need help. yeast explosion

So I found a recipe for a strawberry rhubarb mead. Thought I'd make it for a friend of mine that loves the pie.

15 lbs of wild flower honey.
15 lbs of strawberrys.
2 lbs of rhubarb.
5 gallon jug topped with spring water.
Active dry yeast. Not sure the exact kind.

Iv only been brewing about 4 years and this has never happened to me before.

I really need help. I'm afraid the mead might consume the house while I sleep.




Before water and yeast







2 hours after adding yeast

Are those aquafina bottles?

Yes and they work really really well. Iv only used glass for bottling.

You use them only for primary?

the proteins from the strawberries and rhubarb are allowing for more 'krausen' on your mead than you are used to. if you normally make 'plain mead', the other issue is this mead is having a much healthier fermentation due to all the nutrients (mainly nitrogen) from the fruit. normal 'honey only' meads lack nitrogen so unless you do nutrient additions, the primary tends to be slow and much less active.

When I make a melomel, I ferment first, THEN I transfer to secondary onto the fruit. If you ferment on the fruit you tend to lose much of the flavor and aromatics due to the volatile nature of fermentation blowing off those compounds. (same reason people dry hop beer after primary ends).
In addition, to keep my yeast healthy, I degas my mead primary for the first week of fermentation.

You're just going to have to ride this out and deal with the loss from the blow off.

I use them for primary and secondary. Then back sweeten and bottle.

I wanted a strong strawberry flavor. Can I still add more in secondary.? Should I chemically stop fermentation and just let more strawberrys soak in secondary?

I like sweet mead. Not dry at all and a lot of it. The local commercial ( honey wood ) winery goes from start to bottled in 4 months. I need all my mead ready by augest.

You can throw strawberries in the secondary no problem. Since you have so much fruit and little water it may be good to just juice some strawberries and add that to secondary rather than whole strawberries to top it off. In the mean time make a blow off tube and ride this monster out over the next week.

If I back sweetened with a frozen juice concentrate that has preservatives in it. Would that be enough to safely bottle my mead.

Any advise is always helpful. I'm trying to make mead in as many flavors as I can as quickly as possible.

Today a guy selling a alkaline water filter stopped by the brewery. Claiming installing his magic water system would be like adding crack flavored pixi dust to my brews.

I have zero experience with magic alkaline water. Does anyone have any thoughts on this.?

It sells quickly at my local health food store.

What's it used for?

Drinking water. Cancer prevention and well being I suppose.