strawberry mead issue

[Oskaar]

Hey there,

From my point of view it's simply that you don't need to keep racking so much after the primary from a practical standpoint.

Once you've made your adjustments in the primary and racked to secondary I think it's a good idea to observe and rack when it makes sense, and not on a timetable. When you rack a lot you, risk contamination, risk oxidation, lose a small amount of mead, have to clean everything up, and generally invest some time that may be better spend observing and annotating your mead's progress. Why upset the stuff so often?

Cheers,

Oskaar

 

[irishoneme]

Hi there,
I just went through a bit of the same thing with my strawberry,raspberry,blackberry batch. We used the EC as well and had a violent fermentation. Although we didn't blow the lid, we did notice that we had alot more product when we removed the fruit (water from the berries I suppose). We noticed alot of bottom fermentation after a couple of weeks and were afraid of rocket fuel, so we racked again and that took care of the yeast.

 

[Steve523]

I have to post in here again to let y'all know how my Strawberry turned out.

Absolutely wonderful. I did not take a gravity reading and so I can't say exactly where it is at, but it is very strong. I, of course, expect it to mellow with more aging. It has a beautiful red color that stayed with it the whole time and still hasn't faded. There is an aftertaste that makes me feel like I just took a deep breath of a rack of almost overripe strawberries.

I continued to age it in the carboy until December before bottling it. It was tough to keep my hands off of it, it was so beautiful. I handed it out to co-workers and family for X-mas. It was very well received. So well that I think I am going to do another batch and see if I can make it better. I need to wait until strawberry season to get fresh ripe strawberries. I credit the quality of the strawberries I used for my results. I got them from a farm local to my area (San Diego).

My critique however:
Racking - I did rack too many times. I am happy with my initial racking after two weeks as the recipe called for, but I now believe that my follow up racking was unnecessary. I should have just waited until after it had flocculated completely before the second racking. As it was I had to rack a third time. Live and learn. Thanks for the input!

Rocket fuel - I used too much honey and I will try adjusting for that next batch. I am learning with experience that more is not always better.

Yeast - I used WL Sweet Mead Yeast. It's a wonderful yeast, but I am really enjoying the results I am getting with the Belgian strains in some of my other meads. I think I will use one of them this year for my next batch.

 

[CosmicCharlie]

I've made strawberry a couple of times - so I'll throw out a few comments. I used to add fruit to the secondary, but now I'm experimenting with adding it to the primary. When I do (I usually make 1 gallon batches) I let it ferment in a 3 gallon carboy. So the original proportion of 3 lbs honey with 2 lbs strawberry should work fine - I usually use at least as much of each ingredient. The problem seems to be adding enough water to fill the 1 gal carboy. It can taste like rocket fuel at first, but aging mellows the harsh flavors. I have just started experimenting with oak chips, and that should also help it mellow out.

Best of luck,

CC