This is a fruit mead, or a Melomel.

Ingredients:
12 lbs Fresh Peaches, washed, halved, pitted, unpeeled
3 cups sugar
Juice of 6 lemons
6 lbs Clover Honey
7 tsp Acid Blend
3 tsp Pectic Enzyme
3 Campden Tablets
3 tsp Yeast Energizer
3/4 tsp Grape Tannin
1 pack (5g) Red Star Montrachet Yeast

1. Clean, pit, halve peaches
2. Peaches, sugar, lemon juice into primary fermenter
3. Boil honey with water in 2:1 ratio, skim foam
4. Pour hot honey / water mix over fruit, let cool.
5. Add water to make 4 gallons total (Assume the peaches would take some volume)
6. Let stand overnight.
7 . Take about 2 cups of the must, add all Yeast Energizer, plus yeast.
8 . Let starter stand 3 hrs, add to must.

Starting Gravity: 1108

Starting Acid: 0.52%

Finishing Gravity (Fermentation): 996

Finishing Gravity (bottling): 1013 approx.

24 August, 2003: Starting Gravity: 1108. Estimated alcohol content: 13%

28 August, 2003: Specific Gravity down to 1010, Add 2 cups sugar and about 1 lb honey.

29 August, 2003: S.G. back down to 1012. Transfer to secondary fermenter. Glad I used the fruit fermenter bag to keep the peaches in.

09 September, 2003: S.G. down to 996. Fermentation extremely slow.

03 October, 2003: Added 1.5 tsp Potassium Sorbate to stablilize. Waiting for it to clear before bottling. Also added 3 campden tablets.

02 November, 2003: Racked

17 November, 2003: Added Isinglass to help precipitate cloudiness.

30 January, 2004: Very clear now (see above note on ignoring things). Also could stand some extra sugar. I added about 1/2 tsp sugar to a 1 oz shot glass, and it's not bad.

07 February, 2004: SG = 996. Added 2 cups Clover Honey to the mead. This was a minor inconvenience. The honey is difficult to dissolve correctly, and really clouds up the entire mixture. I would up using the thief to extract out about 2 cups of mead at a time, then dissolved what honey I could in it, poured it back in, and kept going until all of the honey was dissolved. I then added 3 tsp Pectic Enzyme in an attempt to de-cloud the mixture.

09 February, 2004: Added 1 dose of Sparkalloid to see if that would improve things. Not much change.

01 March, 2004: Added 2 tbsp / gallon Bentonite Slurry. This stuff really works well!

20 March, 2004: Bottled. total yield as follows:

750 ml bottle: 11
375 ml bottle: 4
187 ml bottle: 5