Description
Here is a Mulberry Mead or Morat recipe.
Ingredients
Scale
- Frozen mulberries – 5 to 7 lb. You can also use fresh mulberries but the frozen ones just allow for better juicing. If you are picking your own mulberries, pick a combination of ripe and unripe ones. This will give a sweet-tart taste to the mead. You can also buy your berries from the local farmer’s market. To make about one gallon of mulberry mead, you need about 20 lbs of mulberries. Since we are making a smaller batch, take approximately 5 to 10 lb.
- Raw, unfiltered, organic honey – You can buy any local variety. Avoid the citrusy ones as they tend to impact the flavor of the mead. Wildflower or orange blossom honeys add great flavor to mead.
- 4–5 ounces of warm water infused with dried mulberry leaves. This is completely optional. I added it because it adds a ton of flavor and the warm tea also helps in yeast activation.
- D 47 yeast – 1 packet. We will only be using about half the packet, since we are making a smaller batch.
Instructions
- Sanitize all the tools and equipment.
- Defrost the mulberries for a few hours.
- Take a little bit of juice from the mulberries in a cup. Add half a packet of D47 yeast to this juice. This quantity is enough for about one gallon batch of mead. You’d need more if you plan to use 10 to 20 lbs of mulberries. Shake the juice and yeast. The sugars in the juice will help activate the yeast. Set the mixture aside.
- Now use the food mill to crush all the mulberries. It will take about 5 minutes to crush about 5 to 7 lbs. It is perfectly alright if you get a bit of skin, leaves, and mulberry fruit bits in the juice as these will add to the flavor of the mead.
- Check the sugar content of the juice using a hydrometer. If it is over 10.00 then it is almost as sugary as commercial juices. So you should not need more than 3 and quarter pounds of honey.
- Now use the funnel to pour the collected juice into the carboy. Add the honey and close the carboy with the stopper. Now stir and shake the carboy to dissolve the honey into the juice. Do not skip this part: shake for at least five minutes so the juice and honey are well-incorporated. This is the main reason why we are using a smaller carboy. A 5 gallon carboy would be rather difficult to shake.
- Now strain the mulberry tea to remove the leaves and add the still-warm tea to the carboy. Shake well. This will bring the temperature of the must to room temperature. This is when you add the yeast-juice mixture to the carboy.
- Shake the mixture and add about a cup of water to the mixture. Again shake well. Take a reading of your must with the hydrometer. This way you will know if the fermentation will stick. Look for a reading of 1.114-1.116. You can add honey if needed at this point.
- Seal the carboy with the stopper (dry the stopper thoroughly before use) and place the airlock. Airlock has a passage or valve to allow the bad gases to go out.
- You will see bubbling in about 3 days. Keep watching the airlock. Make sure you do not lose the seal and that the stopper is not pushed out by the bubbles.
- Ideally, you need not do anything for about a month. But if you feel something has gone awry, check the reading with the hydrometer.
- Your mead should be ready in 3-4 weeks. After this, rack the mead and store in glass bottles.
- Prep Time: 30 minutes
