New ingredients !

Well, to prove it's not all "mead, mead and more bloody mead", I've been on a bit of a mission over the last week or two.

I saw mention of "cheap black currants" at WAH but was too late to get any in the local branch of Tesco, but I did manage to find some "broken mandarin segments" (in syrup) for 11 pence a tin.

I also managed to get some Kiwi fruit, for 50 pence per pack of 4 (I got a dozen packs - hopefully enough for 2 gallons).

Then yesterday, we finally got time to visit the local PYO (pick you own) farm. We managed to get about 3lb of raspberries, even though it looked like they'd been decimated by the hoards of ravenous pensioners - who can get there during the week when the rest of the world is at work and a plastic carrier bag full of "discovery" apples.

So far, I've put the rasp's in a bucket with 2 pints of water so I can crush/squeeze by hand, and topped it off with 7lb of the apples that have been pulped in the "magimix".

The mix of fruit has had 1 campden tablet to hopefully kill off any residual "wild yeasts" (a.k.a. mould) on the rasp's and 2 teaspoons of pectolase/pectic enzyme to help prevent any pectin hazes and assist in the extraction of the juice/flavours (I'll post some pictures later).

I've been promised further apples, plus some frozen blackberries and red currants by my aunt. So I should be able to come up with something from that lot.

Oh and I've got some more of the cheap honey (£2.50 per 2 x 1lb jars) from the local "Scummerfield".

Of course, the cheap honey it's a lot of good for "normal" mead's as it's been blended and processed to hell and back, but it's certainly fine for any of the "fruit based meads" like cyser (mead with apples/apple juice), pyments (mead with grapes/grape juice), melomels (meads with other fruits/juice), metheglins (meads made with spices), etc etc etc! Where the actual honey flavour is secondary in importance.

Anyway, as I say, as I progress, I'll post some photo's of the different batches.

TTFN!