Home

Who's online

There are currently 0 users online.

You are here

Home

Tangerine Tupelo Melomel

Fri, 02/21/2014 - 13:50 — PHB2234
Wanted to brew a semi-sweet mead, using Tupelo honey and tangerine juice. We have a mature tangerine tree in our back yard, and it is prolific. Last year we couldn't keep up with the fruit, so I juiced and froze a bunch: ten pounds of juice. It measured 17 brix on my refractometer. Finally got around to making the mead this month. It fermented almost 3 weeks in primary, at 65F, and is now ready to rack to secondary. I tasted it, and it tastes like high octane Tang! It is a cloudy, pale orange in color now, but should clear nicely after I ignore it for 6 months in secondary. There's both tangerine and honey aromatics a plenty right now.
Brewed By: 
Rich, with help from Old Jim
Brew Date: 
02/01/2014
Brew Type: 
Extract (with or without Steeping Grains)
Beer Styles: 
Melomel
Classic Style: 
Still Melomel
Recipe Category: 
Personal Brew
Wacky
Batch Size: 
4.0 gallons
Boil Time: 
0 minutes
Original Gravity: 
1.117 O.G.
Final Gravity: 
1.012 F.G.
ABV: 
15.0% ABV
IBUs: 
0.0 IBUs
SRM: 
3.5 SRM
Malt/Grain/Sugar/Extract: 

Tupelo honey, ~14 lbs

Tangerine juice, frozen, then thawed, 5 lbs

Mashing Instructions: 

Added honey and tangerine juice to 2 gallons of filtered tap water, heated to 145F and held for 20 minutes to pasturize.

Ran off into fermenter, topped up with more filtered tap water to make 4 gallon target volume. Chilled with immersion chiller to yeast pitching temperature, pitched yeast starter, oxygenated for 2 minutes and let it roll.

Hops: 

none

Extra Ingredients: 

(see details for tangerine juice above)

Yeast: 

WLP720, Sweet Mead

Stepped up to 1200 ml in a starter.

Special Instructions / Notes: 

The must measured 27.7 brix on my refractometer before I pitched the yeast.

Will rack to secondary this weekend and then ignore it in my garage for at least 6 months.

Update Nov. 19, 2014. Bottled from secondary today. Whilst it sat in secondary, the gravity dropped to 1.008. It is pretty clear without any fining, so I won't bother. This is a bit less residual sugar than I had hoped for, but a lesson for next time - USE MORE HONEY! See you at the next mead tasting in 2015 and you can taste it then.

»
Drupal theme by pixeljets.com D7 ver.1.1