Bill Savage used to work for Wild Blossom Meadery in Chicago, IL. He now brews at Goose Island Beer Co – we wont hold that against him. He still enjoys making and drinking mead. You can take a meadist out of the meadery, but you can’t take the mead out of a meadist!
Bill was nice enough to send me his recipe for a Lavender-Blackberry Mead so I could share with Meadist readers. So here it is – a milestone for the meadist – the first guest recipe. It’s great step in building a stronger mead community! I welcome others to contribute as well. Head on over the the contribute page and send along great mead content.
If you end up making this recipe, leave a comment below and let Bill know what you think. Cheers!
I enjoyed a Lavender-Blackberry mead that I made about 3 years ago. There’s a nice little all organic & local-grower grocery shop in Edgewater (far North side of Chicago), where I obtained some Lavender flower tips just before they blossomed. I used about a half ounce at the time, making a sort of “tea” concentrate with the Lavender tips. The aroma is amazing!
Ingredients
- 12 lbs. of raspberry honey
- 2 tbs Yeast Energizer
- 1/2 oz Lavender Flower Tips
- Lalvin 71B-1122 Yeast
- 9-10 lbs of blackberries
Directions
- In a 5 gal. pot, bring 4 gal. of water to a boil for 5 min. let it cool using a Copper Coil Immersion Chiller
, & cool the water down to about 160F.
- Stir in/dissolve 12lbs. of raspberry honey & 2tbs. yeast energizer/yeast hulls.
- Continue to cool with copper coil chiller to @70F.
- Make a concentrated “Tea” with the Lavender Flower Tips.
- Transfer into a 5 gal. carboy & aerate.
- Finally add your Lavender “tea” to the carboy, stir, & then add your rehydrated yeast/starter.
- Allow to ferment for 3-4 weeks @ 70F. Then, rack again into another carboy, that has previously been packed with 9-10lbs of blackberries (if desired, 48hours prior to this step, add about 1/4-1/2 tsp. potassium metabisulfite to the blackberries/juice mixture at the bottom of your sanitized 2nd carboy, to ensure bacteria/wild yeast aren’t introduced to your mead). During the rack, also add a second Lavender ‘tea’ concentrate infusion.
- Let this sit for another 3-4 weeks. Rack a second time, and let age for another 5 months.
- Bottle afterwards & serve at @ room temp.
O.G. – 23.5 Brix. @11.5 – 12% abv.
10 Comments
I’ve been watching this recipe for a while. I grew some lavender over the summer and will attempt making this. Thanks for the nice recipe.
This looks amazing! We are thinking about making this for our wedding gifts, since we want to incorporate my brewing/meading making in some way. One questions though, how did you go about making the lavender tea? Thanks!!
no one answered the tea question… that is my question as well!!
Brewing this tomorrow a.m! I found 20lbs of blackberries for 40$, not to bad!
How necessary is it to boil the water and introduce the honey at 160F? Is that just to sanitize and to help dissolving the honey?
If I use spring water bought from the store, so it is clean, would I still need to boil or heat it at all?
Thanks for the help!
I agree with Jeff’s comment that the boiling appears to be unnecessary. I’ve raised the honey temperature in the past to kill bacteria, but this doesn’t kill the bacteria in the honey, only the water. The water from my tap is clean and is used extensively in wine making with no problems (to wash sulfite off equipment). Also, since the honey I get is from Costco or Smart and Final, it’s already pasteurized and most likely bacteria free. I was just having a discussion regarding the need to sulfite the berries. I don’t think it’s necessary if one purchases frozen berries. If you pick or they are fresh, then yes. My concern is that the sulfite might interfere with any ongoing fermentation. Lots of different options such as waiting till fermentation is complete; but the key thing is that I believe store bought frozen berries are probably pretty clean. I think I’ll bypass the boiling the next time around. I will add that everything I use is washed in a meta solution and then rinsed with tap water. This level of detail is missing from the instructions, but probably assumed.
I’m going to try this as soon as our blackberries come in and my lavender plants start seriously producing. I’ll post updates this winter when it’s done fermenting. Thanks for the recipe!
I’ve been trying this recipe, done the first rack off and gave it a try, it’s really dry, almost no sweetness at all which was a surprise as I was expecting some of the sugars from the honey to be left over, I was told that honey has sugars that aren’t fermentable which is why it’s always sweet when made into mead.
Anyone have any ideas? I’m determined to make it work somehow, doesn’t taste bad just very dry. Maybe adding a bit of honey to the lavender tea which I could try right now… (He thinks to himself.)
most of the sugar in honey is glucose and fructose so none will be left over after fermentation unless you add enough honey to ferment past the yeasts alcohol tolerance, or if you back sweeten which is what I do
Hello, thought I’d answer the “is boiling the honey necessary?” question. Not sure what the chaps aim is but here’s what happens:
When you boil certain sugars, they will break down into their monos (e.g. lactose splits into glucose and galactose). It’s likely the same would happen with the ~5% non-fermentable sugars in honey so it would end up fractionally more dry by boiling it. Whether you’d notice that 5% difference in sweetness is anyone’s guess.
If you’re using raw honey, it might be a good idea to boil it because it will contain dormant microbes including yeasts which are kept as such by the lack of moisture in honey (so when it goes in your brew…). Unless your aim is to use wild yeast of course.