About one month ago, I started growing some beetroot seeds. Here is the post. After a couple of weeks, only three seeds had come up. I didn’t really understand why, so I decided to leave it there and plant some more, but bring these to my room. I found out why my beets were not growing… because the seeds were gone! How, you may ask? A pigeon was eating them on a daily basis, but now they are protected! The summer beetroot mead is back on! Looking healthy!
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I make a beetroot mead as well! Have some tips for me on future batches??
What’s your recipe? I tried my own recipe, to be honest. It worked wonders! But regardless the recipe you follow, beetroot mead had one of the most violent fermentation I had ever experienced in a brew, if not THE most violent. My main tip is, however much you decide to brew, leave quite a bit of head space, even for a 5L batch, do use your 23L fermenting bin, otherwise you will lose a lot of the sugars through the airlock/blow tube.
I didn’t have that issue. I did 2x 4L experiments. Simmered sliced beets for 45min I think.. Then mixed with 3lbs of honey and pitched a different yeast on each.. Both taste great and cleared very fast. Left with about 1% residual sugars each. Very much like a fine red wine! Still aging both and may ultimately oak!
Only the liquid off the beet boil*
What was your OG? So you only boiled the beets, then! I took a slightly different approach. I, too, boiled the beet, but added everything to the fermenter. For a 5L batch, I used 1kg of beets in primary, then another 0.5kg in secondary. My OG was 1.085. It primary fermented until the gravity was down to 1.010, then I transferred to secondary and added another 0.5kg of beets to it. Left in secondary until the gravity was down to 1.000. Then to tertiary, liquid only, and left in tertiary for 4 weeks. I was surprised how quickly it cleared. It yielded 5L. That was my first batch. Since then, I have repeated this batch for a 25L yield. It was pretty much the same, I must say! Delicious!
Expected final gravity: 0.995, Achieved final gravity: 0.993
Ingredients (5L batch):
5L water
1.5kg of beet (1kg 1hr boil and primary, 0.5kg secondary)
1.5kg of honey (1hr boil)
zest of two large limes (1hr boil)
irish moss (last 10mins boil)
D47 yeast (at 21C/70F)
You recipe seems slightly similar, but it less beet, right?
I used cotes de blanc yeast and KI-V116. It was about 2kg beets for two batches of 4L each. OG around 1.120… The KI-V one is dry and the other has some residual sweetness. Very red/purple and definitely don’t need more beets I think, but adding the beets to primary you must have had some more fermentable sugars!
I used no clearing agent and add the honey after the boil, and used raisins and juice of an orange for acid/nutrient
https://theworldisawindmill.com/2014/01/25/feel-the-beet-beetroot-mead-really/
This is how mine came out. D47 is a very violent strain of yeast. The beat in secondary is barely fermented. The taste of beets in my brew is very sharp. It came 4th in a competition in Oxford.
Since the yeasts you used has an alcohol tolerance of around 14%, there would be more residual sugar than 1%, right? What was your FG?
I add honey and lemon zest to the boil because the heat and the zest enzimes breaks down the complex sugars of hone into simple sugar, increasing, also, the availability of fermentable sugars. I guess that raisins will also help that.
KI-V1116 states 16% tolerance but always goes way higher for me if supplemented with some nutrients. I have had it hit 18% in no time. Sorry for late reply, mate.
Ah, no problem! Hitting 18%, you say? Well, I like my mead slightly dry and still very “suave”… 18% alcohol would be a little too much. Unless I add a lot of fruit to hide the taste of alcohol, maybe… well, time to experiment, I guess!
Indeed. I usually don’t build gravity beyond 1.100. Seems to be where I find balance.
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