Totally Excellent Cherry Mead

Classification: mead, melomel, cherry mead

Source: Rodney Boleyn (boleyn@scr.siemens.com), r.c.b., August 14, 1995

This weekend I had the rare opportunity to taste a batch of 10-year-old cherry mead! It was probably the smoothest, yummiest liquor I've ever had the pleasure of tasting. The person who let me taste it got it from "this crazy old guy in my neighborhood", who apparently has been homebrewing since prohibition days. It was very sweet, presumably due to the bread yeast, and had just a hint of cherry flavor, but a beautiful rouge color. After 10 years, there were no weird yeast flavors or anything, just pure drinking satisfaction!

Anyway, my friend had some details about the production, so I thought I'd pass it along in case anyone wants to try it. This is apparently a 2 to 3 gallon recipe....

Ingredients: (for 2-3 gallons)

2 gallons water
12 pounds (approx 1 gallon?) fresh honey
bread yeast
2 buckets of cherries

Procedure:

Let ferment a while (I got the impression the primary ferment was allowed to go a couple weeks)

Add "2 buckets" of cherries (Again, the impression was about 2 half-bushel baskets). Preparation unknown, but probably minimal. Also, I'd say these were sweet cherries, not sour.

Let ferment on cherries for 3 days. Rack off.

Age 10 years before bottling.