Persephone’s Descent

Pomegranate Mead

a pyrex measuring pitcher full of juice, a metal bowl with a mesh bag full of white seeds, and a black bowl full of picked apart pomegranate husks

Ingredients
1.5 cups fresh squeezed pomegranate juice
1 liter pomegranate syrup / equivalent 1.74lbs sugar
.2oz fresh rosemary
1lb 10.2oz honey
water to 1 gallon (approx 2qt, 1cup)
1pkg yeast
1.5tsp fermaid o (start, 48, 72)

2024-10-04
So. I will never complain about the price of pomegranate products again. Holy goddess. 5 pomegranates (from a friend’s yard) turned out to be about 1.5 cups of juice. Apparently pomegranates come in white fruit too. Tasted good. Then I added the pomegranate syrup, got it from the International Market the other week. It tastes like jolly ranchers, but I like that so it’s all good. Added in the honey, which was just what I had left over from two 5lbs containers. Let the yeast and the fermaid o start doing their thing in a cup of water while I prepped it all. Shook the heck out of the must to make sure it was aerated enough. Checked the starting gravity: 1.092 spg. Added the little bit of rosemary and put it all under air lock.

Everything was so sticky. But I’m excited to see how it comes out. 😀

Alpine Berry Mead

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.