[miccullen]

I have 15 lbs frozen, not pitted Montmerency Cherries, and some canned 44 oz total cherry weight .

Write ,me a recipe if you please, for a semi dry Cherry Mel.

[psolio]

I am wanting to do something today or tomorrow related to this. I think I might just shoot from the hip for mine, unless someone chimes in.

I have 23 pounds of pitted Montmorency cherries with 2 pounds of separated pits. I am thinking of using about 15 pounds of cherries and 1 pound of pits to 10 pounds of honey and 4 gallons of water. I am not sure of the SG of the cherries, but I think I might be getting a total SG of around 1.110. I am probably going to use my standby yeast of 71B.

With the remaining 8 pounds, I think some preserves and/or pies are in order.

[psolio]

Okay, this is what I came up with today:

15 pounds Montmorency cherries (pitted)
~12 pounds wildflower honey
3 gallons of water
4.5g Fermaid-K (SNA step 1)
4.5g DAP (SNA step 1)
10g 71B yeast

SG 1.100
~6 Gallons total volume

I am probably going to toss the pits into secondary for a few days, haven't decided yet. I kept the pits out of primary.

My cherries were on the watery side, since Michigan had a wet summer and had been raining the entire week when I picked them.

[psolio]

BTW, the must tastes amazingly good.

[MtnBrewer]

You fermenting the cherries in primary? I'm probably going to use some of mine for this same recipe or something pretty similar anyway. I also bought some cocoa nibs a while back and I was thinking of doing another one with cherries and the nibs. Any thoughts on how to go about that?

[psolio]

Yeah, I did them in primary to experiment compared to adding to secondary. The ferment was incredibly fast, probably the acidity of the cherries was optimum for the yeast. The mead is in secondary now, with a brilliant red colour and strong cherry aroma. I would have thought the cherry aroma would have been blown off in primary, but maybe because of the quick ferment, it stayed. I am not sure about adding the pits to secondary now.

When I did the dark cherry mead last year, I added some chocolate powder. For the nibs, maybe just toss them into secondary for a few weeks to a month?

[Howie]

psolio, on 04 December 2009 - 03:55 PM, said:

For the nibs, maybe just toss them into secondary for a few weeks to a month?

Listening to the Lagunitas episode of the BN Session, the guys from Lagunitas were talking about cocoa nibs. They said the nibs are absolutely coated in all kinds of bacteria, so you may think of some way to sanitize them. Maybe a vodka soak or something. I forget what they said they did.

[psolio]

I pulled a sample today, and it is a little underwhelming in the aroma and taste. It is also a little flat. I think I will get some mahlab from Penzey's and then I'm going to titrate to see what I can do about the TA.

[miccullen]

psolio, on 06 January 2010 - 12:51 AM, said:

I pulled a sample today, and it is a little underwhelming in the aroma and taste. It is also a little flat. I think I will get some mahlab from Penzey's and then I'm going to titrate to see what I can do about the TA.

What'd you come up with on the tartaric issue ? mine is pretty sour, and when sweetened it tastes like ludens cough drops, dammit, what to do.

[psolio]

I haven't titrated yet. Yesterday I ended up putting the cherry pits in to get some tannins, and hopefully the cherry flavor/aroma.

I have a feeling I'm going to have to add some acid blend, but my sweetness level is pretty good. I will update in a month or two when I do titrate.