Parlé Bleu

I figured out that Lallzyme EX-V is a pectic enzyme type of product and I don't need both (like I used on the Marion Bomb). Also, the package instructions on the EX-V call for 0.525g, but it comes in 0.6g packets and I really didn't feel like trying to save 0.075g.

Nutrients

GoFerm by package instructions
Targeting 150ppm nutrition - see notes (right) for more info
Fermaid K: 13.25g
- 2 additions; 6.625g in each
DAP: 12.62g
- 2 additions; 6.31g in each

Wanna see the initial honey pour?

Notes

This is another fruit bomb based heavily on Cory's experience and guidance with no-water melomels. Hopefully this one fits entirely into one bucket! Anticipated yield is 55% or ~3.75 gal.

I've improved my understanding of nutrients and how to calculate them on this batch, as well as specific fruit volume estimates. I learned that while 9 lbs / gal is a good general estimate, blueberries are usually more like 8.25 lbs / gal. This lowered my OG, but that works out in my favor since Cory recommended US-05 for blueberries - an ale yeast that will probably only hit 11% ABV. With the yeast changed out, no further recipe adjustments were necessary.

For nutrients - I used bal's YAN Nutrient Calculator to figure out my target ppm YAN, and used the offset Cory suggested here (150 ppm since I'm at 6 lbs / gal fruit) to account for the organic nitrogen from fruit. This gave me 146 ppm YAN, which I rounded up to 150.

However, bal's spreadsheet doesn't allow me to zero out Fermaid O, which Cory usually does given the amount of organic nitrogen naturally available in such a large amount of fruit. So I took the 150 ppm YAN target number over to the MeadMakr Advanced SNA Calculator where I could set FermO effectiveness and limits to 0, finally giving me the nutrients I would be using for this batch:

Carrot blossom honey

14 bags of blueberries

Cold honey doesn't mix well!

Level settles down as it warms

Mead Stampede 2022 Results

We entered this brew into Mead Stampede 2022 where it scored 40 points, which is fantastic! A detailed explanation of the scoring system can be found on the Brewchievements page - but as a point of comparison, my Marion Bomb, which snagged a 2nd place medal in 2021's Mead Stampede, scored 41.5! So I'm very pleased with this score, and I think it's also very cool to see that the judges agreed (both gave similar feedback and both scored it at 40 points).

Their constructive feedback was mostly focused on balancing: both felt the mead was too sweet. Cory's original recipe was oaked, and while I didn't feel like oak was the right direction for my palate as the mead developed, it does make total sense for it to come up a little short on balance with a big part of the tannin development that was included in the original recipe omitted.

Next, I'm excited to look at adjustments because I submitted this brew without bottling it. Since it's still in a carboy, we can attempt to implement the judge's feedback right now, on this brew, and without starting from scratch!

The exact plans on how to better balance this aren't quite settled, but we will likely add more of the parsley and pepper. The judges observed the mead could have benefitted from more of both, and we selected them for this mead because they helped balance it, so adding more should help address both of those tasting notes.

I will update this page as we finalize and enact the final balancing touches. In the meantime, the snapshot of this brew that was submitted to Mead Stampede is what we had as of the below update on 06/13/2022. Any changes made after that date were not present when the mead was judged.

Parle Bleu Scoresheet.pdf

Timeline Pitch to Bottle

04/16/2021 - mixing begins

Frozen berries will take a while to defrost, but I got the honey added and mixed them together well enough to fit into the bucket. The berries alone take up almost the entire fermenter while frozen - but I'm told a lot of that airspace in between them should collapse as they defrost. In the meantime, it took a lot of mixing to get the honey worked into the cracks (I couldn't just pour straight over the top because the cold honey ran too slowly and there wasn't enough room in the bucket).

I eventually got the Lallzyme EX-V mixed in as the must warmed up just enough to mix it in by the end of the day.

04/17/2021 - cold maceration

The must did not warm up enough to pitch today, so it was just a process of checking in periodically to mix things up and check the temperature.

04/18/2021 - pitch

It took all day for the must to warm up enough, but I was able to pitch the yeast and officially kick off fermentation late in the evening today.

04/19/2021 - nutrients #1

Fermaid K: 6.625g
DAP: 6.31g

04/20/2021 - nutrients #2

Fermaid K: 6.625g
DAP: 6.31g

I'm not going to do entries every time in the log, but I'll punching fruit cap for the rest of the first week after this.

05/13/2021 - racked

About 3 days ahead of the official 4 weeks mark but I get antsy about mold sometimes. And the fruit on top was honestly starting to dry out, it seems like the blueberries have a really hard time sinking in the same way the cherries did. No mold, but I wouldn't want to drag out the tanin development period much longer than this.

Also, this is delicious already. The carrot honey - and I think the yeast, too - were absolutely fantastic suggestions from Cory. I've played a little bit with oak additions but honestly right now I like it better as-is. One of the Discord mazers noted as it ages and calms down the apparent sweetness will rise more and it's a good idea to have more tannins in there to prepare for that. I might try splitting the batch, oaking some of it for longer-term aging and leaving some of it un-oaked for shorter-term drinking.

Anyway - racked from the hop cage fairly well and got about 3.5 gallons. Pressed what was left by pouring it into brew bags and then squeezing the heck out of it and got a little over 2 more gallons (though it should be noted the latter 2 gallons here are very sediment-heavy and there will be noticeable losses racking off that fruit gunk in a couple weeks). I'm keeping the pressed 2 gallons separate from the cleanly racked 3.5 gallons for now, just in case there may have been any issues with O2 exposure from the pressing. I'll check in on both brews after they've had a little time to bulk age and see if there are noticeable differences.

05/18/2021 - lab readings and new information

Observed in the Mead Hall's #melomel channel that Brijac also presses after racking and keeps the pressed product separately. However, he also stated that this is done because the pressed product is "quite harsh due to high tannin content" and suggested blending the pressed mead with the free run racked to taste.

I hadn't really A/B compared my pressed and free run vessels. I had noticed a slight difference in my indirect comparisons, but suspected it was due to the sediment and would largely dissipate when the pressed mead cleared. This is really good to know and really good timing to have learned this lesson, before I potentially blended anything together.

Anyway - I also got lab readings today:

ABV: 11.56%
OG: 1.16131
FG: 1.0798
pH: 3.70

The ABV is right on the nose - the yeast has a tolerance of 11% - but the OG and FG were both significantly higher than expected. I think this is the biggest disparity I've seen between the calculated results and the actual. Not entirely sure what happened here, but I did notice that if I had used the 9 lbs/gal estimate for the blueberries instead of 8.25, my OG would've calculated out to more like 1.157, which would've been only 4 points off.

07/18/2021 - racked

Decided to rack the whole shebang together - pressed and free run products are now together in one gallon carboy. Also got it off a lot of the fruit sediment that falls out in a big fruit mead, especially in the pressed containers.

I originally intended to filter it, but the pads started squirting like crazy so I aborted the filtration mission thinking the mead was still too sediment-heavy, and overloaded the pads.

However, in retrospect, I believe that the issue was using star san instead of a k-meta solution to sanitize the buon vino minijet. I thought I had heard others refer to using star san, but the instructions do call for a k-meta and citric acid solution to be used on the machine and to pre-soak the filter pads. I tried such a solution right after on a different mead that still had a layer of fruit sediment and the filter tore through it no problem.

Not a big deal. I'll give it some more time to settle out and try again later.

05/20 thru 05/23 (2022) - spice selection via bench trials

This has been bulk aging for a while - life's kept me busy enough that it was easy to let this age for what I now realize is over a year from pitch - which is probably for the best, as it means the brew has had a lot of time to come into itself and naturally develop its flavor profile.

The base profile hasn't changed a ton, it's just a little smoother and more rounded. It is absolutely delicious, but my partner has accurately identified that some spices can round the flavor out even more and really polish it up.

She originally suggested basil, but also had the idea to try parsley, so we went with some bench trials. For the first set, I pulled 2 oz samples of the mead and added a moderate amount of fresh basil and fresh parsley to each. We tasted after 20 min and both found the parsley to be smoother - especially in the back-end of the taste as you swallow. There's a bit of bitterness back there, maybe alcohol burn, which the parsley addresses better.

For test two, I topped off both samples with another 1 oz of the mead and we added a lot more of the fresh herbs. We tasted this second batch after several hours (at which time we removed the herbs, which is necessary because the herbs remaining in the sample greatly exaggerates their impact especially on the nose). The basil's performance improved compared to its initial tasting at about 20 minutes, and narrowed the gap enough that we were reconsidering whether parsley still held the lead. It was a tough call.

However, tasting again next-day with some ground pepper added cemented the parsley as the better option. To my palate, basil and pepper competed with the blueberry too much and I started to lose the identity of the original mead. It's a big fruit mead; a fruit bomb - it should be overwhelmingly fruity. Parsley does a better job of calming down the harsher edges of this mead while still allowing it to retain its core identity. My partner didn't think basil was overwhelming the blueberry by a long shot, but also felt parsley was the better choice.

On 05/23, we added parsley and pepper to a slightly bigger sample of this mead (1 cup) to sit for several days. This extended test was intended to offer a more thorough validation of the parsley addition and to dial in the amounts and method as best we can before proceeding with spicing the main batch.

05/24/2022 - bench trials continue

Taste tests so far are hugely successful, I'm getting excited for this one! This might be my personal favorite of everything I've brewed to-date. Partner thinks it needs more pepper. I don't notice a lack of anything, but she tends to be right when she says pepper would help (read: "has not yet been wrong about adding pepper") so we'll certainly go that route if soaking on the parsley/pepper tea bag a little longer doesn't increase extraction.

The mouthfeel on this is lovely, it's not so smooth as to taste watery - by which I mean, it's clearly an alcoholic beverage and it has a tannin impact more like a red wine, but in a good way. It's very fruit-forward but I believe the earthiness of the carrot blossom honey helps back that up with a full and complex flavor profile. At this sweetness, it definitely falls into the "dessert wine" class of flavors, but it has the complexity and tannin development to back that up.

06/05/2022- parsley and pepper additions go in

Bench trials concluded with the decision to move forward with parsley and pepper. We added the following to the main batch:

2 tsp freshly ground black peppercorn in small tea bags
200 fresh parsley leaves in larger tea bags, crushed up a bit first

06/07/2022- pepper comes out

Pepper can over-extract very quickly, so we tested frequently and pulled it out just over 48 hours later (pepper went in on a Sunday afternoon and came out on a Tuesday night). Luckily, we had the foresight to tie a string to the pepper bag so that it was removeable - although, the string had wound up around the parsley bags and had to be disentangled.

I would also like to note that from both our bench trials and from tasting the product that came out of the removed pepper bag when I squeezed it, this mead can handle a lot more pepper flavor and still taste amazing. The main reason we stopped it here is that I can't help but feel like there must be far more budget-friendly meads that lead with pepper flavors... so I wanted to keep pepper a supporting member of this cast. A pepper-forward version of this mead is still incredibly delicious, it's just not what I wanted.

That is all to say - if you're trying to recreate this and want more pepper - the mead can handle it. Especially if you like pepper! But it can go very quickly from not enough to too much, so taste test very frequently while the pepper is still in there.

06/13/2022- parsley comes out

Parsley was pulled out today. It extracts a lot slower and is a much less aggressive taste than pepper so you can relax your taste testing regimen a little bit once it's just parsley.

The taste today is amazing. The parsley and pepper filled out their supporting roles flawlessly, cutting down the harsher notes from acidity and alcohol and smoothing out the entire experience from nose to swallow, but without diluting the desirable components of the flavor profile. This is easily the best brew that's ever been covered on my blog.

It's a thick and sweet dessert style mead with a complex flavor profile. It's blueberry-forward, supported by the rich and earthy flavors of the carrot blossom, and the supporting spices back it all up to sustain a balanced mead that tastes mature in spite of actually being just over a year old.

Retrospective

Process Improvement

Probably easier to allow the still-sealed berry bags to defrost at least partially before trying to add the honey, or maybe even simply allowing them to defrost for a bit in the bucket before adding honey. Although, a bigger bucket is another way to handle that problem. At the end of the day I just wanted to get the honey on the berries ASAP and made it happen through brute force instead, haha.

Recipe Improvements

Cory's suggestion for this recipe involves finishing it with medium plus toast American oak, which is a recipe note I want to preserve. However, I have learned that if you press your fruit at the end of fermentation to increase yields (like I did with this batch), the pressed product also significantly increases tannins. I think pressing took up the "tannic space" in this mead balance that oak would have utilized, so I did not use it this time. It's something I may consider in the future if I don't press or perhaps if I change the balance some other way.

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