Super basic question

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Morgan

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I saw on a couple mead forums that the mead makers add all their fruit and ferment/age in a carboy until the fruit drops to the bottom, at which point it's time to rack. Is this necessary? Could one just ferment like a regular fruit wine with the fruit in a bag in a regular ol' plastic fermenter then rack to carboy for secondary, or is there some mead magic that happens with leaving the fruit in longer? I'm just thinking about minimizing the mess/labor. Thanks
 
Thanks! I've only tasted mead once at a winery/brewery/meadery up in the Sierras but I thought I could do better. I love honey and have been pleased with making wine so thought I might try my hand at mead. Quality of the honey makes a big difference, yes, ergo I should get it from the Beekeeper at the farmers market instead of Wal Mart??
 
Yes, use the best honey you can find and afford. Your meads will be better for it.

When making meads with other fruits you need to balance the flavors of honey with the particular fruit you have. So depending in how much fruit flavor you are going for use a more or less flavorful honey.

I would think the cheaper honey would be better suited for a fruit honey mead. Not a stand alone mead.
 
Adding fruit to the primary has a slightly different effect than adding it to secondary/bulk aging..

When you add the fruit to the primary, its exposed to the fermentation process which has a habit of altering the flavors from the fruit, so sometimes its not as recognizable - some yeast make it kind of jammy, some will change the acidity up a bit, some bring the aroma compounds out of the fruit

Adding fruit the secondary, evades the vigorous part of the fermentation, which helps to leave the original flavor of the fruit more "intact" & skip those yeast-contributed characteristics except where they interacted with the honey, as they would either way
 
There's a big difference between the fermented flavour of fruit i.e. fruit in primary and when you just "steep extract" the flavour and colour in secondary.

The later is, IMO, less disappointing, as the thing we tend to enjoy about the fruit is the original taste of it. Notwithstanding, some fruit benefits from heat processing first - usually dark fruit like blueberry and black currant etc. Don't heat white/green fruit as you end up with a cooked taste (think apple).

Either way you will need pectic enzyme.
 

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