Strawberry Melomel

[Dend78]

in primary

1gal honey (clover and wild flower)
12lbs straberries
yeast nutrient
yeast energizer
pectic enzyme
wyeast sweet mead yeast
4oz american medium toast oak chips
sg before pitching yeast 1.080

3 cans welche's strawberry breeze added in

secondary

12lbs strawberries to be added for additional sweetness and awesome strawberry flavor and honey if necessary at all to backsweeten

 

[Deezil]

How many pounds does a gallon of honey weigh?

How big is the batch? 3 gallons?

 

[Dend78]

12lbs roughly of honey, no its gonna be about 5-5.5gal when finished. i know 12lbs of berries to start isnt a lot which is why i plan to steep it into secondary. i did a check this morning i am sitting around 1.083ish with no noticeable activity from the yeast, just stirred and pressed the bag, I will probably kick in some welche's strawberry breeze to add to the total sugar so the yeast can do its thing and leave residual sugars

 

[Downwards]

How far will sweet mead yeast go? This sounds like it will be tasty!

 

[thehoss77]

4148 goes to 11%

 

[Dend78]

yup thanks hoss! I went with the dry the first time around and wished i had went with the sweet now ive got the sweet

 

[fatbloke]

yup thanks hoss! I went with the dry the first time around and wished i had went with the sweet now ive got the sweet

What you've got is a finicky as hell, PITA yeast.

I'd already read that but figured it should work with some nurturing.....

Nope. 3 different attempts with it, 3 failures. 2 stuck above 1.050 and 1 didn't start at all. Correct nutrients for 11 to 12%, pH fine all about 3.8 pH etc etc.

So bollocks to it....... maybe 1 duff pack but not all 3.

It's put me off bothering with liquid yeasts period. I've only had 1 problem with dry yeast and I know that was my fault, so all those beer makers who rave about liquid yeasts can stick them up their collective backside.

Not familiar with the welches strawberry breeze stuff either as there's only a limited range of their products available here......

 

[Dend78]

hmm well im off to the races with mine i opened it this morning to the nice sound of fizzing/bubbling and its near the top of the bucket i expect it to start pushing out tonight or tomorrow. I love strawberry lol

 

[fatbloke]

hmm well im off to the races with mine i opened it this morning to the nice sound of fizzing/bubbling and its near the top of the bucket i expect it to start pushing out tonight or tomorrow. I love strawberry lol

Don't we all?

Just that we don't realise how light the taste is in the fruit until we try fermenting the buggers.........

A straight strawberry wine recipe would need a lot of fruit in the gallon to retain even a light strawb flavour and not just a generic fruit sort of flavour. Which is why your secondary idea is good.

Well done in getting the yeast going, with any luck it'll finish.

Give it some air daily unitl it hits the 1/3rd sugar break and then another half teaspoon of energiser and it should work fine......

Oh and at least 2 more teaspoons of pectic enzyme once the secondary fruit additions go in.........

 

[Dend78]

for sure will do!

checked sg last night 1.070 and its rolling strong if it crashes now i will be amazed its churning like an ec-1118 hahah foam is pressing on the lid im guessing today/tonight she will start pushing out

 

[fatbloke]

for sure will do!

checked sg last night 1.070 and its rolling strong if it crashes now i will be amazed its churning like an ec-1118 hahah foam is pressing on the lid im guessing today/tonight she will start pushing out

Lucky old you eh ! I wouldn't touch the stuff with a barge pole now, so if it's doing it's thing, then that's brilliant.

Foam ? You should be aerating it at least once a day for yeast health/development down to the 1/3rd sugar break, and the side effect of degassing helps with the problem of the bloody stuff foaming out the airlock or causing a bit of an eruption.

Not so much to do with the mess eruptions make, but more about it being a waste of good mead........

 

[Dend78]

yeah as soon as i start the stir she foams up like a beast and after a check tonight shes down to 1.050

edit:

and a good stir this morning shows 1.040 shes really clipping along nicely

 

[Dend78]

chugging right along i transferred it to secondary at 1.012ish its a nice pink color right now, i will get pics up and i plan to kick in strawberry's in the next couple of days

 

[fatbloke]

chugging right along i transferred it to secondary at 1.012ish its a nice pink color right now, i will get pics up and i plan to kick in strawberry's in the next couple of days

Pectic enzyme may also help with retaining some colour. A lot of strawberry wines end up with a golden, sort of straw colour to them, even if they do retain the taste and aroma from the fruit.

Either way, sounds like it's working out well for you. Brilliant....

 

[Dend78]

yeah, i racked the strawberry we are using for the WMT competition last night it is crazy how straw colored it is, once you get a lot of it in the carboy it starts to shine red again its very strange.

 

[fatbloke]

yeah, i racked the strawberry we are using for the WMT competition last night it is crazy how straw colored it is, once you get a lot of it in the carboy it starts to shine red again its very strange.

Not so much strange, more of a good demonstration on how easy it is to fool our eyes with colour.

Personally I try to keep as much colour as I can and usually get the fruit into both primary and secondary. There's a number of enzymes kicking around to help with colour retention, of course they'll be mainly for grapes but should also help with less colour dense fruit too.....

 

[Dend78]

just as an update, gave this a taste the other day, color is pretty good but flavor is lacking (as expected) i tossed in a couple pounds of berries a little over a week ago maybe 10 days, and I am about ready to rack again and repeat.

 

[Dend78]

racked this the other day off the ghost white strawberries, im going to steam a bunch more strawberries and add to the mead for flavor. its starting to come around but still young to taste.

 

[Dend78]

after racking i left space for almost 1gal, i dropped in some strawberry juice and honey i will let this sit and clear again and give it a test and taste to see where i am at, im thinking of oaking this batch, any thoughts on what i should use?

 

[fatbloke]

Nope not a clue as I make my own oak "staves" or sticks.....

Hit the garden centre when its warmish so some of the half oak barrels
have fallen apart and are destined for the rubbish or offer then a quid or two for a scruffy rusty looking one......

Break it apart, dump or burn the barrel head and recycle the hoops.

Then each stave is planed down to clean yellowy or golden coloured wood (tip is that if you can get the wood from an old wine barrel its less planing - old spirits barrels will need more planing as the char or burn from the inner surface is considerably thicker).

Then the clean wood is sawn into 6 inch lengths, then split into small staves/sticks with a chisel and hammer or a splitting axe. Each individual stick should be the 6 inches long and about 5 to no more than 10mm square at the end.

Toast them on a baking tray in the lowest temp you can manage in the oven. Until they're about as dark as a HB grade pencil lead (a bit darker won't hurt).

Bingo. Cheap oak staves.

I add between 2 and 4 per gallon, then leave it in for a month before tasting. Its easy to add more but hard to remove too much so caution is advised.......