Elderberry Melomel Mead

Origin: British      Period: Modern

This is a festive Melomel (mead made with fruit) that includes both elderberries and orange peel in the mead-making process. When picking elderberries it's far easier to pick while sprays of ripe fruit from the tree. Once you get the fruit home use a fork to prise the fruit from their stalks then discard the stalks (do this in a bowl, or the tiny fruit wil jump all over the place!).

Ingredients:

3l of unchlorinated water
2.7kg honey
700g fresh elderberries boiled until soft in 3 kg honey and 2l water.
pared peel of 2 oranges.
6 tsp yeast nutrient
6 tsp pectin
Yeast (Epernay II is good but champagne yeast would also work)

Method:

Preparation

As with most of the other recipes here, this has been gauged to make 5l of mead. Only a basic listing of ingredients is given, and for a brewing method please see this page for a step-by-step guide. Also see this page for a list of the equipment you'll need.

First prepare the elderberries by boiling in water and honey until they 'pop' and go translucent. Add this to the boiling honey and water mixture. When you have completed the boil add the pared orange peel, pectin and yeast nutrient and allow to infuse until the must cools. At this point take out the orange peel. At this point you can return to following the instructions given in the basic extract brewing page to make your mead. Again, this is not a 'short' mead, and you can follow the recipe given for my 'standard' basic mead exactly. As a wine-like mead, once bottled, this preparation needs to be left to mature in the bottle for at least a year.

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