Cherry Bomb Mead Recipe Exposed!

[Music] hey everybody and welcome to the show my name is Dave and I'm Kristoph and this is another episode of meeting of the minds so uh this episode what I want to do is share with you one of my favorite recipes maybe my favorite to date uh We've hinted at it a little bit on this channel and I thought well so I got this little 2 gallon fermentor here last time we bought 15 lbs of honey but I figure you know we're going to be making my favorite recipe why don't we do it up so we're not going to be making one gallon we're going to go ahead and kick this up to what will yield probably six so you've seen this before this is the 30 L fermentor that we're going to be filling up again with uh now everything is going to be proportional um so you can split this into a one gallon uh it's basically well we'll get into it so Chris is going to start grabbing all of our cherry juice uh we've got some mosquite honey over here 15 more pounds of it and some Habaneros cuz of course we're making my favorite recipe the Cherry Bomb and again this will be yielding about six gallons worth of product at the very end so uh yeah let's get rolling I got to go grab those Peppers which I did something special too that I want to tell you about so I'll be right back Okay so we've collected all of our ingredients here and what I have here is something I hope will work out moving forward uh this in this jar if you can see that we've got north of 30 habanero peppers that I put through a blender that is now just basically a paste so what I'm hoping is a couple of things to get done by doing this uh one give us a more consistent level of heat because what will happen is depending on where the peppers come from or just how they're grown or where they're grown or if they're not getting enough water the heat can fluctuate wildly and so one batch versus another it's always kind of a surprise although they're always hot that's just how hot are they going to be um what I'm hoping to do here is uh give us consistency and also um longevity cuz after I am you know done making all of this for you I'm going to portion this out into like an ice cube tray and freeze them and seal them in the bag or something so air can't get to them but then they'll be just pre-portioned just stick it in every time you want yeah like a cube per um well it'll depend I don't know how I'm going to set this up yet because the peppers themselves are pretty light Nery and this is a ton of peppers and so it's going to be very dense so I got to be careful very concentrated so uh first things first we're going to have to try and get all of this mixed up to take gravity you're eaing so I'm going to start by not filling it full with liquid yet so what we're going to be using is 2 and 1/2 gallons of water and 2 and 1/2 gallons of cherry juice in addition to the 15 lounds of honey we're not watering to anything it's that plus that and that's why I would recommend if you're going to do the one gallon do it um in something bigger than a gallon so you'll have room because I would recommend that you use the same proportion of a gallon of water plus the three L PBS of Honey because there's a lot of sugar in these Cherry juices which are two kinds we have equal parts uh black cherry and tarte cherry yes so it's half and half water and cherry juice and then in that cherry juice it's half and half black and tart it rounds everything out in the end and uh again it's more consist consistent you don't want to be too sweet cuz again you're going to this is going to be a really hot drink and we're going to need a lot of sugar to make it palatable for a lot of people even me I think it comes across a little better when there's a little sugar in it so that's why we're going to really sort of pack it in and if memory doesn't fail me this juice is rocking at about I think 1.0 five between five and eight zero I remember exactly but it it's pretty high it's more than Apple Juice I know that so let's do half of each of these things and get our honey mixed up with our giant paddle a few moments later all right so what we have in here right now is one gallon of water and one gallon of cherry juice split between the whatever y yada yada uh now it's time to put in our honey and start mixing uh we might add more cherry juice I want to save for how much water we're going to put in at the end cuz I have a esoteric and maybe annoying way of making sure I get exactly what I want in this recipe so what we have here is 15 lbs of mosquite honey uh it come from the local place it's highly secretive or whatever um I and I that's the thing I recommend you can do this with any sort of Honey with any sort of yeast with any sort of whatever uh but it will really change how this recipe comes out I've done it a couple of different ways I find this to be like the most robust and the most complex the most interesting that's why I'm going to recommend the mosquite because we've used Wild Flour and Orange Blossom and all the good stuff in between but the mosquite brings with it something that I think you can only it comes close to like oaking since mosques a tree it brings something that feels and tastes and almost mimics an oaking or a French oak or you put some Maple in there or whatever yeah so I think it's something that's built in and it saves you a little bit of trouble if you like that but it really also just compliments the flavor of the peppers and the cherries also personally I like the darker especially with the darker berries um because you can find it from yellow to Brown anywhere in between sometimes it'll surprise you but uh yeah I say the darker the better yeah and you're right it does bring like a woodiness to the um the uh the drink on its own I think it's a little much like the mosqu honey I think it definitely needs to be paired with a fruit or something um it's got a little too much body never had it like maybe handled properly CU it is an overbearing and maybe needs to be dealt with a little bit delicate hand if it's going to be by itself but again with the fruits totally cool so we don't waste any of this honey cuz there's still a pretty good chunk in there we're going to throw one of the gallons of water in here and get it All Shook Up and while we're doing that since we're going to be shaking anyway I'm going to go ahead and throw our yeast nutrient and everything in there which I'm going to cut in half from what I would usually do for a couple of reasons um the cherry juice that we're using has a lot of sediment and other particulates that like from the Cherry itself and I'm going to be throwing a decent amount of this pepper paste in here that's going to have a a pretty decent nitrogen content like I've mentioned it before yeast love these peppers and they eat them right up like at the end of this I'll be lucky if I have any heel left to throw out cuz they just Chow Down so that's why I'm going to try and avoid possible complication cuz it's already going to be on top of that a very cloudy and dark Brew but the less I have hanging around in suspension the better which is why I'm cutting in half I've Justified it to myself many different ways is what I'm getting at all right so I'm uh usually I'm putting in a teaspoon per gallon so I'm only going to put in half of that so uh two and a half is what I'm looking at even though it's going to yield six gallons I'm not going to count the honey teaspoon and a half of our yeast nutrient and our nutritional yeast or sorry yeah two and a half I'm have to do more I wasn't counting right I'm being a little generous cuz again since we're only doing half whatever I might fudge the numbers dude let me know in the comments does your yeast nutrient smell I think it's because it's the the nitrogen is from a natural source or an organic Source maybe but it kind of stinks oh it remind it it reminds me of some kind of food it I think it smells good M I don't know man I could be smelling the nutritional yeast yeah that you might be cuz it smells more like cheese than anything yes this is not yeah that does smell like cheese you're right so I'm going to go ahead and fill the lid on this and make sure we get it nice and shook up cuz there's still some on the lid and whatnot okay our honey and nutrient water going into the must here oh God whoa trying to hold it so you guys can see everything makes it hardest for me to see all right so now we've got two gallons of water and one gallon of cherry juice we're going to put the rest of the cherry juice in and to make sure that cuz I don't want to eyeball it after we get all the cherry juice in I'm going to fill up one of these a couple of times to make sure that we get exactly 2 and2 gallons of each cherry juice and water okay we're almost at that time you've all been waiting for we're going to fill this up uh twice we'll be at five gallons of liquid total with our 15 lbs of honey and then we'll get to start paddling talking on a turn back to paddling last one I'm really looking forward to having to stir this there you go okay whoa that is so high we're going to get wait I am going to get in here and start stirring and uh I'm going to see you guys probably in a maybe more than a few minutes after this is all done I don't know where we're at uh it's taking a very long time I don't know how long it's been real time I hope Christa is editing this check-in point it's taking a long time because every time I pull it up after a little scrape from the bottom there's still honey dripping off it so I know we're not done [Applause] m all right I've scraped the bottom I think we are pretty much clean down there it's what you want to say uh you know a good ship and a good bathroom break so now it's time to do some gravity readings more specifically a specific gravity reading now the reason I'm or rather maybe you don't know the reason I made this SU super sweet I'm hoping because I don't want to back sweeten and I want the um the mosqu honey to stay in there the whole time during fermentation so it can impart as much as possible and I don't really want to back sweeten because it's kind of a pain to me personally I'd rather do it all up front get it out of the way because if you got a good yeast it'll come out pretty clean at the end and you don't have to worry about it whoa all right all right people so buckle up what do we have here okay it's not super high say 1.14 so not bad now um I mean potentially that's a lot but we're going to use something that I chose specifically for this Brew because of the red color and yada yada yada because this attributes of this yeast are specifically for red wines but I figure red cherries are close enough so it's red star Premier Rouge or Premier Rouge if you want to be a douche about it um now one package will do five gallons then they're going to have six you know whatever fudge it um I don't think it'll matter it's big enough I'm not worried plus they're going to love what's in here so they're going to be probably happy enough that they won't have to share so much so I got to go get some scissors to cut this open as I was walking over there to get the scissors I thought I don't want to put the yeast in yet uh because I want to put our peppers in there yes I want to get those sort of in solution so again we're using this like pepper Jam it's Habaneros over 30 it was probably closer to 40 yeah I don't want to get this too close to my face so what I'm going to do is do a a pretty generous half of a tablespoon per gallon woo I can smell it boys ooo uh which is probably going to be way more than maybe not way more than the pepper but it's going to be more than a pepper and I don't have a tiny little Brew bag the size of a tea bag so I'll just let it all fall out in the end strong one gallon two what the sound it makes when it hits the liquid too I hope you guys can hear that three plop oh Jesus four that's our fifth gallon and that's probably oh the spoon starting to smoke a lot more than five habanero peppers yeah it's probably more than it should be honestly but I like it well I mean should be subjective I Like It Hot so if this becomes Atomic Cherry Bomb again it's the first time using this pepper puree so if it is way too much we'll find out in the end I hope it isn't because I'm hoping there are enough not hot peppers in there to sort of balance out the super hot ones but the fact that it is like stinging my eyes a little bit kind of makes me think that we're on the hotter side of things yeah anyway but I think it's going to be great that all spread out it's got a ton of surface area so the yeast are going to eat it up have we forgotten anything I need to take a breako so much work this is a little raspberry number we did back in the October month probably recipe are getting hard to find I thought you need to know that when is this happening I don't know the smell of the Habaneros just keeps coming out of the it does but the the thing is you can already smell the flavors working together at least I can the mosquit and the Cherry are already blending with that habanero cuz the habanero is going to bring a decent amount of body like the problem with when you use a lighter honey or an orange blossom or a clover or anything like just wild flower it's it doesn't have any legs it doesn't have it's like a like a jacked guy at the gym who always gives leg day like it's it's there the Heat's there everything is up top like the flashy stuff but there's nothing beneath it carrying the load of that upper body you know what I mean so it needs to have something staing this Foundation anyway here goes the East whole packet of red star Premier Rouge right uh I don't think I'm going to mix it I'm going to let them just enjoy the party up top uh yeah so we got just double check got our water cherry juice yeast nutrient peppers I think that is it we might do a little something in secondary just to see if I can't bring I mean it's already great I may or may not mess with it in secondary but since we've got such a big batch I might Dole it out into 6 one gallons like I had to do in the past with this baby so we might do some experimenting with it with uh splitting it into smaller batches later but the classic is all I really need and that's the thing you don't want to mess with Coca-Cola classic CU you get new Coke and you go why do we do that coke with lemon though I mean come on you guys anyway yeah so that's all we got so I'm going to go and throw the air lock on here cuz that's all still in the starter sand salute U which again if you've not um been in home brewing make sure you're sanitizing all your stuff that's something to check in with even though we all take it for granted but then there are some people that say they don't I you know I recommend it we've had vinegar infections some people get lucky and never do and I always remind myself right because people have been making fermented stuff for basically ever you think well before they even knew what yeast was they were using these big clay pots they just had like they were open topped they were d like doing this with them and big things all day so I figure we're probably not doing too bad right pretty clean I there's no like donkeys running around so I'm not kind of sweat it so yeah we're going to throw this back together and we'll give you a checkup probably in a month or so when we racking into something big and clear maybe do some testing split it up um who knows what the future holds because again it's my favorite recipe so I don't monkey too much but we'll see you on the next episode of Meeting of Minds well maybe we'll talk about yeast maybe we'll make know the recipe or who knows what see you next time [Music] bye

Channel: Meading Of The Minds

Views: 5,281

Keywords: meadingoftheminds, Meading Of The Minds, mead, homebrewing, homebrewers, homebrew, youtube, howto, wine, subscribe

Id: YuJEMXhlqqs

Length: 19min 23sec (1163 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 14 2024