Raspberry Mead – Micro Batch Recipe (2024)

FAQs

How many raspberries for 1 gallon of mead? ›

You'll need 3 pounds of honey and roughly 6 ounces of raspberries per gallon.

If you're using less honey to make more of a beer-like mead, those can be fully fermented and drinkable in under a month. Other types can take a few months. It just depends on the amount of honey. Amount of honey primarily is what it depends on, and some yeasts ferment honey faster than others.

A good starting point with most fruits is about 3 pounds of fruit per gallon of mead, though I have been known to use 5 or even 6 pounds of fruit. Fruit blends can produce some great-tasting meads.

If you put in a bunch of honey and you get enough yeast (the right kind of yeast where it ferments all the way out) then you'll have a really dry, high alcohol champagne-like mead. You can use less honey to make a lower alcohol mead. Using less honey might make it a little bit more dry, though not necessarily.

Remove the fruit bag between 7–14 days or when you notice that it is beginning to blanch (turn white). After 2–3 weeks most of the fermentation will be over. At this point, transfer to a secondary to separate the mead from the sediment.

A typical mead batch consists of 15 pounds of honey for a 5 gallon mead batch. In this example, you have 3 pounds of honey per gallon of must, so your potential alcohol by volume is about 15%.

Stirring twice a day is generally sufficient (if you have a fast fermentation, you might want to stir three or four times a day).

Yes, you can drink it as soon as it is clear, or you can drink it at nine months and have a fine wine.

Smoothing out, over time, to make a mellow, less dry experience, letting the latent sweetness emerge. If you want to create an experience for yourself or your friends, we suggest storing a few bottles of mead, out of the sun at room temperature, for 6 months to a year.

What fruit makes best mead? ›

After initially shaking to stir and aerate your must, we recommend using a wine whip or similar tool (making sure to stir and splash your mead) every 12 hours for the first 3 days to make sure your yeast has plenty of oxygen to grow strong and healthy.

Use 1.5 to 5 pounds of honey per gallon, depending on your target for residual sweetness and alcohol content. The more honey, the more residual sweetness and the greater potential for a high, final alcohol content.

If you want to make high-ABV mead, there are two ways you can consider. Either you can add more sugar or use a fermentation technique that produces higher levels of alcohol. Adding more sugar can also increase the potential alcohol content.

Mead has a finicky way of kicking fermentation back into gear just when you think it's over. If you want to add extra sugar to the finished product in order to increase sweetness, chances are your yeast will come back to life. They'll eat up the sugars, and you won't get the top-off of sweetness that you want.

Generally, you will dose yeast nutrient at 1 tsp per gallon of must and yeast energizer at 1/2 tsp per gallon of must. I will address yeast rehydration later in the Basic Recipe section.

Like nearly all brewing topics there are no absolute rules about addition rates, but a good starting point is one pound of fruit per gallon of beer (0.45 kg per 3.8 L).

Planting tips: Plant raspberries in a container at least 24 to 36 inches wide and deep. Half-barrels or five-gallon pots are ideal sizes that allow enough room for new canes to grow in future years. Start with three to six canes, depending on the container size.

The ratio of water to honey depends on the type of mead you want to make. For a dry mead, the ratio is 4 parts water to 1 part honey; a sweet mead is 2 to 1. Kluz likes his mead sweet, so he typically uses 1 3/4 gallons of honey and tops it off with 3 1/4 gallons of water.