While this is not a 100% completed project, due to tasting late in fermentation I decided to start the post in anticipation.
7 gal batch:
Approximately 6 gal water
16 lbs honey (I used golden because that was the only 16lb container at the LHBS at the time)
Ammoretti wild strawberry flavoring
15lbs fresh strawberries
9oz rose hips (dried)
Wyeast sweet mead blend
Yeast nutrient
Yeast energizer
Mix together 16lbs honey with water, use as much water is needed to hit 7 gallons. Add small amounts of the strawberry extract at this time tasting in between. This is your base flavor, a lot of initial flavor will be stripped out so by using the flavoring saves some money as strawberries are expensive. At that point add yeast and let sit.
Day 1: add energizer and 1/4 of total nutrient (in the future I would be using GO Ferm and Fermaid K but that is just what I had on hand.
Day 2: 1/4 nutrient
Day 3: 1/4 nutrient
DAY 5: 1/4 nutrient
End of primary fermentation (day 21-28): rack into secondary
Now this is where things get a bit tricky, I use a 7.9 gal fastferment system with a hop cone (or whatever it’s called). Unfortunately I only can fit about 5lbs of strawberry at a time in it so I do step additions. For your recipe you can change things around to suit your system but this is how I did mine
Day 28: added 5lbs strawberries and 3oz rose hips;also added potassium metabisulfite and sorbate to keep those precious juices from fermenting.
Day 42: removed strawberry’s, cleaned and sanitized the hop cone, added 5lbs strawberry, 3oz rose hip, and more sulphite
Day 56: same as day 42 except I also added two light toasted oak sticks.
This is where my initial taste test came in and oh boy was it good, not too sweet not too dry, a little tart but in a good way. Posted is a pic from that day of sampling.
Day 70: removed strawberries, cleaned and sanitized hop cone and put the oak back in.
Will be removing those on day 100, using a clarifying agent to speed things up and will hopefully be bottling on day 120.
Now the big questions are my SG points.
At this time I can’t quite remember my OG, but based off of a few calculations I believe it was in the ballpark of 1.095 give or take and my FG was .998. After the slight waterdown it gets from the strawberry juice it’s currently at about 9%.
