super berry melomel

[weerich]

Apologies if this has been answered elsewhere, but couldn't find any references.

I've followed this recipe for super berry melomel - Curt Stock - http://brewingtv.com/recipe/2010/10/...urt-stock.html (I'm only doing 1 gallon though).

Directions advise to ferment in primary for 1 month. I started this on the 1st of March with SG of 1130, on the 6th March it was 1016 - I'm beginning to feel uncomfortable about leaving it on the must for so long. I'm pushing down the fruit daily.

Can anyone offer any insight to the pros and cons of either following the recipe or ignoring it and straining into DJ now?

Appreciate your thoughts, you clever people.

W

[fatbloke]

Apologies if this has been answered elsewhere, but couldn't find any references.

I've followed this recipe for super berry melomel - Curt Stock - http://brewingtv.com/recipe/2010/10/...urt-stock.html (I'm only doing 1 gallon though).

Directions advise to ferment in primary for 1 month. I started this on the 1st of March with SG of 1130, on the 6th March it was 1016 - I'm beginning to feel uncomfortable about leaving it on the must for so long. I'm pushing down the fruit daily.

Can anyone offer any insight to the pros and cons of either following the recipe or ignoring it and straining into DJ now?

Appreciate your thoughts, you clever people.

W

Curt Stock has a good reputation. I'd guess that he's alluding to trying to get all the flavour possible out of the fruit, because logic suggests that once it hits dry, there's no further sugars to be converted. That doesn't mean that there's no more flavour that might be extracted or that he wasn't trying to get a specific flavour profile.

I'm a great believer in always following any recipe/method the first time I try a batch of whatever, that way I will have made a "benchmark" batch so that I know what the difference is when I make another batch and vary it in some way........

[weerich]

Thanks for the sage words. Re reading my notes on the recipe it says to remove the fruit at 3 weeks, into primary at 4. As I was racking several other gallons of wine this afternoon I decided to do the melomel - it's 3 weeks and the fruit looks pretty much 'done'. But I take your point. I think it probably has quite a bit of flavour, am looking forward to future tastings.

[fatbloke]

Thanks for the sage words. Re reading my notes on the recipe it says to remove the fruit at 3 weeks, into primary at 4. As I was racking several other gallons of wine this afternoon I decided to do the melomel - it's 3 weeks and the fruit looks pretty much 'done'. But I take your point. I think it probably has quite a bit of flavour, am looking forward to future tastings.

Da nada matey. With fruit batches, I try to put some of the fruit in primary and some in secondary/tertiary as that helps with a more fruity, "cordial-like" taste (actually, if I can, I try to increase the fruit a bit over what a recipe will suggest, something like if the recipe uses 3lb in the gallon, then I try for 4lb total, maybe 2lb in primary and the other 2lb in the secondary).

If you tried something like that, then if you don't want the second part of the fruit to ferment as well, you'd need to consider stabilisation before adding the secondary/tertiary fruit etc......

Hopefully that makes sense.......