Strawberry Mead

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commonsenseman

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Made this today. 1 gallon of water, 2.5lbs of honey, I'll add some strawberry extract at bottling time. Pitched Pasteur Champagne. OG: 1.088

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Hopefully it'll work out well, it's been 5 hours & there's some activity.

I'll post more pics as it progresses.
 
Are you making the extract and if so how did you do it? Or did you purchase, and if so, where and what is it called (brand)?

I've been patiently waiting for strawberry season to give this a try.

Bill W
 
I bought the Brewers Best strawberry extract from Northern Brewer. I'd like to use fresh strawberries in the future, but I need to get my mead-making down first.
 
Are you making the extract and if so how did you do it? Or did you purchase, and if so, where and what is it called (brand)?

I've been patiently waiting for strawberry season to give this a try.

Bill W

You could always give frozen strawberries a try. I would say they are more fresh than what you will buy in the store and about as fresh as you will get when picking them from a field. Most produce has a very short travel time from being picked to frozen now. Just a suggestion :)

I made a dry strawberry and like it. To each their own :)
 
You could always give frozen strawberries a try. I would say they are more fresh than what you will buy in the store and about as fresh as you will get when picking them from a field. Most produce has a very short travel time from being picked to frozen now. Just a suggestion :)

I made a dry strawberry and like it. To each their own :)

Sounds like a good way to go, I'll give that a try next time around :mug:
 
looking pretty good.What size stopper are you using? I'm about to purchase some for a few gallon jugs. I've heard #6 work well.
 
Took a gravity reading today & it was down to 1.010, so I added 1lb of frozen strawberries. I decided to stay away from the strawberry extract for now & use the real stuff.

I tasted it, not.....too.....good.....:rolleyes:

Oh well, I've got nothing but time!

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Well I can say that your first problem is that you tasted it in under a week! Mead will not be good to drink that fast.

I would say that the second thing to consider is that you didn't add enough honey. I like to use 3lbs/gallon. I am sure some would say otherwise, but that's what I do. I also think that 1lb of strawberries will not be enough. I must have used double that in my strawberry mead done last year.
 
Well I can say that your first problem is that you tasted it in under a week! Mead will not be good to drink that fast.

I would say that the second thing to consider is that you didn't add enough honey. I like to use 3lbs/gallon. I am sure some would say otherwise, but that's what I do. I also think that 1lb of strawberries will not be enough. I must have used double that in my strawberry mead done last year.

Well I'm not too concerned about the taste since I know it's way too soon to pass judgement.

Unless I'm mistaken, couldn't I still add more honey anytime?
 
Looks like your procedure is similar to my melomels that have actual fruit or puree...get the bulk of primary done, then add the fruit directly to the primary. After a few weeks rack off the fruit and let it ride until bottling. I did this using canned cherry "puree" (actually more fruit in their natural juice), and it came out awesome...I've been thinking about repeating with the strawberry puree.
 
You could easily add another 1/2 lb honey as well as the strawberries if you'd want.

I'll give it a taste before racking to see if it needs a little extra of anything :D

looks good. this is next on my list. what kind of honey did you use?

For this recipe I used Wildflower honey from my LHBS. I made another gallon of Raspberry with Clover honey yesterday.

Looks like your procedure is similar to my melomels that have actual fruit or puree...get the bulk of primary done, then add the fruit directly to the primary. After a few weeks rack off the fruit and let it ride until bottling. I did this using canned cherry "puree" (actually more fruit in their natural juice), and it came out awesome...I've been thinking about repeating with the strawberry puree.

Good to know! :mug:
 
Crap, I'm impatient which is not a good thing to be when making mead.

I just checked the gravity, degassed & added the 3rd dose of nutrient to the Raspberry batch. 1.094 down from 1.108

Dunno what the gravity is on the Strawberry batch, I'm going to wait until I rack it to check. I'm suspicious it's quite low.
 
Racked to secondary tonight, the strawberries looked like they had given everything they could already.

Here's the two batches, guess which one already had fruit in it. I love that color by the way!

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sweet thread! I just started my first batch of mead 9 days ago. About ready to transfer to secondary and add fruit. Thanks for the pictures - it helps A LOT.
 
Thanks! Anything I can do to help, especially since I really have no idea what I'm doing.

Here's an updated picture. The Raspberry is just about ready for some fruit, while the Strawberry is starting to clear up.

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Here's the batch of Hard Cider I started a few days ago. Total experiment, I have no idea if it'll turn out at all.

Pictures942.jpg


I'll post the "recipe" if it turns out to be halfway decent.
 
Just racked my second Melomel onto 2 lbs of Raspberries tonight, the gravity reading was 1.040 before I added the raspberries.

It's tough to see in the picture, but the raspberry one is already much darker than the strawberry one.

Pictures946.jpg
 
Figured I should give this an update. Both the Strawberry & the Raspberry have been bottled. The Strawberry was clear & tasted quite good, so I figured I might as well. Been enjoying the heck out of it & everytime I open a bottle, it's better. The Raspberry was just bottled last night. It had been aged on oak for about 6 weeks, was perfectly clear, & tasted great.

As for the hard cider, well they say good ingredients in-good product out. That's so true. Next time I'll use real, cloudy cider. It is improving as time goes by, but it's still virtually tasteless.
 
Snapped a couple pics to show how it turned out. They don't really do it justice, but it's a brilliant gold color & perfectly clear.

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Also, dunno why it looks like there's carbonation, but there isn't any to speak of.
 
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