Pumpkin Mead

Classification: mead, pumpkin mead, fruit, melomel

Source: Jane Beckman (jane@stratus.swdc.stratus.com), MLD #30, 10/31/92

I've never tried it with pumpkin, but I've made a lot of meads with canned fruit as a flavoring agent. Based on the density of canned pumpkin, I would reduce the fruit amount to one can, and use pumpkin pie spice, increasing the spice amount to a tablespoon, to get that real pumpkin pie flavor.

I've been using this recipe as a base for fifteen years, and have gotten some really interesting meads by adjusting the fruits and the ratio of ingredients. Although I never had the courage to re-try the one adaptation that turned the bottles into geysers that all shot their corks and contents out, within a two-hour period, four months after bottling... :-(

Ingredients:

2 gallons of water
5 lbs honey
3 8-oz cans of fruit
1 tsp spices
twist of orange peel
yeast

Procedure:

Boil, skimming, for one hour. Strain out the fruit and transfer to the fermentation container and add the orange peel. Cool overnight, add your favorite yeast and stopper with your fermentation lock. Ferment approximately 3-4 weeks. (Makes a killer pear mead and cherry melomel.) Both fruit and spices can be adjusted to taste. The general finish turns out on the dry side, so if you like really sweet mead, you may also want to increase the amount of honey.