wpreston

Recipes 

I am planning on making two one gallon batches of mead; this will be my first attempt at making mead also. First batch will be with 3 pounds of orange blossom honey and some yeast nutrient and champagne yeast. The second gallon will be with 3 pounds orange blossom honey yeast nutrient and fresh strawberries. A big question I have is on the strawberries I was thinking of running them threw my juicer and just adding the juice to the batch, any thoughts? Should I add it to primary or secondary, and how long till you rack to secondary? I was just hoping for some advice on ferment temps and any other thoughts on the batches I am going to make.

Smogre

Recipes 

Strawberries tend to be one of those fruits that can be a challenge to pull out it's flavor. Most folks I see making it add fruit to both the primary and the secondary.
How long until you rack to the secondary? I always give my mead as much time as it wants but others here may provide a better hard and fast rule.
I'm not sure if I would puree the berries. I can see that making it harder to clarify.
Keep us posted and I'm sure a few others will chime in.

__________________
aisle19

MikeRLynch

Recipes 

I've found that strawberries can make a wine that generally doesn't taste very good. I made one a while ago and the overall flavor wasn't good at all. For a long time I thought it was just my noobness and problems with my process, but recently I've tasted a couple different strawberry wines from commercial fruit-winemakers and they both had the same off flavor mine did.

YMMV, but I have a feeling strawberry wine is an aquired taste.

__________________
Lost Elm Brewing Co.

Follow us on Twitter
Like us on Facebook

On Deck - IPA, Lost Elm Rye Pale Ale
Fermenting - Lost Elm ESB
On Tap - Lost Elm Rye Pale Ale, Lost Elm ESB with Honey

Cugel

Recipes 

I have a strawberry (frozen costco fruit) mead in secondary at the moment. It smells "off" at the moment but that odor is diminishing. I plan on throwing 4-6 lbs organic (trader joes) banannas into the secondaries next week after I ripen them nicely. I just picked 2 lbs strawberries locally and will throw them into the secondary too. Will probably backsweeten with 2-3 lbs honey once the mead settles down and I get a feel for what it will taste like.

I'm treating this like a regular wine, just fermented with honey rather than sugar, and use jack keller's recipes to keep me straight.

__________________
Relax, don't worry etc. and so on.

Primaries: Old Ale, Barleywine, ESB, Scottish 80/.
Secondaries: Lime Wine, Strawberry-Banana Mead, Carmenere (from 144 lbs of grapes!), Engl. Barleywine, Modded JOAM, Concord Grape Pyment.
Kegs: Choc/Coffee Stout, Saison, Dry Stout.
Bottles: Belgian Str. Dark, Dubbel, Cider X 2, Modded JOAM, RJS Pinot Noir, RJS Aussie Cab. Sauv.
Coming soon: Blueberry Mead.

Cugel

Recipes 

I have a feeling that much of the odor referred to above is yeast-related. The smell from the yeast cake was quite powerful, in a non-good kind of way. I used D-47 at about 65*F for 10 days on the fruit and also added bentonite to the primary which probably concentrated the yeast substantially more than usual. I had ~0.75 gallons of yeasty-nastiness I had to throw, much more than usual. Still 6 gallons left so not bad.

What yeasts did you folks use, how long did you have fruit contact for, and at what temps?

__________________
Relax, don't worry etc. and so on.

Primaries: Old Ale, Barleywine, ESB, Scottish 80/.
Secondaries: Lime Wine, Strawberry-Banana Mead, Carmenere (from 144 lbs of grapes!), Engl. Barleywine, Modded JOAM, Concord Grape Pyment.
Kegs: Choc/Coffee Stout, Saison, Dry Stout.
Bottles: Belgian Str. Dark, Dubbel, Cider X 2, Modded JOAM, RJS Pinot Noir, RJS Aussie Cab. Sauv.
Coming soon: Blueberry Mead.

Brandon O

Recipes 

okay, like others have said. Pulling off strawberry mead or wine that tastes good doesn't really happen that often.

I would use a beer yeast and don't shoot for a high ABV. no more than 10 or 11%.

A beer yeast won't rape the original strawberry flavor as much as a wine yeast. Keeping the low ABV, say 10% will also help the overall good taste factor of the drink.

also, +1 on blending your strawberries. make sure you campden tablet them before fermenting.

Poobah58

Recipes 

I beg to differ. My strawberry mead is only 7 months old and was fantastic the last tasting. It's still bulk aging but is a keeper. FYI here is my 3 gallon recipe:

0.75 tsp Pectic Enzyme (Primary)
3.00 Campden Tablets (Primary)
12 lbs Strawberries, Frozen & thawed (Primary)
5 lbs Honey, Orange Blossom
4 lbs Honey, Clover
12.0 oz Bananas, Freeze Dried (secondary)
Fermaid-K, GoFerm, DAP
1 Pkgs Cote des Blancs

Started at 1.100 SG. Racked to secondary at 2 weeks (0.993). Stabilized and added more honey at the 5 month mark to sweeten a bit.

__________________
Mead Lane Brewing
The liver is evil and must be punished

Dude123

Recipes 

I've got a strawberry mead going right now as well. I don't have the recipe on me right now, but what i did was make the must and added to strawberries, then when they went white and nasty raked onto more strawberries and added a little more honey and water

__________________
Primary(23L/6g): Empty
Primary/Seconday(19L/5g):Empty
Primary(4L/1g):Strawberry melomel
Primary/Secondary)(4L/1g):Empty

Bottled:Apfelwein(Started 2/20/09), JAOM

planning:Dogfish head 60 minute clone, a stout of some type, prickly pear mead, cherry melomel

Poobah58

Recipes 

Dude, you have to stir fruit 2-3 times a day (when in primary) to keep the top from getting "nasty" and to allow gases to escape!

__________________
Mead Lane Brewing
The liver is evil and must be punished

Brandon O

Recipes 

holy crap, 4 lbs per gallon? that's the way to go. I did 2.