My (now) wife had picked over 30 pounds of strawberries one day, and I was only able to convince her to part with any of them because I told her this mead was for our upcoming wedding! I brewed a bunch of beers and meads for the ceremony, and this one was a crowd favorite.
Midsummer’s Mead
A dry strawberry mead (melomel)
Batch Size: 3 gallons
Batch Data
- 5-6 gallon carboy – need the extra volume to handle the added strawberries
- OG 1.110
- FG 1.003
- ABV 14%
Ingredients
Fermentables
- 9 pounds Wildflower Honey Swan's Honey (Albion, Maine)
- 10 pounds Fresh Strawberries Fairwinds Farm (Bowdoinham, Maine)
Yeast
- 2 packets Lalvin D-47 Two packets is 11 grams
Other
- 3 grams Fermaid K Yeast nutrient
Instructions
- Sanitize the carboy.
- Heat 9 quarts of water to 140F, then add the honey (to dissolve) and Fermaid K.
- Clean and stem the strawberries. Crush half of them, and quarter the other half. Add them to the sanitized carboy.
- Add the honey mixture to the carboy and cool to pitching temperature (65F).
- Pitch the yeast, and ferment for two months.
- Rack the mead off the strawberries into a secondary carboy. Allow to condition/ferment another week (or until fermentation is complete).
- Rack into bottles, seal, and store for as long as you can resist.