Strawberry MEad

Juiced 10 pounds of strawberrys and put juice and pulp in 5 gallon nylon paint strainer with cup of rasins. Warmed up 12 pounds of fresh honey I got from Hummer and Son's bee keepers farm. Filled up to 6 gallons spring water. Added Mead Yeast Sweet Smack Pack and tablespoon yeast energizer. Adding oak and 2 vanilla beans when it hits the secondary. Anything I left out?

Yeah, my plane ticket in a few months to stop by and give a "taste test" for ya. Sounds like you have a solid game plan in place. Looking forward to seeing how this turns out. Subscribed!

I just started a similar mead. It will be interesting to see how they come out.

Pics in 2 months then! Be interesting to see the difference. Of course I'm having some concerns, no activity yet.

Just watch your yeast, the Wyeast sweet mead smack packs are notoriously finicky and like to finish real sweet (like 1.05+ sweet) or just cut out early for no real apparent reason, esp if you slapped, swelled and pitched it and didn't go the starter route. think about step feeding some nutrients, degassing and aerating frequently during the first third of fermentation, it will help prevent later stress.

OH and make sure you have a fairly good size blow off tube or even just cover to opening of your fermenter with a clean peice of damp cloth or similar for a day or so and set your fermenter in something that can catch spills, fruit in the primary like that and for some reason especially strawberries can give you A LOT of initial foam up like if you use a standard airlock there is potential for the geyser effect as in airlock impaled into the ceiling and strawberry honey smoothies decorating the ceiling and walls. It might not happen that strongly but is it worth the risk of having to repaint if it does?

I shoved a plastic tube down the airlock grommit on the bucket - fit tight. Put other end in jug of starsan. Watching it bubble now.

Any opinions on when to move the must off the strawberries?

I wouldn't until your fairly sure your primary ferment is done, then rack into secondary. Did you take a hydrometer reading? if not or don't have one I'd look into it, one of the best $8 investments a mead maker can make as far as equipment goes (or $16 cuz I got two this time in case my daughter tries to see if one bounces on the ceramic tile floor again)

My 5 year old likes to put the caps on the bottles while I fill them. He also likes the smell of wort cooking. Of course my wife turned green when he informed his teacher and class that he made beer and had to hurry and go home to count the bubbles.


I didn't take a reading at the start. I guess somewhere around 1.000 it's ready to be racked then?

Couple of pics..

have to say I'm liking the color. Pics aren't doing it justice.



and a close up..

It does look pretty, hope it tastes as good

Wow, tastes as good as it looks. Light strawberry flavor and aboslutely NO harshness!