and about 3 kg of black currant. I figured I would mix the berries so I get the sweetness of the black currant and the acidity og the red currant.
Since I will not start up any mead making untill the fall, I decided to juice the berries and then freeze the juice. For that purpose I used my trusted juicer. The advantage is that the juice is not boiled but the berries are heated untill they bust and the juice is extracted with water vapor. When no more juice can be extracted the the only very little water is collected so you do not risk diluting the juice if you leave the juicer a little too long on the heat. I also enjoy that it is such a clean procedure and it easy to keep contaminations out.
The flasks used for collecting the juice just cleaned in boiling water and I did not add anything to preserve the juice. And oops, there went another glass of last years cyser - busted :)
In the end I had about 1.25L of red current juice and 2.25L of black currant juice.
The plan is to start out with about 20L in the primary and then add the juice in the secondary. The volume should then be about 23L (20 - 0.5 for racking + 3.5L of juice) i.e the juice will constitute about 15% of the total volume. To get an idea of the taste I mixed 15 ml to 100 ml of water. The color was OK and the taste was there, though kind of light. I do not think think the juice will overpower the taste of the mead/residual honey. The smell of the berries is quite strong thoughand it will give an interesting nose to the mead
The juices were pooled in a 5L plastic container and stored in freezer. I am already beginning to look forward to the fall;)
And what do you make with fresh berries? .... Cake of cause!
