Dragon's Blood

Retrospective

Process Improvement

• It's apparent that I don't really know how to manage whole fruit. I thought I could just calculate the sugars added but was later told I also need to account for dilution from the fruit's water content. I'll be trying to determine how to better math that out and the impact the fruit water has on the must volume moving forward.

• Tried to do this in a 2 gal bucket, and probably could have, but didn't properly account for volume of berries and overfilled the fermenter. It technically fit but I think it would have been messy - having virtually no headspace - so we moved it into a 5 gal bucket instead.

• I've been learning on later fruit recipes that I should probably leave the fruit in for more like 3-5 weeks (with most fruit, anyway) to allow for complete flavor extraction and proper tanin development via skin exposure.

Recipe Improvements

• This is still in primary but already smells and tastes pretty great, I think it's pretty solid so far.

• I ended up with about 1.75 gal of product after losing some to lees, racked into 3 different containers of decreasing sizes. This is a really awkward volume and the impact of fruit on volume needs to be accounted for next time.

• That all said, this is already quite tasty. Just goes to show how forgiving mead making can be!