for each of the fruits I froze them in a ziploc bag, thawed them in the fridge, and froze them again. It made a surprising amount of juice!
As for the mutant blueberries, I live in Texas... everything bigger in Texas
got them from the grocery store!
Answered on page 1
Here's a brief overview of my technique/experiment. I have 3 approx. 1.5 liter glass apple juice bottles that I saved. I made 3 identical batches of mead and pitched WLP720 - sweet mead yeast into all 3. In the meantime I froze 16 oz. strawberries, 12 oz. blueberries, and 11.2 oz. raspberries in quart-sized Ziploc bags.
When fermentation looked like it was slowing down (about 3 weeks) I thawed the fruit in the fridge for 2 days. This created a lot of juice! I froze them again for 3 days. The day before I added them I put them back in the fridge. They didn't thaw all the way and some of the fruit was still frozen together. The freezing/thawing however made them all very soft to the touch as if they had been crushed. I've crushed fruit before and I seemed to get more of the juice out by freezing.
I heated them separately in sauce pans with about 1/4 gallon of water until they were warm to the touch (80-90 degrees). I funneled them into 1 gallon fermenters and racked the 3 meads on top of the fruit. I topped it off with water and airlocked it.
The pictures were taken on that same day. The blueberry and strawberry melomels were tan/yellow but the raspberry one was a nice shade of magenta.
Now, a couple days later, the blueberry one is bright purple, the strawberry one is a light pink or red, and the raspberry one is a deep magenta.
A strawberry got stuck overnight and popped the airlock off. I woke up this morning to 3 strawberries and an airlock lying around an open glass bottle. The blueberry also started to overflow into the airlock. I cleaned and re-sanitized and put them both back together. We'll see in the morning if I have another explosion!
I am actually surprised at how vigorous the fermentation restarted! I expected some but they are all 3 bubbling like crazy! The blueberry one is hissing like alka-seltzer!
Sorry, very long post. I'll try and post more pictures soon.