Author Archives: spinstercatlady

Rosemary Blueberry Mead

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We have a pair of rosemary bushes on one side of our house, and so early in my mead making journey I decided to see what would happen if I fermented on fresh rosemary. To my great delight it turned out to be my most favorite creation.

two one quart mason jars with fermenter lids, inside is a cloudy golden color liquid with visible sprigs of rosemary floating at the top
a half-gallon glass jar with a blue lid, an airlocks is sticking up out of the lid, the liquid inside the jar is a deep red

Because this was just an experiment, I only made half a gallon of it. Much to my later dismay. Here’s the basic timeline and ingredients I used.

2024-03-12
2ish quarts water
24 grams rosemary leaves/flowers
1.5 pounds honey
1 packet k1-v1116 yeast
in two 32oz mason jars

2024-04-20
racked mead off the rosemary, put back in jars and put back under airlock. the smell is not bad, but it’s interesting.

2024-04-21 (afternoon)
poured rosemary into half-gallon pickle jar with blueberries, sugar and water:

Macerated Blueberries 

386g frozen blueberries
128 grams turbanado sugar 
wide mouth 32oz mason jar

2024-04-20 
8pm - mixed it up, popped it in the fridge 

2024-04-21 (early afternoon)
moved to half gallon jar, added 3/4th cup of water to get the sugar and stuff out of the mason jar. covered jar with strainer bag, will let it come up to room temp and then add in rosemary mead.

placed pickle jar with airlock onto fermentation shelf

2024-04-28
racked off blueberries, washed container, put mead back under airlock for aging

deep red liquid in a glass jar being held up to the light

Bottling Day

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several glass bottles, mostly amber colored but a few clear and one cobalt blue, of mead with labels sitting on a light green tray

Spent my day bottling up all of my previously brewed mead. The two big bottles (half gallon) in the back of Strawberry Moon mead are going to a pottery friend, one of the little 8oz Ginger Mead is going to another pottery friend.

Most of the rest of them are going to friends & family, but they’re not all spoken for yet. And the tall (1 liter) clear bottle and shorter cobalt blue bottle are being stored. So I’ve got more oregano flower-hibiscus flower & breakfast potion (oat ‘milk’, cinnamon, maple syrup, barley malt, dates, honey) for laters. 😀

Alpine Berry Mead

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approximately 5 oz of fresh rosemary in a white bucket
two small sprigs of rosemary on a white bucket lid
white bucket with light brown liquid (honey and water)
glass measuring pitcher with 1/2 cup water and yeast in it, an orange chopstick has been used to stir it and rests in the pitcher as well
outside of white bucket, you can faintly see that the liquid inside is just a hair above the 1 gallon mark (written in black sharpie on the side)
hydrometer & graduated cylinder containing mead must (a light golden brown), the hydrometer is showing a specific gravity of 1.140

Rosemary + Blueberry Mead Take 2!

3oz fresh rosemary leaves + some stems
4lbs honey
1pkg k1-v1116 yeast
water to 1 gallon
1.5tsp fermaid o (start, 24, 48)
41oz frozen blueberries (secondary)
14oz turbinado sugar (secondary to macerate blueberries)

2024-09-27
Harvested rosemary, washed and prepped it (removed woody stems), placed in plastic bag in fridge. Filtered 1 gallon of water. Marked the 1 gallon, 1.5 gallon & 2 gallon spots on the 2-gallon fermenter bucket.

2024-09-28
Mixed honey 4lbs, water 0.6875gal, yeast & fermaid o 1/2tsp together, spg 1.140, added rosemary 3oz, stirred some more, put under air lock

I made my first rosemary+blueberry mead back in March. It was just an experiment, so I only made a half-gallon batch and I added the blueberries in on a whim. It turned out to be my favorite of all the ones I’ve tried making. So now that I’ve got my 2 gallon fermenter available again, I decided to give it another go. Fingers crossed that it comes out as good or better now that I’m doing it on purpose.

This batch should take about a month to ferment, though I will have a better idea now that I have a hydrometer. After it finishes fermenting I will rack it off the rosemary and add in the macerated blueberries for a week or two. I will be able to take specific gravity readings this time, so I’ll have a clearer idea of what the final ABV% is.