Goji Mead # 2 - Let's try this again

Well, the last experiment was rather interesting. I particularly liked the subtle rasberry like taste partway through the fermentation. The one major thing I learned from the last batch of Goji Mead was to check the specific gravity of the juice prior to adding Honey. The result in the previous batch of Goji Mead was a very high starting Specific gravity and a high alcohol content end product. Consequently, my wife was not too fond of the burn.

Today I am doing things quite abit differently. First of all, I checked the specific gravity of the Goji Berry juice and found it to be around 1.050. Once I added the blackberry juice and water it dropped substantially but it was still at 1.021. Here is the recipe:

2 - Litres re-consitited Goji berries Blended in a blender
6 - Cups steamed unsweetened blackberry juice
3 - Litres water
3 - Cups Clover Honey
1 - Pack of 1118 yeast

Innoculated at 8PM on Friday Decemeber 7th
Specific gravity = 1.071

I will ferment this batch of Goji Berry Mead to dry. Once complete, it will be mixed with the previous batch of Goji Berry Mead which will hopefully result in a more palitable Mead. By fermenting it to dry with a lower specific gravity, I will also gain a better understanding on the effect of complete fermentation. I will still pasteurize the Mead upon completion.

I did an experiment and found 1 cup of honey to equal an increase of about 0.015 on the specific gravity scale.

Goji Berry Mead - Now for something completely different

OK, so I think I may now have officially lost it. Well at least I'm not making wine out of onions or something crazy like that.

Goji berries, also known as wolf berries have quite the long history and as with just about anything medicinal from the orient there are claims it will make your penis bigger (Maybe not quite but something to do with sperm production). Hey Boner wine, why not :P

I started out with about 4 or 500 grams of dried berries. I added just enough water to re-hydrate them then I crushed them up in the blender. The result was about 2 litres of juice, pulp and seeds. (I think I'm going to save the seeds to see if I can grow the fruit here.

I added 1 litre of blackberry juice, 2 litres of honey and 3 1/2 litres of water. The end result was a specific gravity of 1.130. Pretty bloody high as the Goji berries are naturally full of sugar. unless you want fire water or deathly sweet Mead, you may want to try a little less honey.

As if using Goji berries to make Mead wasn't strange enough, I decided to try something different as far as yeast went. You see, I saved up some active yeast from the bottom of one of my blackberry batches and kept it in the fridge. Ya nuts I know.




So here is the recipe


Start time: 4:30 PM November 14th 2007
Specific Gravity: 1.130

2 - litres honey
2 - litres re-constituted Goji berry pulp (AKA Wolf berries)
1 - litre steamed blackberry juice (Unsweetened)
3 1/2 - litres spring water
3/4 - cup Recycled yeast pulp




POST PRODUCTION NOTE:

Although this mead has a very interesting taste, both my wife and I found it to be far to strong. To remedy this situation, I started out another batch with similar juice and water proportions but with quite abit less honey and a lower potential alcohol level. Here is the link GOJI BERRY MEAD #2