Question about strawberry mead?

I am planning on making two one gallon batches of mead; this will be my first attempt at making mead also. First batch will be with 3 pounds of orange blossom honey and some yeast nutrient and champagne yeast. The second gallon will be with 3 pounds orange blossom honey yeast nutrient and fresh strawberries. A big question I have is on the strawberries I was thinking of running them threw my juicer and just adding the juice to the batch, any thoughts? Should I add it to primary or secondary, and how long till you rack to secondary? I was just hoping for some advice on ferment temps and any other thoughts on the batches I am going to make.

Strawberries tend to be one of those fruits that can be a challenge to pull out it's flavor. Most folks I see making it add fruit to both the primary and the secondary.
How long until you rack to the secondary? I always give my mead as much time as it wants but others here may provide a better hard and fast rule.
I'm not sure if I would puree the berries. I can see that making it harder to clarify.
Keep us posted and I'm sure a few others will chime in.

I've found that strawberries can make a wine that generally doesn't taste very good. I made one a while ago and the overall flavor wasn't good at all. For a long time I thought it was just my noobness and problems with my process, but recently I've tasted a couple different strawberry wines from commercial fruit-winemakers and they both had the same off flavor mine did.

YMMV, but I have a feeling strawberry wine is an aquired taste.

I have a strawberry (frozen costco fruit) mead in secondary at the moment. It smells "off" at the moment but that odor is diminishing. I plan on throwing 4-6 lbs organic (trader joes) banannas into the secondaries next week after I ripen them nicely. I just picked 2 lbs strawberries locally and will throw them into the secondary too. Will probably backsweeten with 2-3 lbs honey once the mead settles down and I get a feel for what it will taste like.

I'm treating this like a regular wine, just fermented with honey rather than sugar, and use jack keller's recipes to keep me straight.

I have a feeling that much of the odor referred to above is yeast-related. The smell from the yeast cake was quite powerful, in a non-good kind of way. I used D-47 at about 65*F for 10 days on the fruit and also added bentonite to the primary which probably concentrated the yeast substantially more than usual. I had ~0.75 gallons of yeasty-nastiness I had to throw, much more than usual. Still 6 gallons left so not bad.

What yeasts did you folks use, how long did you have fruit contact for, and at what temps?

okay, like others have said. Pulling off strawberry mead or wine that tastes good doesn't really happen that often.

I would use a beer yeast and don't shoot for a high ABV. no more than 10 or 11%.

A beer yeast won't rape the original strawberry flavor as much as a wine yeast. Keeping the low ABV, say 10% will also help the overall good taste factor of the drink.

also, +1 on blending your strawberries. make sure you campden tablet them before fermenting.

I beg to differ. My strawberry mead is only 7 months old and was fantastic the last tasting. It's still bulk aging but is a keeper. FYI here is my 3 gallon recipe:

0.75 tsp Pectic Enzyme (Primary)
3.00 Campden Tablets (Primary)
12 lbs Strawberries, Frozen & thawed (Primary)
5 lbs Honey, Orange Blossom
4 lbs Honey, Clover
12.0 oz Bananas, Freeze Dried (secondary)
Fermaid-K, GoFerm, DAP
1 Pkgs Cote des Blancs

Started at 1.100 SG. Racked to secondary at 2 weeks (0.993). Stabilized and added more honey at the 5 month mark to sweeten a bit.

I've got a strawberry mead going right now as well. I don't have the recipe on me right now, but what i did was make the must and added to strawberries, then when they went white and nasty raked onto more strawberries and added a little more honey and water

Dude, you have to stir fruit 2-3 times a day (when in primary) to keep the top from getting "nasty" and to allow gases to escape!

Poobah58 said:

I beg to differ. My strawberry mead is only 7 months old and was fantastic the last tasting. It's still bulk aging but is a keeper. FYI here is my 3 gallon recipe:

0.75 tsp Pectic Enzyme (Primary)
3.00 Campden Tablets (Primary)
12 lbs Strawberries, Frozen & thawed (Primary)
5 lbs Honey, Orange Blossom
4 lbs Honey, Clover
12.0 oz Bananas, Freeze Dried (secondary)
Fermaid-K, GoFerm, DAP
1 Pkgs Cote des Blancs

Started at 1.100 SG. Racked to secondary at 2 weeks (0.993). Stabilized and added more honey at the 5 month mark to sweeten a bit.

Click to expand...

holy crap, 4 lbs per gallon? that's the way to go. I did 2.

Brandon O said:

holy crap, 4 lbs per gallon? that's the way to go. I did 2.

Click to expand...

You can get 6# bags at Costco for a good price.

Here is mine I did last year in December. I should really rack it off the lees and then get to bottling it after a few more months of bulk aging. It has cleared up completely, took a sample like 2 months ago was pretty good but would like more strawberry flavor. Maybe I should rack it onto some more strawberries and age for longer.

I like the addition of bananas that many people did, I think that it would add more body and tone down some of the sharp, acrid harshness I'm getting from my strawberries. Strawberries are now in season here, and we just picked a bunch. Maybe I should give it another go.

Off topic, but how do strawberries work with cider? Any good?

I was curious about diluting after aging? I plan, as I always do, to make a strawberry mead with about a 19% ABV. If I rack, age, rack, age, rack, and age. After 5 months or so of aging, would I be able to dilute the mead to a 10% ABV by just adding water without losing a lot of flavor? And before you ask, I want to make sure I bring the alcohol high enough to prevent the fruit from spoiling white it ages, because I have seen it happen a few times in the past.