U2M - Fruit Salad 3

This is Dick's third fruit salad melomel. This version has peaches, rhubarb, raspberries, chokecherry, and pomegranate.

Ingredients:

Yeast notes. 8 g EC-1118 Brewmaster yeast. Rehydrated and pitched at brew time.

November 23, 2022 - Weighed honey into the kettle and added water. Heated to 160F, stirring until the honey fully dissolved. Put the must chiller in the kettle and maintained that temperature for 15 minutes. Cooled the must to 115F, meant to only get it to 120F. The fruit had been removed from the freezer a couple of days earlier, and stored in a cooler. Some of it was still a bit frosty. The fruit went into a bag inside the fermenter, the juice poured on top, then the honey must was added. We ended up adding hot water to top it off. No gravity reading as it wouldn't mean much at this stage. Yeast was pitched. Already blorping on 11/24.

December 3, 2022 - A small bucket was cleaned and sanitized, along with a strainer that fit onto the top of the bucket. The fruit bag was transferred to the strainer to drain into the bucket. Dick used clean, food safe, disposable gloves to squeeze the juice out of the bag. That juice went back into the fermenter. SG 1.040. Tastes peachy.

December 10, 2022 - Rack to carboy. SG 1.014. Peach flavor is there, but nothing really dominates. It's fruity, interesting and complex.

April 5, 2023 - SG 0.996 but still hazy from the peaches.

April 12, 2023 - rack carboy to carboy.

June 6, 2023 - SG 0.994 (difference from 4/5 reading is probably because it was warmer in the garage) rack to keg for bottling. This will need to be decanted before serving.

June 22, 2023 - Bottled.

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