Heloooo all I am back again with another mead. Summer is here and the fruit is ripe! Strawberries have recently plummeted in price so I decided to pick some up. 5lbs to be exact. This is another mead that is somewhat in real time as it has been in secondary less than a week. Lets start off with what you need.
Ingredients
- 5Lbs of Strawberries not frozen
- 1 gallon of quality water
- 5lbs of Clover Honey
Nutrients
- Pectic Enzyme
- Yeast Nutrient
- Yeast energizer
Yeast
First thing I did [that is not pictured] was take the strawberries and cut the tops off of them. I then put them in ziploc bags and smushed them up until they turned into a strawberry puree almost. I can hear what your brain is about to ask. "Why go through all the work of smushing them up? Why not just blend them?" The answer,like this mead, is simple. The seeds would impact unwanted flavors to the mead. After they were all squished up I put them in the freezer to let it freeze.[Freezing fruit helps the cell walls break down and the yeast can better extract color and flavor]
The next day I got my 2 gallon bucket and in it went the strawberries, summer berry honey,water and nutrients. I took a gravity reading. I think it was off due to the strawberry particles.
Once I got everything mixed in I whipped it up with a stick blender, [carefully so I wouldn't break the seeds] and got it nice and oxygenated, then I pitched my yeast. After a lag phase of almost a day, the yeast then took off!
These were once strawberries. This was like day 3 of it being in the bucket.
Because the strawberry messed spread out like that, daily I had to break up the floating mass (aka a Cap in brewing circles) to keep the yeast from being unhappy/dead.
After about a week, she started to slow down so I decided to rack it as I did not want fermentation to be done all the way.
You can see here how high it foamed up compared to where the actual liquid is. This is why I brew my melomels in a bucket. Pleeeenty of head space.
I took another gravity at this stage. You can see here it is bone dry. I want you also to take noticed of the color. Noticed how it is a pale unattractive color?
My astute readers will notice I said I bought 5lbs of strawberries and I only put 4lbs in the bucket. The extra pound is for secondary.
As you can see here, fresh strawberries will turn it from a pale, sickly color into a fantastic red.
In the closeup you can see how the strawberries are barely even red anymore. All that color, and flavor will be going to the brew.
And this is now where she sits. I must also clarify the photos of the carboys only show .5lbs of strawberries as there are two carboys.
I plan to rack it soon at the time of this posting it has been in secondary for about a week. I might do a racking day post as I will have to rack
The Midnight Cherry soon as well.
