Name: Christine Kilpatrick
Message: From your website..."we once made a fine homebrewed ale-mead flavored and colored with prickly pear fruit gathered from the wild..."

Could you please tell me how you made this brew? Sounds great!

I didn't even remember writing that, and had to check Google to find the page, "Hand drawing with fabric markers: Wildflowers of Texas". Yes, as it happens, we keep good records of all of the brewing we do. It turns out that this was not actually an ale-mead, because it contained no malt; instead, it's more properly known as a melomel. Here is the recipe we followed, over sixteen years ago:

Prickly Pear Mead
(ingredients cost $10 for 2 gallons)
10/10/1988

3 lb ripe prickly pear fruit
7 lb local clover honey
1/4 tsp irish moss
1 pkg Red Star sherry yeast

Singed, sliced prickly pears.
Boiled two hours, removed fruit, strained juice.
Heated honey to 170 degrees F., maintained for 30 minutes.

Notes:
Specific gravity was 100 at 90 degrees F. directly after brewing (equals 112);total volume of 2.5 gallons - too much water.
10/16/88: Racked; SG 70 @77 degrees F (equals 72); looks like pink lemonade
10/30/88: Chilled overnight and racked. SG 30 @40 degrees F. (equals 29); clearing
11/24/88: Bottled. SG 30 @68 degrees F. (equals 31 (?)); added 2 cups water SG 20 (equals 22)
[At bottling time, the yeast had stopped growing due to the alcohol concentration; adding plain boiled water at the end, without added glucose, allowed the yeast to produce carbonation.]
total 23 bottles.

If you're not already a brewer, you'll want to consult a good book on homebrewing before the above recipe can make sense. The sherry yeast contributed a very different flavor than ale yeast or champagne yeast could.

We probably based this on a recipe in Charlie Papazian's book on home brewing, but I can't find our old copy to check.