Homemade Blueberry Mead Recipe - Celebration Generation (2024)

FAQs

How many blueberries for a gallon of mead? ›

Here's a batch that I just finished. Let me do some math for a 1 gallon batch... I would use about 4 lbs of blueberries and 2 lbs of honey. Freeze and Thaw the berries a few times to make them super soft and 'pulpy', add them to your fermenter in a mesh bag.

Keep fermentation temps up to around 70° or 75° F. Fermentation should last between 10 to 20 days. Rack into a conditioning vessel and bulk age for 3 to 6 months. Bottle, then enjoy now and again to see how it's progressing.

Always age your mead at least 6 months. The sweeter your mead, the less time it takes to mature. I've had a few sweet meads that were good at 6 months and a year. That being said 18 months seems to be the sweet spot for the sweeter batches.

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.

Secure the lid on the jar to create an airtight seal. Store the jar at room temperature, away from direct sunlight, and allow the blueberries to ferment for about 3-5 days. Check the jar daily and press down on the weight to release any trapped air bubbles.

Pour the fruit puree into the fermentation jar. Rack the mead from the carboy to the fermentation jar, taking care to leave as much lees as possible at the bottom of the carboy. Place the lid on the jar and refrigerate for 1 to 2 weeks.

It is important to stir the 'must' during the primary fermentation. The yeast requires a good supply of oxygen during this 'aerobic' fermentation, meaning with air. It also helps keep the fruit in solution if you are fermenting on the fruit, grapes, or whatever kind of fruit. You don't want a solid cap forming on top.

Mead will age gracefully as will wine as long as the closure (crown cap, screw cap or cork) you use is in correctly and the seal is good. There are other things in the mead (acid, tannin, alcohol, etc.) that will help to add longevity to your mead as well. I've had crown capped bottles that have gone 11 years.

Also, while most homebrew beers are quite acceptably tasty almost immediately after the primary fermentation, mead takes much, much longer — 6 months to a year — to mature to a flavor that mead brewers and aficionados find acceptable and might be aged for even longer by serious mead homebrewers.

Yes, mead improves with age. As mead sits aging in the bottle it will undergo a type of mellowing that will allow some of the subtle flavors to come forward while other less desirable flavors will retreat. It will still remain the same for the most part, but some flavors move forward while others retreat.

Can you age mead in mason jars? ›

Yet you can age it in any container type/style that you want to, whether that's jars or bottles, beer bottles or wine bottles, etc etc.... Just remember, it's about air space/oxidative damage as well as light/UV damage to the product.....

Aging your mead

Go ahead and set bottles aside with different aging timelines. For example: Let one or more bottles age for 30 days in bottles before drinking. Let one or more bottles age for 3 months in bottles before drinking.

Ken introduces his “Noble” fruits which he believes are the top fruits to use in meads including fruits like tart cherries, raspberries, currants and blackberries. We discuss how the acidity and tannins provide the flavor and structure needed for a large gravity mead with a substantial amount of residual sweetness.

In general, more yeast is actually better, at least at first. But you can, if you severely over-pitch, end up dosing your must with so many ravenously hungry yeast cells that they over compete for the sugar and nutrients, resulting in stressed yeast and resulting production of off flavors.

Some people add lemon or other citrus juices to mead as a source of acid to help balance out the sweet flavor of the honey, but this is by no means mandatory. Adding sugar or honey will not actually neutralize the acid or change the pH; it will only help to balance the flavor as David had mentioned.

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.

As far as how much fruit to use: A good rule of thumb is 1 lbs per gallon for a lighter tasting fruit flavor, 2-3 lbs per gallon for a medium fruit flavor, 4+ lbs per gallon for a very strong fruit flavor.

About 5 pounds fit in a one gallon freezer bag and you can use them all winter on cereal or in blueberry recipes.

2 to 4 lbs of blueberries are needed per gallon of wine. If you want to learn how to grow them, you can check out my videos on growing blueberries. In fact, the tastiest blueberries I have ever had, by far, are the ones I grow in my back yard. They are so much better than anything you can buy.