Embedded Files
Recipe (Split into 2 fermenters)
Recipe (Split into 2 fermenters)
Primary
Primary
40 lbs clover honey (20 lbs per primary fermenter)
60 lbs marionberries (30 lbs per primary fermenter)
Secondary
Secondary
Yielded 10 gal when pressed aggressively during the initial racking.
There was heavy sediment from pressing, so final yield was 7 gal.
Added 1 gal Cherry Bomb to fix headspace in a 3 and 5 gal carboy.
At a 7:1 ratio, the cherry is not noticeable (intentionally so).
Gravity & ABV
Gravity & ABV
Calculated OG 1.157
FG ~1.042
ABV: ~15%
Pre-Pitch Powders
Pre-Pitch Powders
0.880g potassium metabisulfite
0.375g Lallzyme EX-V *
3 tsp pectic enzyme
* Unfortunately all I could find in stock at the time was a single 0.6g packet so technically, I only added 0.3g Lallzyme EX-V.
Nutrients
Nutrients
GoFerm by package instructions
Aimed for 160ppm nutrition:
Fermaid K: 12.62g
2 additions; 6.31g in each
DAP: 8.41g DAP
2 additions; 4.205g in each
Notes
Notes
This is another fruit bomb based heavily on Cory's experience and guidance with no-water melomels. Thanks again for all the help!
Regarding gravity, Cory suggested 1.065-1.070 FG for blackberries because they are so tart, but I decided to aim for 1.050, with the rationale being that I can always add more honey but I can't really take it out. This finished at 1.042, since 71B seemed fairly happy and hit 15%, but with a couple months' age I felt that was a perfectly fine FG.
Also - I later figured out you don't normally use both Lallzyme EX-V and pectic enzyme, they're different products that serve the same purpose. But perhaps it wasn't the worst thing in this case, since I had slightly less than the desired amount of Lallzyme EX-V available.
Mead Stampede 2021 Results
Mead Stampede 2021 Results
I entered this brew into Mead Stampede 2021 where it garnered an impressive 41.5 points - enough to take home 2nd place in Fruit!
A detailed explanation of the scoring system can be found on the Brewchievements page, but it probably goes without saying that I'm over the moon to have medaled with this one.
The first judge noted that some people might find this one too sweet, but that he really enjoyed it. Both judges described it as big and bold, which was great to see.
While neither judge commented on the presence of honey character in words, both placed it close to the middle mark of the low-to-high scale. And among the general feedback from the judges to the entrants at large was "work on honey character" so with that in mind, it's possible this could benefit from a stronger honey that stands out more.
That said, it's a tart berry and I find clover to be a tart honey, so I also think they naturally work together toward similar flavor goals. That may mean they blend together and it's hard to pick out the honey separately, and that might just be OK for this mead.
I'm still unsure if I'll try a different honey next time. That said, I had a tasting on 07/17/2022 - about a year after the Mead Stampede '21 results - and this is aging very well. The sharpest notes are rounding out while the complexity not only remains but develops. There is technically always room for improvement, of course, but this one is so good I'm a little scared to change it at all. If I brew it again, it may just be a carbon copy.
Keep Calm and Marion Scoresheet.pdf
Yeast - Lalvin 71B
Berries start to float up
Second bucket
Top layer of berries full visible
Timeline Pitch to Bottle
Timeline Pitch to Bottle
02/12/2021 - mixing up the must
Berries, honey, and pre-pitch powders were all mixed together. The berries arrived frozen much faster than the last en masse fruit shipment, so unlike the already partially-defrosted cherries, these were frozen solid. Due to the chill, the potassium metabisulfite likely wasn't needed, but we added it anyway just to be certain nothing undesirable took hold while the berries were defrosting and macerating.
02/14/2021 - pitched
Pitched yeast after rehydrating with GoFerm. I originally planned to pitch 24 hours after adding the pre-pitch powders, but the berries had not warmed up enough, so I gave it another 12 hours. Even then, it was still a little on the chilly side, so the yeast may start up slowly, but it's warm enough I think they'll be fine. I also rehydrated in a full quart of water because the must was too viscous, it seems that these marionberries were not as juicy as the cherries.
02/15/2021 - nutrient addition #1
Waited until the evening to feed because in the morning fermentation didn't appear to have kicked up fully. Likely due mostly to the lower temperature, but possibly also the high starting gravity and viscous must.
6.31g Fermaid K
4.205g DAP
02/16/2021 - nutrient addition #2
6.31g Fermaid K
4.205g DAP
03/14/2021 - racked
Couldn't use a racking cane on this to save my life, so I ended up pouring the whole thing into brew bags and then squeezing them out. Horrible practice as far as oxygen exposure is concerned, but my auto siphon kept getting clogged and pumping air through everything anyway, so it seemed like I was stuck getting lots of air exposure regardless of how I racked this. Figured I may as well pick the option that would maximize my yield.
I'm sure a lot of the small berry goop still got through the brew bags, but I'm hoping it settles into a more compacted sediment layer that I can rack off of cleanly at a later date. In the meantime, I managed to just about fill up two 5 gallon carboys, so even if there's a decent amount of losses still to go as the mead clears, I like where my yield is headed.
Right now it's definitely young, but I like it a lot already. While I can tell it needs age, I would actually drink this as-is, so I don't think it needs more sugar for my tastes, even though the gravity is a good bit lower than Cory's. That said - the wife and roommate both made "WEW!" faces when they tasted it, so it appears my tolerance for tartness may be rather high!
1/4 tsp potassium metabisulfite added to each 5 gallon carboy (to mitigate potential oxygen exposure)
SG: 1.042
Within the normal range for a happy 71B fermentation
ABV: ~15.09%
Right smack in the middle of my projected ABV range!
Racking, blending, and submitting to Mead Stampede 2021
At some point I must've lost track of my note-taking on this one - apologies for the lack of timeline dates. But this was eventually racked off the fruit gunk into a 5 and a 3 gallon carboy (the rough rack had two 5 gallon carboys, but with heavy sediment due to pressing).
The 3 gallon carboy only had about 2 gallons worth of marionberry product (meaning there were ~7 gallons total of marionberry in the end), so I took a one gallon leftover from the 10-05-2020 Cherry Bomb hoping that, as another fruit bomb, it would maintain the fruit/sugar/honey/tartness levels fairly well while filling up the extra headspace.
But it eventually turned out I didn't really like what having 1/3 of the small batch be cherry did to the flavor profile, so I later blended all 8 gallons of the product together so that the cherry I used to fill up the headspace was no longer noticeable. Perfect!
I've had all 8 gallons in secondary since then, and the only thing of note was pulling 3 small bottles worth off the top to submit to the Mead Stampede 2021 competition, where this brew took 2nd place in the heavily impacted fruit category. Awesome!! It scored 40 and 43 from the two judges, averaging 41.5 points!
Retrospective
Retrospective
Process Improvement
Process Improvement
Racking was a horrible pain but I'm not really sure how to make it better. Hypothetically fruit could be bagged, but I'm lead to believe that is somewhere between difficult to impossible to work on a fruit bomb. Maceration and mixing the fruit with the honey become extremely difficult when fruit is bagged without any extra water. I could try the hop cage method, but marionberries get so completely obliterated I think it will clog too often to be useful.
The volumes on this are awkward for my gear - I can't fit 30 pounds of berries in a 5 gallon fermenter, nor can I fit 60 lbs of berries in either of my bigger fermenters. So I had to put 30 lbs in both of my biggest fermenters, which were way bigger than necessary for that volume. I will try to set this up more carefully next time to limit oxygen exposure - perhaps weighing out 10 lbs of berries from one of the 30 lb bags so I can do a 20 lb batch in a smaller fermenter and a 40 lb batch in a bigger one. Or maybe even just getting a fermenter big enough for all 60 lbs. Or maybe finding another source that sells 40 lbs of marionberries instead of 30 lbs. So many options, I'm sure I can pick one next time...
Nutrition is an interesting discussion. I had thought perhaps it would be better to increase nutrients due to others often calculating yeast at a higher nitrogen requirement than they actually are (ex, using the calculator at medium nitrogen requirement when the spec sheet for 71B says it is low nitrogen requirement). But Cory pointed out if there wasn't any particular problem with this mead - no off-flavors due to stress, no slow or stalled fermentation - then it's probably not actually necessary to increase the nutrition. Super valid point. So I'm changing my mind on the nutrition, I think what I used on this one was actually fine.
Recipe Improvements
Recipe Improvements
It ended up not mattering because I had 1 gallon of cherry in 7 gallons of marionberry, but I did not like what the cherry did when blended with the marionberry in a noticeable ratio, so I'll probably try to avoid introducing it next time. I'd rather just use 7 gallons worth of carboys (maybe 1, 1, 5 or 3, 3, 1). The cherry lowered the tartness - which technically made the brew more crushable, but I felt like it was throwing the balance off (it was too sweet to lose tartness), and it also lost the identity and uniqueness of the marionberry.
I just used clover honey on this, and while it clearly came through in this mead, there was a lot of talk about honey character and how ubiquitous clover is in the Mead Stampede wrap-up content. So I wonder if a richer honey varietal could stand out amidst the berry tartness, and bring the honey character further forward.
I have had mixed feedback on the sweetness level. I very much like it where it is. One of the Mead Stampede judges commented the mead might be too sweet for some people. But on the other hand, a good friend thinks there's not quite enough sweetness to fully back up the tartness, and I know that (as discussed above) Cory usually goes a fair bit higher with his final gravity when using blackberries. So I've effectively got votes for leaving it the same, increasing it, and decreasing it. I guess at least on this particular mead, the sweetness level is fairly subjective. The only thing I can think to recommend for sure is following my method of aiming for the lowest FG you think you might want, because you can always add more honey if it isn't sweet enough, but you can't really lower the gravity if it finishes too sweet for your palate.
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