can i freeze citrus fruits

and use later in mead or wine? I hope so because I already froze them Lemons, oranges, and limes. I don't have the time or space to use them right now and didn't want them to go bad.

sodypop said:

and use later in mead or wine? I hope so because I already froze them Lemons, oranges, and limes. I don't have the time or space to use them right now and didn't want them to go bad.

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You can freeze any fruit for preservation. It's just gonna depend on whether you want the fruit too look "pretty" when it's defrosted (like for cake decoration, patisserie stuff etc, which is why "soft" fruit either isn't frozen or it's "flash frozen" to maintain shape and texture as much as possible).

For citrus, I'd have thought it's probably more prudent (take that to mean "space saving"), to "zest" the outside of the fruit and bag that with records of how many fruit the zest is from, then press/juice the flesh and freeze that separately, again, recording how much fruit the juice was extracted from. The records (permanent marker in the plastic bag/container) is only really for recipe compliance, where X amount of fruit goes in a mix with Y amount of honey and Z amount of water, etc etc.....

I cannot speak for the impact on brewing but citrus fruits generally have large, turgid cells as the "fruit" portion of the cell. This also means they are chock full of water which tends to expand when you freeze it. This irreparably damages the cell walls and when you thaw the fruit, it will be far from the same fruit it was when you froze it. This is why you see many berries frozen in the local super market isle but never (or rarely) any melons or citrus fruits.

You are free to give it a go but I would not recommend it! The quality of the fruit will most likely go down.

Edit: Strike the "not recommend it" part per olefattguy's response below. As I mentioned, can't speak for the impact on brewing (only making my first batch right now).

For use in wine or mead it is not only ok, it will probably bring a better yield, largely due to the fact that when the water in the cells freeze, they crystallize and gnaw holes in the cell membrane. This in turn allows the juices to flow, as it were, freely into your mead or wine when thawed. In fact it is a trick sometimes used even for barley malt (moisted) to increase efficiency.