12.5-14 pounds of honey
4 gallons of water or enough to make 5 gallons
2 tsp. yeast energizer
2 tsp. of yeast nutrient
and yeast starter
According to the recipe I should have a starting gravity of around 1.094-1.112. With the mead finishing around 1.010. I am confused as to what point I should transferr the base mead to my gallon jugs with the fruit. So if anyone could point me in the direction of a gravity reading or time frame, it would help. Also feel free to offer suggestions as to what fruit would make a good melomel to try out. Due to the season I will have to depend on frozen fruits from my local grocery. Just wanting to get a idea of what melomels I would like to persue larger batches of in the future. If I am going about this in the wrong way feel free to let me know that also would rather do this right the first time.
You haven't got a hope in hell of the ferment finishing at the 1010 level on it's own.
Most wine yeasts will ferment that dry without even blinking.
Yes, I'd guess that you would have a starting gravity of that sort of area but it might still be either side, and would probably depend on the % of water in the honey (there's a way of working that out, but whether it's practical for the home brewer, I don't know). I'm guessing that you'd have to mix the batch with the lower amount of honey and then test it, adding more honey if the numbers didn't come up to that range.
Then run the ferment to completion, sulphite/sorbate to stabilise, then back sweeten to 1010 (if you haven't already cleared it, I'd use honey to back sweeten). Then rack it onto the fruit, adding some pectic enzyme, which not only helps with pectin but also colour/flavour extraction.
You could equally, run the ferment until it gets to about 1010 and then rack it onto the fruit - again with pectic enzyme - then some of the fruit sugars would also be fermented - you'd probably still need to back sweeten it to the 1010 number though.
Depending on yeast selection and fermentation management, 1094 would (presuming that you take dry/finished as 1000) give about 12.77% ABV, whereas 1112 would (1000 being dry/finished) give 15.21% ABV. So allowing for those numbers and appropriate fermentation management, you might have some residual sugar if used a yeast like 71B, D47 etc etc but how much would depend on the end reading and how eager the yeast was to much through the sugars. Though I'd probably be thinking along the lines of D21 (Maury yeast - and reputed favourite of the late Brother Adam of Buckfast Abbey Bee breeding/mead making fame) or K1V-1116 (which is considered by many, to be the "swiss army knife" of yeasts).
The reason for not putting fruit into primary are that a lot of the flavours/aromas are just blown out the airlock during the early fermentation stage and the inclusion of the fruit into either secondary or tertiary (i.e. after the ferment has finished) is because you often get a mead that is ready for drinking earlier and requires less ageing.
So it's really up to you how you do this or what kind of styles/flavours you want......
If there's any recommendations in Kens book then it'd be fine to use those as a guide - he does know his stuff, or just read around the various forums to get an idea of what you might want to do/follow etc and work/ask questions from there......
dunno if that lot helps any
regards
fatbloke