Author: JWL

I realized recently that I haven’t included many pictures of what fermentation looks like, only pictures of pitched must before active fermentation begins.

Here is the prickly pear mead, about 72 hours into fermentation:

First off, the color on this batch continues to be just unbelievable. Vibrant, almost glowing. Prickly pears are amazing, they represent their desert ecosystem with style and grace, during a snowy New England winter!

You can see the layer of bubbles at the top. This is CO₂, carbon dioxide which is one of the byproducts of fermentation, along with heat (too little to be noticeable) and C₂H₅OH, or ethanol.

This stage of fermentation is very fun, if you look closely at it you can see it swirling and undulating, stirring itself as the yeast go to town, madly consuming the glucose and fructose from the honey. Fermentation is a metabolic process; it is literally alive. Like any other live creature, it really responds well to good juju. Love your mead!

When I first started brewing beer years ago, the first book I read on the subject was The Complete Joy Of Homebrewing by Charlie Papazian. It remains a great introduction to homebrewing, written during the homebrew renaissance of the 1980s, after President Carter legalized homebrewing. The book focuses mostly on beers, but does have a detailed appendix on meadmaking.

In the appendix, he states that his favorite mead ever was Prickly Pear Mead:

Prickly Pear Mead is the most seductively delicious mead I have ever had — ever. Its color can be as dramatic as a sunset. The fluorescent crimson of ripe prickly pear fruit, the titillatingly soft character of light mesquite honey, a floral bouquet of the Sonoran desert freshly washed by rain and, finally, the sweet delicate currant nature of the world’s finest sherry all combine to stun your senses in appreciation of one of the greatest gifts to this world.

With a description like that, who can resist? I knew I had to try it one day. Unfortunately for me, the Prickly Pear is a cactus, and only grows in the desert. Not too many of these plants local to me in New England.

Enter Facebook. A fellow health drink enthusiast who does live in the desert, Anthony Anderson, posted about harvesting wild prickly pears where he lives in Arizona. I commented that I wanted to try a prickly pear mead, and he was kind enough to send me some! Thank you Anthony! Gratitude!

The pears themselves are, well, prickly; you have to handle them with care (meaning with tongs). They are gorgeous in color:

Because of the prickliness, I decided that rather than try to process these by hand, I’d just run them through our Champion juicer. Worked like a charm, with only a little seedy pulp left:

And in the end, I had about 1.5 quarts of the most amazingly vibrant fresh fruit juice I’ve seen in a very long time:

So I made a mead with this amazing juice. I started with a chaga decoction, and infused 3 bags of black tea. I then added the prickly pear juice, along with enough honey (about 3/4 gallon) to get things up to 18% alcohol potential:

The result is a vibrant brew that just glows with royal purple, the color is not unlike the elderberry mead I made last fall:

I think I’m gonna let this one go for a while. Charlie Papazian claims his Prickly Pear Meads can take sometimes a year — or even two — of fermentation. Not sure I’ll let it go that long though…. I didn’t use his exact recipe, but rather adapted my own meadmaking method to incorporate the prickly pears. Can’t wait to try it! Thanks again Anthony…

UPDATE, May 2, 2011: I just racked this mead, and wow. It’s a semi-sweet at about 3% remaining alcohol potential, which gives this batch about 15% alcohol content. It’s stronger than some of the recent meads I’ve done, and it tastes it! What an incredible color, still! And flavor-wise it will benefit greatly from aging. Very excited!

Last winter, before berries were in season, I made my first cacao mead. I chronicled the technique/recipe on facebook. It was one of my favorites, particularly out of the early batches I did. I particularly enjoyed using the cacao plonk as a marinade for pork tenderloin…. serious yum.

I thought the entire batch was gone as of about May of 2010. Yet, in the fall, a friend of mine surprised me with a bottle I had given him back when they were still available. It had aged incredibly well! It was the first vivid example to me of how profoundly aging can affect mead.

So of course, I wanted to do another one. Now that the summer and autumn berries are past, I figured it was time to explore cacao. It’s not like there isn’t a ton of it around the house… :-D

Those of you from the health community will probably know about cacao being championed as one of the greatest “superfoods” available to humans. David Wolfe, among others, has championed its use. It is distinguishable from cocoa in that it is in its purer, raw, more nutrient-dense state, containing antioxidants, flavanols, psychoactive compounds, and a long list of other components and factors. In addition to making it taste yummy, I want to extract as much of this usable nutrition into the mead as possible.

I began with the customary 2-gallon chaga decoction, with a one-drupe sumac infusion after I turned off the heat. I strained it and added about about 3/4 gallon of honey, adding honey a bit at a time until the hydrometer gave an alcohol potential reading of 16.5%. This should produce a bit drier of a mead, which is in tune with my current aesthetic.

I added a secret mixture of cacao, vanilla, and maca, and it just looks gorgeous:

I always said to be careful pouring into the carboy funnel, this is the first-ever spill I’ve had at that stage. Luckily not too bad, it cleaned up pretty good:

In the end, a gorgeous brown color put down. Can’t wait to revisit this around Beltane or Midsummer.

UPDATE (7 May 2011): This is definitely ready to rack, but I have to clear some space first (a bit of bottling to free up one of the jugs). The current alcohol potential is 1%, so this is 15.5% alcohol. It’s strong and dry, but not overbearingly so. Very nice!

Here is the label for this batch:

Thanksgiving time, so a Gratitude Mead is in order. My friend Arthur Haines was kind enough to give me a quart of his homemade, wild-harvested cranberry juice, so I thought one of the best uses I could put it to is a mead.

I started with a chaga decoction, then strained the cranberry juice into the must, to filter out the pectin:

Then, I added honey to 18% alcohol potential:

And, I was left with a carboy full of Gratitude Mead, which surprised me because it wasn’t a red color, only the slightest hint of red in the brown must:

UPDATE, March 20: I just racked this mead. It measured 6% alcohol potential, so it is extremely sweet tasting, clocking in at 12% alcohol. I’m now starting to wonder if I am approaching the alcohol limit of the Montrachet yeast I am using; to get higher alcohol levels I think I might need to start experimenting with different yeasts, such as champagne yeasts. Still, this is already delicious, and will only get better!

June 19: This mead is delicious! Here’s the label: