[hubie]

I made a number of one-gallon test batches of meads using various honeys, etc.  One of the first ones I did was a simple mead using bulk honey from the warehouse store.  I had quite a bit of trouble getting it to attenuate but it is finally down around 1.010 or maybe a bit higher.  It tastes a bit sweet, but is otherwise unremarkable.  I picked up some nice, fresh local peaches and I was considering racking the mead onto the fruit in a secondary.  I wasn't sure whether I should/need add any pectic enzyme.  I'm not planning on heating the fruit, which I know would set the pectin, but I'm not aware if there is enough pectin in fresh fruit to give me any problems.

The other thing I was considering, since it is a pretty sweet mead, is to add hot peppers or something sour instead.  Any opinions whether adding peaches to a sweet mead would make it too sweet or cloying?  I do have a gallon of a ginger mead where the ginger-ness isn't where I want it to be.  It tastes a bit dull and I might want to add the peaches to that instead, since ginger and peaches are a nice combination.

[Jimmy K]

Pectic enzyme after fermentation would be useless. Alcohol denatures it. You probably don't need it, but you could mix it with the peaches before adding them to the mead.