Orange and kiwi mead

Hi everyone,
Got some honey the other day and decided to throw together a random mead. I put and orange and two kiwis(peeled and chopped) and some raisins straight into the demijohn(Carboy).
It's going well but I was wondering if I can keep the fruit in this for a long while or wether I should rack it relatively soon to remove the pulp etc.
Any advice is greatly appreciated.
Brian

If you keep the fruit in too long, the flavors may become overpowering. How large is your batch, and how much honey did you use?

It's a one gallon batch(imperial gallon) I used just over 3lbs of wild flower honey. Was thinking about racking it after a week but will the flavours remain?

Would the fruit drop on it's own or is it best removed?

Fermentation is probably going to take about a month- and it's probably a bad idea to try and rack while the yeast are still so active. I would wait to rack it until it is completely fermented. You can try a bit then, and see how strong the flavor is. You may get a stronger fruit flavor than you were looking for, but hey, it's only a gallon, and not five. The only thing I can think of that might help if it is way too strong is to get a larger fermenter, and add more must in the same proportions as the original. This would restart fermentation, but would dilute the fruit flavors a bit (or a lot, depending on how much must you add).

Hope this helps you out.

Also, what yeast did you use? (Just curious)

Graham

It was a packet of youngster wine yeast super compound, sorry don't know any other details of it

Youngs sorry

Aha- just looked it up. It's supposedly made for fast fermentation, so you might be looking at less than a month, but meads generally take a while.

Also, when making meads with added fruit, you might want to look into using a plastic bucket as your primary fermenter. Then you can just put any fruit you want to add into a muslin bag, and it will be easily removable.

Thank you, it was a day off and I was super bored so just threw it together tbh

Haha that's how the best brews happen. I made a mead in the same way around New Years- tastes like orange-y jet fuel at the moment, but hopefully it will be something drinkable by Christmas.

If you really want to get into mead, I would try to get a copy of The Compleat Meadmaker, by Ken Schramm. It's a good read, and deserving of the title in regards to the information presented.

Thanks for the advice, I will get the book as mead really interests me. The brew smells fantastic just now so here's hoping