With a caramelized honey, you also may get non fermentable sugars due to the caramelization process which would stop the use of sulphites and thus a sweeter product. Don’t quote me but I have heard that before
If you only have one of those 5 gallon jugs can you rack into a clean container, clean the jug and proceed to use the jug again for the next racking process?
Im in a similar situation. I have a gallon of sweet cherry mead that stopped fermenting. Its been sitting since may of 2021 and is 7% abv. I am thinking about making a batch of extract beer and mixing them together and calling it cherry braggot.
Three months late to the party, but I don't see an update video on this on your channel. According to a quick Google search, tart cherries contain 4x more malic acid than apples. In my experience, straight hard cider has enough malic acid to make it borderline too sour. My cider underwent malolactic fermentation using the natural culture found on the apple skins and it is now very pleasant. At 1 gal cherry juice in 5 gal mead, you're potentially at a similar malic acid level. I'm not sure if any lactic acid bacteria have a 14%+ alcohol tolerance, but I would try that with 1 gal to see if you can convert the comparatively sharper malic acid to softer lactic acid.
Hey there! We recorded a tasting video on it but the audio came out terrible so we still need to re-record. We ended up adding erythritol to backsweeten and vanilla to smooth it out. Came out wonderful!
@@DointheMost Sadly I can't take erythritol so will have to think of a different thing to sweeten, I like the caramelized honey and vanilla suggestion, hum, maybe some cocoa nibs also.
If I were in this predicament I would probably split it and top one up with apple juice/cider and actually bottle condition that one so that it is carbonated, the other I might just ramp it up with more honey or bring another fruit into the mix to help smooth it out but still go for more wine like. Love the channel by the way!
We are very into the idea of doing a pseudo-cyser with apple juice. Hadn't even considered that. Could be a great winter warmer! Thank you for watching the channel!
My very first mead was a tart cherry mead. Entryway drug. I ended up oaking half of it and then bottling it at a semi-sweet level (1.015ish). I will say that time did wonders for that particular fermentation, and while I liked it at 1 month old it was magic at 1 year. I would recommend racking off a bottles worth and aging it just pure.
I'm sure I'm too late at this point but what about a vanilla bean to help mellow out the tartness? I'm actually going to be starting a 1 gallon tart cherry mead today and was also thinking of adding 1 vanilla bean in secondary (I've never used a vanilla bean in any of my 30ish meads to date).
I wouldn't water it down with spring water... however, splitting the batch and topping with a tradition mead to lessen the acidity and tannins might be a good plan. Then back sweeten with honey to taste if the honey flavor isn't lost to the über tartness of the cherries. If it is, maybe just back sweeten with concentrated apple juice? My 2 cents, which is only really worth one cent. Looking forward to watching what you do. Love your channel by the way. 👍👍
@@dswem79 Definitely depends on what you want to make. We always recommend sourcing local when possible - farmers' markets and the like. Orange blossom honey is a great go-to for consistently good-tasting honey that maintains its character post-ferment. We've been enjoying playing around with using portions of buckwheat honey in addition to wildflower in a few session-style meads with some great success. Buckwheat is rich and molassesy. There's a seller on eBay called saving_bees that sells AMAZING buckwheat honey. Round Rock Honey sells great wildflower honey and publishes a chemical analysis of their honey online, which we love. Hope this is helpful!
@@dswem79 Definitely depends on what you want to make. We always recommend sourcing local when possible - farmers' markets and the like. Orange blossom honey is a great go-to for consistently good-tasting honey that maintains its character post-ferment. We've been enjoying playing around with using portions of buckwheat honey in addition to wildflower in a few session-style meads with some great success. Buckwheat is rich and molassesy. There's a seller on eBay called saving_bees that sells AMAZING buckwheat honey. Round Rock Honey sells great wildflower honey and publishes a chemical analysis of their honey online, which we love. Hope this is helpful!
Maybe a nice clover local honey, my experience is that it is super sweet, even when fermented out has more residual sweetness left over into a newer small batch of low alchol mead and then blend. Not that it will do much good for you now, but I have discovered a couple yeast that are great at reducing those high acid country fruit wines, MA33 and B71, I am too sitting on a very tart 1 gallon batch of cherry mead and I will be blending half with some simple apple wine and some with a traditional mead. Next time I will be using the MA33 in my primary ferment. Mead makes should know their honey source is legitimate. I am a sidliner beek, there is alot of fake honey in the stores.
I haven’t backsweeten med your recipe from tart cherry and hibiscus and it’s not bad but the soft boring cherry flavor didn’t turn out tart and definitely needs sweetness. But with what kind of honey
You can use pH buffers like Calcium Carbonate or Sodium Bicarbonate to raise the pH to a(n) area you prefer. I would recommend buying a pH meter so you know what you are working with and to know your sweet spot.
Does it taste like cough syrup? I've heard that phrase commonly with cherry meads. My suggestion would be that no matter what you do, you experiment! meaning if you split the 5 gal batch in two, one batch be different than the other. unfortunately i have no better feedback than that, but im looking forward to the results
I tried this. It's def not cough syrup. It's actually almost drinkable at 2 months, which is high praise. I'd imagine cough syrup is what you'd get if it didnt ferment properly. Of course I'm not nearly as fancy as this, I just dumped in frozen cherries in a mead bag.
Sou Brasileiro e estou gostando muito dos seus vídeos. Gosto de hidromel (em português mead significa hidromel). Estou agora fazendo uma receita de Braggot. Abraço!!
How about making a sparkling wine with 1/2 and do the dilution with the other half. Maybe lower the alcohol to 11-12% by adding water then bottle with 20g per lite of sugar. Sparkling with need to be acidic.
I know this is way late but cinnamon with tart cherry always adds that certain "something" on the back end that always makes me go HMMMM? If there is no cinnamon in a tart cherry pie I know that there is a certain "something" missing.
Did you say you put the cherry flesh into jam? Wouldn't that ruin the jam? You don't want pectic enzymes in jam or it will never set up. It is the natural or added pectin that cause a jam to turn thick. I think the enzyme will ruin that process.
Just trying to learn. What I always knew “mead “is only made from Honey water alone, no fruits. Dating back BC. Once you add fruits, it’s just fruit wine or beer, not mead!
Oak. Always oak. Half medium and half dark toast. Then lightly sweeten. If it were me I would use a caramelized honey.
I like your style.
With a caramelized honey, you also may get non fermentable sugars due to the caramelization process which would stop the use of sulphites and thus a sweeter product. Don’t quote me but I have heard that before
oak adds tannins
Why always oak?
If you only have one of those 5 gallon jugs can you rack into a clean container, clean the jug and proceed to use the jug again for the next racking process?
I used half sweet and half sour cherries with raw honey and it tastes fantastic.
Im in a similar situation. I have a gallon of sweet cherry mead that stopped fermenting. Its been sitting since may of 2021 and is 7% abv. I am thinking about making a batch of extract beer and mixing them together and calling it cherry braggot.
Three months late to the party, but I don't see an update video on this on your channel. According to a quick Google search, tart cherries contain 4x more malic acid than apples. In my experience, straight hard cider has enough malic acid to make it borderline too sour. My cider underwent malolactic fermentation using the natural culture found on the apple skins and it is now very pleasant. At 1 gal cherry juice in 5 gal mead, you're potentially at a similar malic acid level. I'm not sure if any lactic acid bacteria have a 14%+ alcohol tolerance, but I would try that with 1 gal to see if you can convert the comparatively sharper malic acid to softer lactic acid.
Hey there! We recorded a tasting video on it but the audio came out terrible so we still need to re-record. We ended up adding erythritol to backsweeten and vanilla to smooth it out. Came out wonderful!
@@DointheMost how much of each, copied this recipe, with similar results-not sure where to go from here
@@timwood8733 About a cup of erythritol and a couple tablespoons of vanilla extract. I would add to taste.
@@DointheMost Sadly I can't take erythritol so will have to think of a different thing to sweeten, I like the caramelized honey and vanilla suggestion, hum, maybe some cocoa nibs also.
Nice touch with the Zelda sounds
Congrats on getting over the 1k mark! You have been working hard and it shows. Good to see you rewarded for that effort too
Thanks for watching! We've been having a blast putting together videos and learning from the community. :)
I know I'm a little late, but what did you do with this? This would have made an interesting braggot if mixed with a very floral witbeer.
I’m starting a tart cherry mead soon and I plan on aging on oak, vanilla beans, and mahlab to round everything out...maybe even some lactose.
If I were in this predicament I would probably split it and top one up with apple juice/cider and actually bottle condition that one so that it is carbonated, the other I might just ramp it up with more honey or bring another fruit into the mix to help smooth it out but still go for more wine like. Love the channel by the way!
We are very into the idea of doing a pseudo-cyser with apple juice. Hadn't even considered that. Could be a great winter warmer! Thank you for watching the channel!
My very first mead was a tart cherry mead. Entryway drug. I ended up oaking half of it and then bottling it at a semi-sweet level (1.015ish). I will say that time did wonders for that particular fermentation, and while I liked it at 1 month old it was magic at 1 year. I would recommend racking off a bottles worth and aging it just pure.
I'm sure I'm too late at this point but what about a vanilla bean to help mellow out the tartness? I'm actually going to be starting a 1 gallon tart cherry mead today and was also thinking of adding 1 vanilla bean in secondary (I've never used a vanilla bean in any of my 30ish meads to date).
Do you drink most of these or give them away? Would love to see your storage setup for all these 5 gallon batches you make.
I wouldn't water it down with spring water... however, splitting the batch and topping with a tradition mead to lessen the acidity and tannins might be a good plan. Then back sweeten with honey to taste if the honey flavor isn't lost to the über tartness of the cherries. If it is, maybe just back sweeten with concentrated apple juice? My 2 cents, which is only really worth one cent. Looking forward to watching what you do. Love your channel by the way. 👍👍
That’s not a bad idea. And we had a pail of honey delivered last week so we’ve got plenty to experiment with... Thanks for watching!
@@DointheMost any recommendations on sourcing honey. Or honey varieties you think I should check out?
@@dswem79 Definitely depends on what you want to make. We always recommend sourcing local when possible - farmers' markets and the like. Orange blossom honey is a great go-to for consistently good-tasting honey that maintains its character post-ferment. We've been enjoying playing around with using portions of buckwheat honey in addition to wildflower in a few session-style meads with some great success. Buckwheat is rich and molassesy. There's a seller on eBay called saving_bees that sells AMAZING buckwheat honey. Round Rock Honey sells great wildflower honey and publishes a chemical analysis of their honey online, which we love. Hope this is helpful!
@@dswem79 Definitely depends on what you want to make. We always recommend sourcing local when possible - farmers' markets and the like. Orange blossom honey is a great go-to for consistently good-tasting honey that maintains its character post-ferment. We've been enjoying playing around with using portions of buckwheat honey in addition to wildflower in a few session-style meads with some great success. Buckwheat is rich and molassesy. There's a seller on eBay called saving_bees that sells AMAZING buckwheat honey. Round Rock Honey sells great wildflower honey and publishes a chemical analysis of their honey online, which we love. Hope this is helpful!
Maybe a nice clover local honey, my experience is that it is super sweet, even when fermented out has more residual sweetness left over into a newer small batch of low alchol mead and then blend. Not that it will do much good for you now, but I have discovered a couple yeast that are great at reducing those high acid country fruit wines, MA33 and B71, I am too sitting on a very tart 1 gallon batch of cherry mead and I will be blending half with some simple apple wine and some with a traditional mead. Next time I will be using the MA33 in my primary ferment. Mead makes should know their honey source is legitimate. I am a sidliner beek, there is alot of fake honey in the stores.
We will definitely be looking into those yeasts. Great info!
Would that work with wild chokecherries.
i would take chocolate and honey and carmelize them together and sweeten with that. the tartness and the bitterness would be great
I haven’t backsweeten med your recipe from tart cherry and hibiscus and it’s not bad but the soft boring cherry flavor didn’t turn out tart and definitely needs sweetness. But with what kind of honey
You can use pH buffers like Calcium Carbonate or Sodium Bicarbonate to raise the pH to a(n) area you prefer. I would recommend buying a pH meter so you know what you are working with and to know your sweet spot.
PH strips are available as well for brewing.
@@1014p not as accurate but yes
What about malolactic fermentation?
Another interesting idea - success would depend on the amount of malic acid in cherries, I suppose.
Yeah🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉
Does it taste like cough syrup? I've heard that phrase commonly with cherry meads. My suggestion would be that no matter what you do, you experiment! meaning if you split the 5 gal batch in two, one batch be different than the other. unfortunately i have no better feedback than that, but im looking forward to the results
It does not taste like cough syrup, fortunately! 😅
Sweet cherries are what makes meads/wines taste like cough syrup.
I tried this. It's def not cough syrup. It's actually almost drinkable at 2 months, which is high praise.
I'd imagine cough syrup is what you'd get if it didnt ferment properly.
Of course I'm not nearly as fancy as this, I just dumped in frozen cherries in a mead bag.
Why not pasteurize and then back-sweeteen?
im new but ill be the first to say congrats!
Thank you! We're having a lot of fun putting videos together!
Blend it all with the carboy setting next to it on the table.
Vanilla bean has a lot of potential to improve the mead as well if you're into that sort of thing
What kind of siphon is that? Looks like it might work better than the cheap plastic siphons from every brew supply store.
We have a stainless steel racking cane. Love it!
Sou Brasileiro e estou gostando muito dos seus vídeos. Gosto de hidromel (em português mead significa hidromel). Estou agora fazendo uma receita de Braggot. Abraço!!
salve
How about making a sparkling wine with 1/2 and do the dilution with the other half. Maybe lower the alcohol to 11-12% by adding water then bottle with 20g per lite of sugar. Sparkling with need to be acidic.
New sub here, love the vids man keep em comin!
Thanks for watching!
I know this is way late but cinnamon with tart cherry always adds that certain "something" on the back end that always makes me go HMMMM? If there is no cinnamon in a tart cherry pie I know that there is a certain "something" missing.
Did you say you put the cherry flesh into jam? Wouldn't that ruin the jam? You don't want pectic enzymes in jam or it will never set up. It is the natural or added pectin that cause a jam to turn thick. I think the enzyme will ruin that process.
Late to the game on the comments here but that mead would probably work well in a Manhattan variation.
If I had it I’d blend I’d make it into a Payment, and Citrus mead then add honey and brandy.and make a Sangrias mead
Add honey, bottle-conditioned, no sulfites. And send me some! Thanks!
I know it's perfectly fine, but the foam from the sanitizer in the carboy bothers me.
Make a chocolate mead and blend the 2
Why not just pasteurize and then back sweeten
>here almost a year later
almost 10k now, 2020 has been good for brewing haha
Do not split the batch and water it down. Pull the half gallon/ gallon off and add honey sounds much better of an option.
Definitely feel like this option could lead to a *richer* more full-bodied final product.
S O I boooooyyyyyyyyy
Just trying to learn. What I always knew “mead “is only made from Honey water alone, no fruits. Dating back BC. Once you add fruits, it’s just fruit wine or beer, not mead!
50 percent peaches 25 percent cherry 25 percent blueberries. I 🤔 that's what you're looking for