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aking An Apricot Melomel
I'm going to be making an apricot melomel this weekend and was wondering if anyone has any advice. Here's the recipe I've come up with:
10 lbs. clover honey
1 gallon Kerns apricot nectar
2 oz. vanilla extract (at racking to secondary)
2 pkg. Lalvin K1V-1116 (Montpelier) wine yeast - hydrated
1 tbsp yeast nutrient
1 tbsp acid blend (at end)
enough water to make 5 gallons of must
I plan on not using any pasteurization here. I figure the apricot nectar is already pasteurized and the wine yeast ought to out-compete anything in the honey. I also want maximum honey characteristics and don't want to drive them off with heat. I'll add the honey to about a gallon of warm/hot water to get it into suspension and then dump it into the carboy followed by the other ingredients. Depending on the gravity reading, I'm thinking about adding a couple of pounds of honey when I rack to secondary just to make sure I get some nice honey aromatics. Anyone have any advice on this recipe?
thanks
naoh
I'm not familiar with Kerns apricot nectar. How acidic is it?
I made an apricot mead with 10 - 12 lbs of apricots from the neighbor and I didn't add any acid blend on a hunch that the apricots would have enough and it turns out that is was a good hunch. It a plenty of tartness to offset the alcohol
I made this last year and it is still aging in the carbouy. After tasting I decided that I would add some oak chips and I'm glad I did.
I like the idea of the vanilla extract ( note to self try this in the future)
The only reason I haven't bottle it yet is that I have a line up of other tasks to do, like finish building a shop, bottle some Shiraz wine and racking some other meads. It's a hectic like being a home brewer. ' '
For what it's worth, the last two meads I've made I use the no pasteurization method from the Complete Mead Maker book and so far so good.
thanks
logan
Yeah,,, my limited apricot expertise found that the original mead was lacking some thing and seemed to be sort of one dimensional, maybe a bit too tart. I thought about it for a bit and decided that the oak would a good additions. It has accomplish a dramatic change, given it, another dimension somewhat offsetting the tartness. I also, took a small sample and sweetened it to, say,,, a medium and that is what I'll be bottling soon. I've decided to sweeten the batch with honey and not the plain old wine conditioner this should give me the honey aromatics I've not been able to get in the past.
thanks
kevin
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