Gooseberry Melomel

This recipe yields about 20L of sweet mead.

Process

1. Make sure all equipment is clean and disinfected
2. Add the honey to the fermentation vessel
3. Top with water¹ to reach the total volume of 20L, and stir to dissolve the honey
4. Pitch the yeast, stir vigorously to oxygenate, and add a lid with an airlock
5. Ferment for one week
6. Simmer the gooseberries to disinfect, then add to the mead and ferment for another five weeks
7. Add potassium sorbate and potassium metabisulfate to stop fermentation, and let sit for 48h
8. Bottle the mead, and enjoy

Notes

I’m very happy with the result of this brew. The mead is pleasantly sweet with a distinct taste of gooseberries. My girlfriend thought it came out slightly beer-y and blamed the use of a beer yeast, but enjoyed in none the less.

I chose to use kveik for this mead as an experiment. I’ve used kveik quite a lot the past few years, and it’s become one of my favorite yeasts. It ferments very quickly with high flocculation, and can survive temperatures up to 40C. At higher temperatures it ferments even quicker and also produces quite a lot of fruity esters, I highly recommend trying if you can!

Despite the use of kveik, the fermentation was quite calm throughout the whole six weeks. This was quite unexpected, as kveik is usually fairly frantic, with the airlock bubbling constantly. It had gone down from the OG of 1.114 to an SG of about 1.070 after about a week though, but it still felt slow enough that I added a second satchel of yeast, mostly because I did partly choose kveik because speed was of the essence (don’t procrastinate on starting your mead).