So I decided to make mead for the holiday season this year (may have started it a bit late, but oh well). The goal is to make 2 2.5 galon batches of mead, each with a different fruit.

I started by making a 5 galon batch of mead using 15 lbs of clover honey and mixing it with water. After pitching the yeast and waiting over 24 hours with no signs of fermentation I started to do some research. I found that honey and water alone isn’t ideal for mead (goes to show that sometimes just winging it doesn’t work). You need to add acidity and nutrient, of some sort, for the yeast to do their job. After researching this on Sunday I went for a late night store run to pick up some Simply Orange and some white raisins. I tossed in a handful of raisins (approximately 125 or so) and 2 cups of orange juice into the must (sanitized the equipment, not the ingredients) and stirred it around a bit to get it mixed up. Woke up the next morning to some signs of fermentation and it’s now bubbling away and getting faster as time goes.

Once I am done with the primary fermentation (about a month from now) I will transfer half of the batch into a 3 galon carboy with fresh cherries and the other half into another 3 galon carboy with fresh peaches. I will let them sit on the fruit for at least a month before stopping fermentation with some chemicals and bottling.

The gravity reading I had (before adding the orange juice and raisins) was 1.109. My calculator estimates it will ferment down to 1.030 (I am hoping for quite a bit lower) which will give the mead about 10.5% ABV. Should be a nice dry mead with some decent flavor from the fruits.

I will post pictures of the final product in a few months.

Can’t wait to taste it!

-Borbosha