Blueberry Mead - Simple Homemade Recipe
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- Опубліковано 29 січ 2022
- Blueberry Mead - Simple Homemade Recipe. I don't know why it took so long for us to make blueberry mead. I mean, we love blueberries, we love mead, why haven't we done it? Dunno. Anyway, we came up with a pretty easy recipe for homemade blueberry mead and here it is! We use frozen blueberries for this, but you can easily use fresh, or even blueberry juice to make your own mead if you wanted to.
Ingredients:
3 lbs Oregon Honey (thanks Jeremy!) starrfarms.net/honey-and-beesw...
1 lb Frozen Blueberries
Zest of One Lemon
P.G. Tips Tea (or one tea bag steeped of your black tea of choice): amzn.to/3Ge2zGE
Water to get to around 1.080 Gravity Reading
1.5 - 2 grams Fermaid O: amzn.to/3Gb5KPx
Lalvin QA23 Yeast: amzn.to/3J5BZSj
Blueberry Mead Finishing, Bottling and Tasting - Siphonless Little Big Mouth Bubbler Test!: • Blueberry Mead Finishi...
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Little Big Mouth Bubbler with Spigot: www.northernbrewer.com/produc...
Scale: amzn.to/3o9hZG0
Our Favorite Pitcher: amzn.to/3KVlkCv
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Whisk of Unusual Size: amzn.to/32MfDWm
Graduated Cylinder: amzn.to/3HeqVBL
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You guys are very welcome for the honey! Excited to see how this one turns out.
Didn't know there was a honey place here in lane County. I'll be shopping there here soon
Started beekeeping last year. The thought of mead never crossed my mind. I’m over 200 pounds of honey this year so I’ll definitely be making some mead!
Im in the same boat as you! Mead making seem like a natural next step!
Jump on into it!!!! Fantastic hobby with some wonderful benefits and a fun learning curve!
What region are you in? What type of honey? Where I live (Louisiana/Texas States border area), here it's about 99% Clover Honey that's available (strong clover too) 🙄. It does get a little old, but oh well 🤷♂️
How many hives do you keep? 200lbs? Wow!
@@tinybadastronaut I'm thinking the same thing.
Blueberry mead will always hold a special place in my heart because it was the very first mead I made.
The temperature is pretty interesting with yeast. I know you guys have a warmer house and your brews usually start bubbling within an hour. My house is always about 72° and it takes almost a day to get to where you are in an hour. Thank you guys so much for all the work you put in to your videos, I love them all!
I made a mead using this recipe when this video came out and it was so goood that i decided to start keeping bees last summer. This year I'm making this mead with my own honey. Thank you for posting this video because it helped me to become a beekeeper.❤
Wow, that's awesome! Glad we could help.
Blueberry Melomel was my first ever mead! It did great too, by pure luck i made it sweet and bottled it, when it accidentally carbonated it got EVEN BETTER!
I just put the rubber stopper on my first batch ever. How did you get yours to be sweet?
If it “accidentally” carbonated and was sweet… it wasn’t finished when bottled. You are very lucky they didn’t explode.
@@CitySteadingBrews haha, indeed. High pressure flip top bottles managed to contain the happy accident. But a corked cheap bottle i prepared for a friend did indeed “pop”.
I took around a flip top to drink with him at a later date.
Fond memories of just starting out.
We learn by experience!
@@ShootinItStr8 essentially, in this early case the ferment had stalled and left some sugars un-fermented. But there were some yeast cells still alive after wracking and settling, that later reactivated and carbonated the brew from some of these sugars.
With more experience now, I tend to ferment to dry, settle out and wrack off all the yeast (I do use finings) and then I “back sweeten” to taste.
I’ve never had to pasteurise yet.
Happy brewing!
If you are backsweetening and not stabilizing you are risking bottle bombs.
My daughter and I started brewing as a fun father/daughter project recently, and she has been after me to do a blueberry mead (since we live in Maine and have our own in the freezer) next, so I'm really glad you posted this. Thank you! :)
A friend who has been making wine for years was really impressed with this recipe! Turned out great
Blueberry mead was the first mead I made with my kit. I didn't use a recipe and just used frozen blueberries. Honestly it was an experiment and I wasn't sure how it would turn out but it turned out pretty good. Now that I watched this, I'm definitely using lemons and tea next time!
Watched on 2x speed because its 630 am and i havnt slept yet lol. This looks amazing.
Thank you guys for making these videos i have started brewing again because of you guys
As a person from Maine, I strongly approve of your choice of blueberries! Blueberries love to be in brews, every brew I've made with blueberries has exceeded expectations. I do use a bag, and anise seed goes surprisingly well with blueberries, the flavors blend nicely.
I'm with you, Nova Scotian here lol.... I make a mean blueberry apple cider ;) I must try anise, good idea!
Orange instead of lemon peel would be awesome too!!
Lol I just moved to Maine and I looked up this video beacuse I'm a out to gather a ton of wild blueberry's.
For measuring the residual honey in the jar, you can add a set amount of warm water (say a pound) to the jar, dissolve the honey and then add the water/honey mixture to the vessel on the scale that contains the bulk of the honey. Then you substract the pound of water you added from your new reading and you should know the total amount of honey ;)
Another approach would be to weigh the full jar of honey and then the empty jar.
@@papasmurf9146 also a good approach :D
@@papasmurf9146measure full measure empty is the most straight forward
I'm wanting to get into Mead making and I love blueberry flavored things. This is definitely top of my list to try after my initial trial!
Just finished the first 5 gallon fermentation. Racked it, my neighbour and I gave it a little taste. We both agree: Absolutely stunning! Thank you from us both for posting this recipe! 🥰😍🥰
I made a mead using this recipe. After 4 months of waiting i finaly tasted it. It feals like heaven touched my mouth. Amazing.
This looks so good. I can't wait to start making my own mead.
Just got one of these, and I'm going to try it out using this recipe.
Been wanting to try a blueberry mead for a while now. Thanks for sharing!
I've been planning to make a mead from scratch and somehow the UA-cam gods brought me to your channel. I am so thankful. Thank you so much for the delightful content.
I am going to be bottling this in a couple of weeks, thank you both for teaching me everything I learned.
I tried to make a blueberry mead when I first started, and it failed. I think I will try it again :) Thanks for the inspiration.
Just made this and looks so good
gonna make my first wine in a couple days. thanks for the inspiration. you all are great!
I love this! Excellent!
making my first mead following this video. Just got it set up tonight. I hope that it comes out good. Excited to get this started.
Finally!!! I was waiting for this recipe for a long time, Made one and it was incredible, awesome, I still have half a bottle and I don't want to finish it.
Very nice, some of the best Mead I ever made was blueberry.
Thanks for showing us your process.
Your videos have inspired me, going to try brewing mead, looks like fun.
You guys are my cup of tea
Cool! Thanks!
Blueberry Mead is probably in my top 5 brews. Gotta love those little purple buggers.
I'm so glad I found this channel! I cant wait to see how this turns out 😁✌
my mom loves my blackberry and blueberry meads, so i had to check yours out. i will have to try adding lemon zest to my next batch.
Many thx for the video. I really enjoyed watching it. You´re great ❤
Your channel...... SO ADDICTING! Thanks for the great content!!!
Love your channel. Also - friendly reminder to all: please support your local home brew shops when possible, we really need it ❤️
Starting into making mead and just stumbled upon this video, you two are awesome!!! I love the vibe
Thanks! Welcome to the show!
I just finished this mead i messed up and used to much lemon zest fixed it during backsweetning and pasturizing. Also use cinnamon and it seemed to bring the blueberry flavor more forward. Loved it blueberry cinnamon
Thank you for the knowledge and sharing your brews. I stumbled upon your channel when my brother and I tried making our first small batch of mead. I bought a book, it’s educational and has good references, I’ve read articles and watched other videos, but I sure enjoy your videos more☺️. Bought my first bottle of mead a year ago and I knew mead was my top choice.
I talk a lot too, lol, short story, stumbled on your videos and have my first gallon of ginger mead going. In July it will be bottled and left alone.
My family must have seen the stars in my eyes because I received bottles, tools and a glass 5g carboy for Christmas 😂.
Now I can learn to make my own mead for me and family holidays.
So, I bought K1-V1116 and I’m hoping to use that with a dark berry of some sort. Also, using lemon with blueberries is great. In the baking world those go excellent together.
K I’m done
I got a starter kit today I am going to give this a shot!
Just starting brewing wine and mead, all three batches of mine have started bubbling within the first few hours. The blackberry and peach wine started bubbling vigorously within an hour. The honey mead had a few bubbles after an hour or two and then after a day or so started going pretty good.
So excited to see this. I've had blueberry mead at a local brew fest and fell in love. Now I feel confident to master a batch.
I made this recipe with some mild differences. First, I used a narrow neck carboy (for other beginners out there, use the wide jar). That was alot of fun. Next I used a Lalvin D47 yeast. I started on 5/26/23 so I'll give an update on how the project goes. Cheers
Update? Lol
Oh man I was just in the store today looking at the blueberries and thinking "I wonder if I could make a mead with those" Perfect timing!
Brian: "All our brews start up in an hour or two, i dont really know why"
Also Brian: "Room temperature, so around 75, 80 degrees F"
Hmmm.....really? You dont know why?
All jokes aside, i loved making a blueberry mead, and the results were probably my favorite brew so far. I also added dried lemon peel during conditioning for a little brighter flavor.
I tried your blueberry mead recipe (pretty close, I used 10lbs of blueberries for a 5 gal batch) and it's hands down the most active fermentation I've ever had. I'm going on a week now in primary with a large bubble every 2-3 seconds. All this after 2 blow outs through the air lock.
Normally my batches are down to a bubble every min by now.
Looking forward to giving it a taste.
I stared following you guys after I started making cider and I've learned alot from your videos an have finished my first fruit infused blueberry cider based off what I've learned here it's delicious 😋
That is awesome!
So excited I’m invited for blueberry picking 1st July. Guess what is on my list to do. 😎
Very nice job thank you 😊
I made a blueberry mead once before. Made it right along with a lemon mead. Now I can handle sour like no tomorrow. I'll sit down with a bag of lemons and limes and eat them straight while drinking actual lemon juice which most people buy for cooking something like fish. So when I say something is sour it's sour and both my blueberry mead and lemon mead were sour. Even after a couple years of aging they were still sour. Had to add in a little sugar when I drank it.
Great job
Another great video!😊
I think I’m gonna make a wildflower blueberry mead in spring! I’m in Florida too and I can’t wait for our blueberry season
I love the seal of the big mouth bubbler. I first used it for a mango mead. Yeast must have loved it because it exploded the stopper. That was a fun day.
Great stuff.
I can say that meads have a flavor when it’s young that made me question if I was brewing wrong. Made this 6 months ago with crio bru in conditioning and just had a glass now and the taste, that I used to question whether I did it right, mellowed out and now it’s delightful. I’ve never been patient on waiting for my brews, but this one I see why. I have another bottle of this that I’m waiting for a year to drink and I’m starting to stash a bottle away of each one and setting a reminder on my calendar to try it.
Aging is a thing! That said... if the yeast don't stress, mead can be good much younger.
@@CitySteadingBrews after binge watching a lot of your videos two things I learned from them: the temperature fluctuation in my house and nutrients. Living in the Pacific Northwest a lot of houses don’t have air conditioning and in the summer the house temperature will fluctuate from 85 to 68 and back to 85 in 24 hours. So I bought a mini fridge that I’ll keep at the warmest temperature to give an even temp for brewing in the summer. I used to do champagne yeast honey and water and sometimes fruit and very little oxygen. I love y’all’s long videos because if I didn’t hear the reasons why you do certain things in certain situations, I wouldn’t have learned. Thank you 💜
In my melomels I use 20% strong black tea to add tannins. Then after the must is fermented to dry, racked and stilled I then rack it back onto fresh fruit for a month to give the finished product more fresh fruit taste and backsweeten.
Great video!!!!
Any of my brews that I started in the mid to high 70's with Ferm O started up fast too. I think that's the magic combo.
man this sounds good! Got my wheels turning...... I live pretty close to a blueberry farm and a Strawberry farm... and with blackberries growing everywhere around us, I bet these 3 would be good with some local Clover Honey. Like you said in some of your videos, use what's available to you 👍👍
I had a busy wine weekend, Bottled a Orange Cranberry Mead. Stabilized a Orange Cream sickle Mead and 1st rack on a white wine. Going to start an hibiscus, Black Cherry Wine next weekend; plan on adding the last of some mulling spice I have maybe an ounce. I have made 2 different meads with this bag of hibiscus already, trying a wine next weekend.
Just watched one of your friends video's . I felt like I was on a trip from here to Tampa , and couldn't wait to get there . 🤠
Hmm?
thanks for the videos!!! made my first blueberry mead this weekend.. of course I put way too much water. heheheh the bubbles are coming out of the bubbler. but heres hoping to a great tasting drink.
Then mend it dear Henry LOL. I really enjoy all y’all do.
I’ve just completed my first attempt at this one. I don’t have the little big mouth bubbler so getting the blueberries into a carboy fermenter was a bit messy 😅. I can’t wait to see how it turns out!
Oh I am absolutely making that come August! I'm in Nova Scotia and we grow some of the sweetest and loveliest wild blueberries anywhere, and with honey from my friend's hive.... I'm thinking 12 litre batch! mmmmmmmmmmm ❤❤
I believe that you started with a warmer solution then other people at a higher yeast specific temp for max colony production 👍Great job
Missed the videos gonna be watching out for the next video
There's a hole in my bucket, dear Liza.... :)
I love the new intro
Love the brand of blueberries. I can drive to Wyman's in about an hour.
I just got sum mesquite Texas Honey.I think it might make a great Mead. Will let you know. Thank for the recipe!!
I just finished bottling this recipe and boy do I love the flavor! The tea didn't come out as well, but really strong blueberry taste. The only thing I did different was using Fleishman's baking yeast (cause it's easier for me to get).
It works too!
Very nice. I’m doing my 2.0 test on a blueberry mead using Knudsen blueberry juice. First batch was a hit. Needs to be perfected.
Could I get your recipe?
@@seanm2680
Recipe is for 1.4gallon big mouth bubbler.
1st, sanitize EVERYTHING, EVERY TIME!
2nd, have a graduated cylinder, clean and new turkey baster, and hydrometer.
2-32oz jars of Knudsen blueberry juice
-Costco wildflower honey until we hit 1.090 gravity (12% abv). 1.5-2.5 lbs.
Lalvin 71b yeast (I just use the whole packet)
-Bottled spring water filled to 1.25 gallon mark, then adjust honey and water till you hit desired gravity.
(You can add 1/2 tsp pectic enzyme if you feel the need. It won’t hurt anything, but it’s not really needed much)
Tosna 2:
Use goferm to activate yeast.
Follow feeding schedule with fermaid-o
(I do 24, 48, 72, and 120 hours for ease)
After 4 weeks, rack into new vessel, add 1/2 tsp potassium sorbate, and one Campden tablet. Let that sit for a week.
After a week, rack again and add honey to your desired final taste. We like sweet, so we went with 1.020 as our final gravity.
Age from this point for 4-6 months
**Version 3**
Our version 3 is the same beginning, but after stabilizing, we add 2 lbs of frozen (and then thawed) blueberries from Costco (in a brew bag), and 1/2tsp pectic enzyme. We soak this in the mead for 3-4 weeks. After 3-4 weeks, we remove the brew bag, gently squeeze the berries into a sanitized bowl, then carefully reintroduce the juice/mead back into the batch.
We then wait a week or so, then add honey to taste (we did 1.014 on this version)
I just started one batch of this. With the same ingredients I ended up with a gravity of 1,120 😅 thankfully I like my mead to be sweet
I made blueberry mead, and it didnt even cross my mind to use lemon peels. it had an interesting taste
You know what they say about great minds. I just started a blueberry hydromel last week.
I didn't know you guys were located in florida! that makes me happy, as a new mead brewer, I was worried about the heat possibly affecting stuff.
Question: Should the blueberries be smashed before fermenting? (thinking of how grapes are smashed.) I enjoy your videos.
Edit: I typed too soon! You answered the question about 7 minutes in!
when i make mine i added the blueberry after i rack the mead off the lees, i also run them through a blender. so it all settles on the bottom. comes out great. apparently my grandpa drank the one bottle by himself on the way home (he wasn't the driver) and loved how smooth it was ( 1 1/2 year of sitting in a bottle).
I only had some 71b to use hope this turns out good! I also used some blueberry blossom honey
Would y'all be chance do a video for blackberry honey mead... I love the videos y'all do and they incredibly helpful!
This mead had blackberries in it: ua-cam.com/video/YOgSjFJ2giY/v-deo.html
Just watched the video. Haven't seen the follow up yet. So I'm interested in how this turned out. I did a very close recipe to this about a year and half ago (or more...time is indeterminate at this age). The one I did went completely dry and is still sitting as life has happened and I haven't got back to it since then. I've sampled it every few months and it has gotten better. But I do want to take a small bottle of it and back sweeten it to see if I can get it to the original flavor I was targeting. Otherwise it's definitely a bright berry with hint of lemon taste on the very dry side. Perfectly drinkable. And now I watch the follow up to see what happens.
Great vid! :) on the tap subject, check if there is a tiny hole in the front.. the tap on my fermenter if turn it all the way off it lined the internals of the tap with the hole so it drains the internal of the tap.. mine caught me and left a puddle on the floor..
I made this same brew last year since my blueberry bushes went wild. Turned out amazing, hope yalls does too.
Gonna use muh new sous vide bring honey up tp 95F, flow mo bedda. Also lovin new 6.5 gal BMB and the LBMB with spigot. Racked the 6.5 to to 4x gallon fermenters in secondary and remainder to LBMB. Easy way to take taste samples and make adjustments as time marches on.
Wish me luck, I've used this video to start a blueberry mead. I did giggle when you got to the tea. Pg tips. One thing I have plenty off being British 😂😂 my blueberries wasn't frozen so we will see what happens. I made some orange mead using a kit from amazon. I forgot about it but it seems ok a bit dry.
I’m leaning a way from using three piece air locks because when using plastic fermenters if you squeeze the pale or try to pull out the air lock it can actually pull in some of your sanitizer fluid. Not the end of the world if it’s clean but not so good if it’s got bugs in it.
Well this was good timing, I have a ton of red huckleberries that need something done with them 🙂 question though, and maybe one of the viewers can answer as well but is it because the berries are frozen you do not need to cook them or kill off any potential bacteria? I was thinking I would need to boil them down with the sugar to make sure I wasn’t introducing something other than yeast. Great video and thanks for walking us through this!
I've been watching A Lot of you videos recently and it got me to actually want to try this. I'll hopefully be starting my first mead here within a week or two. Do you guys publish the recipes you use somewhere? Thanks for all the entertaining info!
They are written in the video descriptions.
@@CitySteadingBrews I guess it would have been a good idea for me to scroll down and actually look...yep there it is lol
When making wines/ciders, what are your thoughts on back sweetening with the original brand juice (or different)?
For example: Brewing 1 gallon of apple blackcurrant juice to a strength of ~15%, then adding 1 further gallon to double the liquid, bring the alcohol content down, add sweetness and more of the original fruitiness, then bottle and pasteurize to halt yeast growth.
Have you attempted anything like this before and would you recommend it or try it yourself if you haven't?
Hi. i am new to brewing and love your videos. I have a question about headspace in secondary. I am brewing a mixed fruit wine which started at 1.078 OG (1-18-22 and went dry at 0.990 on 2 feb. it is still in the primary fermenter as i dont have the right size carboy to keep headspace low. am i better to 1. leave in the primary until clear, 2. rack into another bucket fermenter with large headspace or 3 rack into a few smaller carboys.
thank you for the videos.
ken
The first time I tried making mead I used blueberry honey. It was a pretty neat flavour, if My memory serves me. I imagine it’s a completely different result adding blueberries though 🤔
I've got a batch of blueberry mead about two months in to fermentation =)
I would love to try distilling the finished mead to see what spirit flavours would come out. Could make for an interesting vodka!
Theres a special type of honey that is made in a town a couple of hours away from here that has a butter consistency and look, very cool I personally love it, do you guys have access to very buterry honey in Florida?
I did a cranberry mead a little over a year ago (stats at the end), however instead of using just the fresh berries, I opted to make what essentially resulted in the pre-hardened cranberry sauce (a simple syrup made from the berries, sugar, and water). It did take forever to ferment, and did end up stalling for a bit, probably due to the acidity, but it was amazing even as a young mead. If you have the opportunity to get some cranberries, I HIGHLY recommend giving it a go! Mead stats and recipe: simple syrup - 4 cups of sugar, 4 cups of water and 48 oz. of cranberries which was boiled until sugar was dissolved and berries were reduced. 11.5 oz. of hella cheap honey, with the simple syrup, was diluted to 5 gallons to give an OG of 1.122 and Lalvin D47 was used as yeast. After 1.5 months gravity was 1.071 and if I remember correctly I probably racked then too. Another 2ish months gravity was 1.032. At this point sweetness was in my opinion adequate and with the sluggish fermentation, I bottled. Thankfully my tops didn't blow but after a year it did lose much of its characteristic cranberry flavor in favor of more upfront honey.
Technically what you made isn't a mead since it doesn't have atleast 50 percent of the fermentable sugars being honey it's not even close lol
Getting ready to make my first gallon of mead. Using clover honey and D47 yeast. Waiting for everything to dry from sanitizing.
looks sooo good. I have a question, @City Steading chat. When wanting to do vanilla mead, do you just use a pod, the entire thing or what?
Once I started with spigots on my fermentation vessels, and using brewbags for my berries, I never looked back.
Also; Made a blueberry mead the year before last, and due to some miscalculations on my part, it came out *dry*. Reminded me of a very robust red wine.
I hate red wines.. hehe.