Sanitising frozen fruit?

As in the title,

I was going to venture into mead making soon, and wanted to make two different batches, a raspberry and a blueberry mead (total of six batches actually, two normal meads, one cyser and one JOAM), but was wondering about using frozen fruit. Should I pasteurize it with the honey, or just throw it into the fermenter with honey, water and yeast, after having let it unfreeze of course?

Thanks.

Toss them in....with a short prayer of course.

dont pastuerize the honey, please

tooomanycolors said:

dont pastuerize the honey, please

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OMG! I TOTALLY missed that part!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Listen to the kid....He knows what he's saying....if you don't want to listen to him.....listen to me....DON"T HEAT YOUR HONEY!

Exactly what they said. Honey needs no heating whatsoever and will only be worse off with it. And I have used frozen blueberries with absolutely no pasteurizing or even campden and have had no bad results.

I don't heat mine but I was told from a LBHS that Zok who is a 9-time national champ (fom Willamantic, CT LBHS) heats his honey to 140F!

I'd sulfite that fruit (camden tabs) to guard against anything that survived the freezing process. Just dump your thawed fruit into the fermentor along with a gallon of water, add the crushed & dissolved camden & stir well. Wait 24 hrs & then add the honey & the rest of the water and yeast nutrients, give it a good stir & pitch your yeast/starter. You'll get more & better honey flavour if you don't heat your honey. I like to mix honey with warm water in the blender, it mixes well & super areates the must. Regards, GF.

Holy smokes, I already knew, don't heat the honey, sorry if my question was badly asked (many drinks had been taken).

I think I might go on the safe side and add camden tablets and wait 24 hours. Should I not add the honey with sulfite as well?

mrfocus said:

Holy smokes, I already knew, don't heat the honey, sorry if my question was badly asked (many drinks had been taken).

I think I might go on the safe side and add camden tablets and wait 24 hours. Should I not add the honey with sulfite as well?

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Adding Alcohol to posts has never hurt anything....just like Campden has never hurt a fruit. Good Idea.

haha, yea the response here to heating honey was much gentler than some a few months ago...

I personally prefer to "flash pasturize" the honey. That is disolve the honey into 1/2 the water you are going to use, then heat up to 140 degrees for 5 min. Then take off heat and mix the rest of the water in. It works better if you chill the water in the frige to as cold as you can with out freezing it. This gets the temp down quicker to pitching temp. Which I use D-47 and pitch at about 88-90 degrees. Then pitch and fit in the air lock. Now I use a big funnel to transfer to the carboy and ususally Carefully do so after I pitch, that Aereates the must very well. The reason why I say carefully is even at 88 degrees it is still molten enough to burn. I also wouldn't put in the fruit until after you rack it once after the primary fermentation. This way it will keep the flavor rather than the fermentation process riping apart the flavor. Good luck.

mrfocus said:

Holy smokes, I already knew, don't heat the honey, sorry if my question was badly asked (many drinks had been taken).

I think I might go on the safe side and add camden tablets and wait 24 hours. Should I not add the honey with sulfite as well?

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Sure, you can mix it all up & sulfite it; actually, that's the safest way to go. It's tough for bad things to live in honey, but all sorts of things can live in water. You might think about using some pectic enzyme on your fruit, but don't add it till about 12 hrs after sulfiting; apparently they don't work well together. Just be sure to give the must a really good stir before you pitch your yeast/starter to reintroduce oxygen, the yeast need it at this stage. Regards, GF.

Great, I will be picking up the extra equipment I need to get all these meads going.