L2025-06-08-1 "Cranberry Grape Mead"
Certified drinkable! Much better than the Bland Rosé. This is a high-alcohol, red-fruity and flowery rosé with a mead-ish mouthfeel. Arguably better than what you’d find for €3 in a supermarket. If only the smell wasn’t so foul… 6.5/10 pleasant mead-like fruity rosé.
General info
- Vintage: n/a
- Batch size: 4L plastic bucket
- Yeast: Vinoferm Red
- Alcohol by volume: ~16%
- Approximate production cost per bottle (including overhead and waste)
- Base: ~€2,40 for bottle, cork, label, wax seal, yeast, nutrition, and sulfites.
- Ingredients: ~€2,02
Ingredients and allergens
- 2L Jumbo Druivensap
- 1L Jumbo Cranberry Drank
- 450g Jumbo Bloemenhoning
- Vinoferm Nutrisal diammonium phosphate
- ~600g random crystallized honey pulled from some random drawer, dissolved in 1L water
About 1g of Vinoferm potassium metabisulphite (note: allergen) added (250mg/l).
Production notes
Using an already-opened pack of Vinoferm Red. According to the instructions, they should be expired. Let’s hope that some of the yeasty bois are still viable. Otherwise I may have to (re)start fermentation with a new pack of yeast1.
Prophecy
Should result in a flavorful and high-alcohol fruit mead. I am praying to Bacchus that it will actually have enough flavour and residual sweetness to mask the funny flavour found in the Bland Rosé.
Fermentation time
Bubbling stopped on 2025-06-17 (10 days).
Bottling date and notes
Racked on 2025-06-21 and left for a night. As such, this batch has fewer lees, but also considerably more oxygen exposure.
…I should get better 5L carboys and a better siphoning system2.
Either way, the entire thing smells sour and foul, like the other batches of hooch so far. I am now fairly certain that you should, in fact, leave hooch to rest for a couple of months for natural mellowing.
This was also my first attempt at using an acidometer. Supposedly the hooch has around 6g/l acidity.
Bottled on 2025-06-22. I didn’t dare to taste it yet.
Storage, aging, and serving
T.b.d.
Actual taste and suggested food pairings
2025-07-06
On a cozy Saturday night we decided to open up a bottle and try it out. It was served chilled at around 8c and had rested around two weeks on the bottle at this point.
My worst fears surfaced as the initial smell of the bottle contents were abhorrent. This mellowed significantly after a couple of minutes, even if the overall smell remained a bit hoochy. Maybe I should aerate the hooch before bottling? Even at the risk of oxidation?
The overall flavor is very fruity, even somewhat flowery. I expected the cranberry to be overpowering, but the end result is actually quite balanced. There is a subtle old honey mouthfeel which we hope will get more pronounced. It was fermented fully dry, but a little more explicit honey-sweetness would have sealed the deal. We got tipsy quite quickly. ABV is definitely above normal wine levels.
Our overall judgement is that it’s a red-fruity rosé that wants to dabble in becoming a mead. The color is a beautiful dark pink (…with some lees discoloration in the last part of the bottle). We would pay €3,45 for this.
The three-month bottle aging review will follow later.
