Raspberry Mead Pulque

Yes, once again I am head butting with the trends. I picked a butt load of Raspberries the other day as one of the local farms had a great deal on U-pick Raspberries for 99 cents a pound. Soooo I spent a few hours picking followed by a few days in pain. The resulting bounty was 20 pounds of berries which I quickly made into juice via my favorite steam juice extractor which you will see an amazon ad for on the left. I honestly cannot say enough good things about this juice extractor. It is by far my best investment when it comes to making wine.

OK, enough with the promotion of someone elses product and onto the wine making. If you do decide to purchase one though, please help out this blog (AKA my wallet) and buy it through the link on this page. Now onto the recipe

Your Ad Here

The resulting juice from the steam extraction was about 8 litres or just over 2 US Gallons which is 2 Canadian Gallons... Eh!
In the past, I have watered down the juice to save money but this time I figured I would go as close to pure as possible, sure I would end up with less wine, but with any luck it will be a much better product.

As with most of my endevours, I first checked out what Jack had to say on the topic. In case you don't know, Jack Keller has become known as a sort of online wine Guru of sorts (Sorry Jack) He has given me advice on a few ocassions, I usually listen to what he has to say and go ahead and do what I want. Nothing against his advice, I'm just a stubborn Kraut.

So back to the recipe. Focus Heinz, focus. (I blame the heat wave in Vancouver)

So like I said, Pure juice very little water if any.

Due to the size of my primary, I removed some of the juice and ended up with 7.5 litres (or Liters in US Speak) The specific gravity pre any sugar was already at 1.030 so I did not need to add much unless I wanted to make hooch.

Raspberry Mead-Pulque

7 1/2 litres juice
1 tsp Citric acid

2 cups agave brought it up to 1.050

2 cups honey brought it up to 1.076 so I added
1 cup honey which resulted in a specific gravity of 1.083
2 cups water brought it back down to 1.081
1 tsp Energizer
1 Pack Lalvin K1-V1116 Yeast, Why.... Because


Added After Primary Fermentation:

3 Teaspoons Powdered Stevia

As an experiment, I added 1 tsp of stevia to flask brought spec gravity up by
.04. In a previous post on using Stevia to sweeten wine, I mentioned Stevia as a non-fermentable sugar. I wanted to see of the addition of Stevia pre-fermentation had an effect on the Specific gravity... well it does. So for those looking at using Stevia to sweeten their wine should add it after your final reading as it will give you a false potential alcohol level seeing as Stevia does not ferment and you will never be able to ferment to dry (per your hydrometer reading) You can see the Stevia post here

The specific gravity of the full batch ended up being 1.082 (keep in mind, a small amount of that was as a result of Stevia.

Just as a little clarification for those unfamiliar with Mead and Pulque. Mead is made with Honey instead of sugar and Pulque is made with Agave Nectar (The same stuff they use to make Tequila) In Mexico, the resluting wine is called Pulque, or Nectar of the Gods. Tequila is made by taking the Pulque and distilling it a number of times.

inocculated 8:17 PM Thursday July 8, 2010. Updates will follow as comments.

Cheers

USING STEVIA FOR WINEMAKING

Stevia is a natural sweetner made from the leaf of a shrub in the sunfower family native to Paraguay. Although there is some contraversy over the use of Stevia as a food additive in the United States, many countries have been using Stevia as a sweetner for years. My research into Stevia shows Japan as the pioneer in the Stevia Industry.

So how does this apply to wine. Well, many winemakers like to condition or sweeten their wine after fermentation. Normally, this is done by adding treated sugar or wine conditioner. The reason for the treating is to prevent further bottle fermentation which results in sediment and possible cork popping. The later being a frequent occurance in my wine cellar as I refuse to use sulfites of any kind.

So back to Stevia and winemaking. Aside from being up to 300 times as sweet as sugar, Stevia is heat stable, pH stable, and non-fermentable. Yes you read right, Stevia will not ferment. For that reason, Stevia is an excellent way to sweeten or condition your wine post fermentation. For those into completely natural winemaking, you could also use Honey or even Agave Nectar for the fermentation of your wine.

Although I'm sure this post will have those traditional grape only wine makers shaking in their boots, I feel there is nothing wrong with a little experimentation. In fact, many award winning wines use Stevia as a final conditioner. In my experiment I plan to use less fermentable sugars and ferment my wine to complete dry. From there, I will let the wine settle, rack and filter accordingly before I add the Stevia to taste. I know this is far from traditional, but it is worth a try and chemical free. I think I will even buy some Stevia Plants or seeds to keep total control on the ingredients in my chemical free Stevia sweetened Wine and Mead.

Here are some Stevia related links. If you purchase from the links here, I get paid a small portion. This helps pay for my playing around with wine and ends up getting more stuff posted on this blog.