Flavouring your Mead.

[Maikiro]

I know people have different times to add your fruit/berries etc. but lets say I want to add fruit to a 1 gallon jar, how much fruit do I add to get the flavour.

Also do I need to prepare the fruit in anyway?

 

[wowbagger]

As always, it depends. There are reasons to add fruit in the primary and reasons to add it to the secondary (processed by yeast differently, adds different flavors, adds the complexity of cap management, etc.). I tend to like a lot of fruit profile so I normally split fruit between the primary and secondary (then again, I also make my fruit meads sweet).

Again, it depends on what sort of fruit. I've really only worked with berries and have found that a couple pounds in a gallon works well for me.

As to preparation, again there are a number of strategies. I normally freeze my berries, thaw them, and lightly crush them.

 

[Altricious]

There's a nice chart in "The Compleat Meadmaker" regarding fruit additions. It can give you a guideline depending on the intensity you're looking for.