Bored enough to brew something?  Well, here is a recipe for a melomel.  I’ve made this as a more traditional mead, that is, the alcoholic strength is in the 12-14% range compared to the usual 4-5% range that I make (for ease of everyday drinking in the tropics).  I’ve used sapodilla, carrot and orange.  Sapodilla because it is in season; carrot because we bought 5kg of carrots to test out the Champion juicer (don’t use the juicer for sapodilla, the chicle in it just clogs it up) and I’d rather brew the juice than drink it; and oranges because, well, there’s lots of those too.

The recipe is to make (bottle) 5 gallons or 19 litres:

1. Take ripe sapodilla fruit and mash it, juice it, turn it into puree.  The total amount doesn’t really matter, to be honest, I ended up using about 10kg of it.

   

2. Since I didn’t want to lose a whole lot of mead to siphoning liquid of off lots of solid material, I got Munchkin to squeeze the juice from the pulp (This is her job because I get into trouble for touching any type of linen-ware!).

   

   

3. The carrot juice came from about 3kg of carrots put through a juicer…turned out to be about a litre.
4. The oranges made about 2 litres of juice.
5. Chuck it all together in a big boiling pot (big enough to hold about 25 litres) and add enough water to reach about 15-16 litres.
6. By taking serial specific gravity readings, add enough honey to reach a SG of 1.095 to 1.100.  This should give an alcohol content between 12-14%, which is considered “correct” for mead.  For me, it turned out to be 6 “quarts” of honey…quarts is what honey comes in, in Belize (for a total of 23-24 litres of wort).

   

   

7. I took a pH reading to ensure the mixture was acid (less than 5, which it was thanks to the orange juice).
8. Bring it to the boil briefly for a quick (partial) pasteurisation/sterilization/sanitation.
9. Pour it all into a sanitised brew bucket and allow to cool to blood temperature.
10. Pitch some champagne yeast,  seal it all up and fit an air-lock after aerating the wort (by shaking the bucket about).
11. Start practising the virtue of patience while the Fermenting Spirits take residence in the wort…say two weeks.
12. After this time has passed and the air-lock is bubbling very little or not at all, siphon all the liquid into another clean bucket, carboy or other container, leaving all the sediment behind.  Again, fit an air-lock and keep everything in a clean, cool (as much as possible), dark spot and forget about it for another month.  You can taste it while your are doing this.
13. Keep repeating this procedure every month or every two months or every three months until you are satisfied with the clarity of the melomel (you can keep on doing this for years if you want).  Taste it each time and once you are happy with it, start drinking it.