Cranberry Mead... well sort of

OK, so I picked up just over 11 pounds of fresh "organic" cranberries. According to the Polish farm guy some old guy in the area "with nothing better to do" grows a small crop of them organically.... Personally I think it was just a sales pitch but who am I to argue.

So I got home and dumped them into my handy steam juice extractor and began the process of pulling out the juice. I guess it shouldn't really be that much of a surprise, but that 11 some odd pounds of Cranberries resulted in only about 2 litres of juice (Including pulp). Typically the steam juicer is great at leaving the pulp behind, but after about 2 hours of waiting for only a small amount of juice I got impatient and started to crush the berries. Must be the results driven Kraut in me.

You might be wondering why the long background story, well that is to explain why this is sort of a cranberry Mead. You see, with only 2 litres of juice and 2 litres of honey already in the pot I needed to make up the space with something other than 4 litres of water.... Ah blackberry juice. So here is the recipe



2 Litres Honey
2 Litres Cranberry juice & pulp
1/2 Litre Apple Juice (Pure reconstituted no sugar added stuff)
1 Litre steam extracted Blackberry juice
2 1/4 Litres Spring Water
1 Cup Mushed up cranberries
2 Packs of 1118 Yeast
2 Teaspoons Nutrient

Measurements:
Specific Gravity: 1.112
Pot Alcohol : 15% Approx
Innoculated at 8PM on November 5th @ 80 F


This should be interesting as the juice is nice and sweet with a bit more tart than the Blackberry on its own.

As a side note, although the 11 lbs of Cranberries only yeilded about 2 litres of juice and pulp all was not a waste. I divided up the remaining pulp and berries and froze them for future cranberry chutney. At some point I need to get the recipe from my brother and post it on here.