Summer's Lease II Apricot Melomel

Classification: mead, melomel, apricot mead

Source: Michael L. Hall (hall@galt.c3.lanl.gov), Mead Digest #444, 11/18/95

Ingredients: (for 2.77 gallons)

5.47 lb. Questa Honey
0.55 lb. Sourwood Honey
0.10 lb. Star Thistle Honey
1.47 lb. Clover Honey (at end)
9.0 lb. Apricot juice from Phoenix Orchard (0.985 gal, SG=1.095)
2 pkts. Lalvin K1V-1116 (Montpelier) wine yeast - hydrated
2 tabs. Sodium Benzoate (at end)
0.5 tsp. Vitamin C (at end)
1 oz. Calcium Carbonate (at end)

Procedure:

On 9/25/94, I put together the first three honeys listed along with a gallon of apricot juice and enough water to make 2.55 gallons. There was no reason for the strange selection of honeys; I was just cleaning out the cupboard. The apricot juice came from apricots from a tree in my backyard. I pureed the apricots to get a thick paste, froze the paste for about a year, then thawed it out and left it sitting in a gallon jug in a refrigerator for several months. >From past experience I knew that the solids would almost never clear out of the mead, so I waited until the juice separated and just used the clear juice. At any rate, I pasteurized this concoction for 90 min at 150 F and pitched the yeast. The SG was 1.115 and the must tasted rather sour, even with all that honey. I thought that I might need to correct the sourness somehow later.

I didn't touch the mead again until 4/15/95 (my son was born on 10/20/94, so I was very busy). At this point I racked the mead, which was still sour, but had a nice apricot character. I measured the acid content at 1.3% as tartaric, 8.5 ppt as sulphuric. The SG was 1.001 and the clarity was good.

On 5/16/95 I removed a sample and adjusted its acidity to 6.5% tartaric with CaCO3, decided that was too much (too chalky) and tried to adjust acidity of whole volume to 9.25% tartaric by adding one ounce of CaCO3. I measured it to be 9.3%. I then added sodium benzoate to kill the yeast and some extra clover honey (20 min at 160 F with 1 pt water) to counteract the residual acidity and give honey character. I let it sit overnight for the chalk to precipitate out before bottling.

I entered this melomel in the 1995 NM State Fair as part of their wine competition (8/27/95). It received a Gold Medal and a score of 6.80/10, which was the highest rated mead, and the second highest rated wine (highest was 7.04). Judges noted excellent acidity-sweetness balance, good apricot and honey character, some spiciness (maybe the Questa honey?), and some sediment (the chalk), but otherwise good clarity. In the future I will try to wait until the chalk precipitates out to bottle, but at that time I needed to free up the carboy. You can see a chalk layer in the bottom of each bottle, but the mead can be easily decanted off of it.

Specifics:

OG: 1.127
FG: 1.023
Alcohol: 13.95% (abv), 10.83% (abw)