@Gratus
Here was my recipe, it was one of my first self designed and could certainly have been done better but in all honesty in came out surprisingly well.
4 Mangos frozen then chopped
4.5lb silver bo clover honey
water to 1 gal
I skinned and sliced the mango and placed in the carboy, the mango not the skins. Dissolved 4.5 lb of honey in 2qt water and added to the carboy, topped up with water and pitched EC-1118. Racked off the fruit 12 days later. Fermentation finished two months later and I added 1/2 vanilla bean split. Bottled 10 days later. It was tart, sweet, mangoey with a nice vanilla touch that smoothed it out a ton.
Issues with this recipe?
1. too much mango, should have broken it up and used half in secondary (will get to that more later).
2. WAY too much honey, EC-1118 did its job and cut it down a lot. I did not take an OG but according to the mead calc 4.5lb honey in 3qts water comes out to 1.215. I did take a reading after racking and before and after topping off. After racking the gravity was 1.010 so EC-1118 had a wonderful feast. After topping off it leveled at 1.000
I made another batch recently. I made a sweet show mead and split it into 5 gallons after fermentation completed. Then added 2 mangos chopped and left until the fruit was more white than yellow. This actually turned out more mellow but still mangoey. I miss the tartness that I had with the other one and it could simple be due to the time of year the mangos were purchased. I also did not add vanilla to this second one and it would have accentuated the Mango flavor very nicely.
@PaddyMurphy
you can do chunks in a brewing bag, pulverized in a blender, etc. It really doesn't matter too much. The biggest difference is going to be cleanup and clearing. I would think pulverized would make it cloudy and require more rackings to finally clear. I simply cut them into chunks and toss then in the carboy, no bag required. I give the carboy a gentle swirl at least once a day to keep the floating fruit from drying out or molding.
So to wrap this up here I would now make my recipe as follows:
2 mangos frozen then chopped Primary
2 mangos frozen then chopped Secondary
1/2 split vanilla bean Secondary
2.5-3lb honey
K1V-1116
I would also make sure you follow the SNA guidelines which I did not know existed when making my first mango batch. I will say the yeasties do seem to like mango.