Sweet Saskatoon Mead

2010 ALES Homebrew Open Category 24 & 25 Gold Medal & Mead of the Year

Batch Size: 23 L

Original Gravity: 1.112

Terminal Gravity: 1.040

Alcohol: ~9.5%

Color: Peach 

Ingredients: 

5 lbs frozen Saskatoon Berries

15 lbs raw honey (Lumsden Valley Honey Company)

2 table spoons pectic enzyme

1 Wyeast 4184 Sweet Mead 

Schedule: 

Prepared yeast started 2 days prior to brew day with:

1 cup raw honey

2 litres water

½ cup berries (probably not necessary in starter) 

Pasturize starter must by heating for 20 minutes at 80 C and chill prior to adding yeast. 

Brew day:

1. Boil approximately 12 L of water.  Remove from heat, add frozen berries and dissolve honey into heated water.  Pasturize (heat at 80 C for 20 minutes). DO NOT BOIL and DO NOT CRUSH BERRIES.

2. Remove from heat and chill to ~25 C in ice bath or use wort chiller.

3. Transfer chilled must to primary fermenter and add room temperature water to ~25 L (the berries seem to absorb a lot of water, so you should end up with 23L when you transfer to secondary fermenter)

4. Add 2 table spoons pectic enzyme to must.

5. Pitch entire contents of yeast starter into fermenter. 

6. Transfer to secondary fermenter after 3 or 4 days, leaving the berries behind in the primary fermenter.

7. Age in secondary fermenter for 5 or 6 months

8. Bottled at ~ 1.050 gravity in order to obtain petillant carbonation (Wyeast sweet mead yeast seems to die out at ~10% alcohol)