Strawberry Shortcake Mead
Disclaimer: These recipes are for personal use only.
Mead Master’s Note
The goal of this mead: Cut strawberries dusted with sugar to pull out juices, then layered on yellow cakes and topped with whipped cream. So how do we do that? Breakdown of flavors:
Strawberry: Massive amounts of strawberries with strawberry gum powder to further enhance the aroma. The honey has strawberry notes as well.
Yellow cake: Soft Maple wood aging. It turns out soft maple wood tastes like yellow cake! It only works in secondary though.
Whipped Cream: Ash wood and lactose. I’m looking for an increased body with a background note of whipped cream.
Mead Specifications
Batch Size - 1.5 gallons
ABV - 15.7%
Starting Gravity (SG) - 1.140
Final Gravity (FG) - 1.020
Style - Sweet Melomel
Ingredients
Wildflower honey - 4 lbs
Wyeast 1388 Smack Pack
Fermaid O - 14g, 7g per dose.
Potassium carbonate - 3g
Fermaid K - 2.8g
Potassium sorbate - 1.6g
Potassium metabisulfite - 0.9g
Spice Blend
Strawberries, frozen and fully thawed - 5lbs
Strawberry gum - 1g
Honeycomb ash wood - 2.5”
Secondary Ingredients
Vanilla Bean - 1 pod
Lactose - 4oz
Honeycomb soft maple - 5”
Must Preparation
To a sanitized three-gallon bucket, add the honey, first dose of Fermaid O, potassium carbonate, and Fermaid K.
Add 3 liters of water. We highly suggest using bottled water to avoid chloramines found in tap water.
Do not use distilled water.Mix until all the honey is dissolved.
Add water until slightly shy of the 1.5-gallon mark.
Add the spices from the spice blend to the bucket.
Yeast Preparation
Remove Wyeast 1388 packet from the fridge and allow it to come to room temperature.
Burst the internal nutrient packet in the Wyeast 1388 pouch.
Tip: It helps to trap it in a corner before smacking it.
Allow the packet to expand for at least 15 minutes. It should swell to demonstrate yeast activation.
Sanitize the pouch corner you will cut.
Once the yeast and must are at similar temperatures, cut the corner off the pouch and pitch the yeast into the fermentor.
Tip: Make sure not to cut the corner so much that the internal packet can come out into your fermentor!
Note: Do not allow the yeast to sit for longer than 15 minutes.
Fermentation
Store the bucket at 72-76°F. The middle of this range is best.
48 hours after pitching the yeast, add the second dose of Fermaid O.
Take a gravity reading every 3 days with a hydrometer until the gravity reaches 1.020 (7-10 days).
Secondary
Rack off the fruit and yeast cake into a freshly sanitized carboy. I generally get around 1 gallon of mead after racking.
Add the secondary ingredient list to the carboy.
Treat for 3 weeks or until the desired flavor is reached.
Stabilizing
Cold crash in a refrigerator until clear. Cold temperatures speed clearing, but clearing will occur without it.
Rack the clear mead into a sanitized carboy.
Add the potassium sorbate and potassium metabisulfite to the carboy and mix well. Allow to sit for a minimum of 2 weeks, ideally until clear.
Note: After stabilizing, there will be a harsh note resembling fusels in the mead for a few weeks. This is caused by the stabilizer and will age out as the stabilizer completes its protective purpose.A few days after mixing, cold crash in the refrigerator to speed clearing. (Optional)
Bottle into sanitized bottles.
Tips and Tricks
Place your bucket into a larger container to contain any potential spill over from fermentation.
If your home is cold, the top back of the fridge is great for keeping the fermentation warm.
A spray bottle of diluted sanitizer is great for sanitizing surfaces, especially hands.
The first time you use a non-graduated bucket, add a gallon of water at a time and draw a line for each.
