Peach pie… what’s not to love? This mead was super experimental for me, especially since I hadn’t really made much with spices.

In this 1 gallon of mead I added a total of: 6 pounds peaches, 4 oz dried apricots, 1.8 oz brown sugar, 1 cinnamon stick, 1 nutmeg, ginger, cardamon, allspice berries, 1 clove, 1 vanilla bean, and 4 graham crackers. Not to mention the 3-3.5 lb clover, and 1-1.5 lb orange blossom honey added!

There was a period where I really wasn’t sure how this mead would turn out. Peaches are NOTORIOUSLY difficult to pull flavor from – and looking back I would definitely use like… double the peaches at least in primary and secondary. As a side note: I didn’t really have a secondary with this thing (as far as I can remember) because I wasn’t stabilizing yet. The yeast pushed this mead out to almost 18% ABV (yeast LOVE peaches!) which just pushed the aging time way out – the higher the ABV the longer aging time needed.

I also wasn’t sure after all the spice additions and everything just how pie-like this would really turn out to be. As a note from experience, don’t judge your mead when it’s young! Time will settle things and even flavors out… to a certain degree anyway. But especially if you remove spices and THEN taste the mead, it will taste very very strongly of those spices. Wait another week or two and you will notice a HUGE difference!

After a bit of time this mead was SO GOOD!!! I absolutely need to make this again, with some refinements. It’s a very complex mead, and it really takes you on a journey!

***I am currently making a new version of this mead because it was SO GOOD, and I will be sure to post a 2.0 version once it’s completed 1/9/25***

Recipe for the original version with recommended actions mentioned, and adjustments in honey additions (added several times due to re-fermentation)
Primary:
Freeze & Thaw 4lb Peaches (include skins, just remove seeds. Choose flavorful peaches, they are delicate and the flavor gets lost easily)
1/2 pack Lalvin 71B Yeast
1.8 oz Brown Sugar (this amount could be changed)
1/2 cup Orange Blossom Honey (I ended up adding about 3.5 lb of honey total using both Orange & Clover honey. Add whatever amount to primary to reach your desired ABV)

Secondary:
Stabilize
Add about 2lb Peaches to boost flavor
Added Spices “Dry Hop” style in a brew bag that can easily be removed after a few days.
1 Cinnamon Stick, 1 Whole Nutmeg, Fresh Ginger, Cardamon, Allspice Berries, 1 Clove (Some amounts were not taken note of. Left in mead for about 8 days)
Outside of spice bag add 1 Vanilla Bean
4 Graham Crackers to be removed after a couple of days
4 oz Dried Apricots (Dried peaches with a couple apricots would be better, the apricots, while boosting peach flavor, also overtook that flavor and made the mead more apricot forward than peach forward)
Backsweeten to taste

Clear & Bottle