Well I decided to take the plunge and start the persimon mead at the end of last week. Here is the recipe that I decided to use. Red Star champange yeast, 8lbs local honey with a very light flavor, 5lbs darker honey with a stronger flavor, and a starter mix from the local HBS. The persimons were crushed and washed through a collander discarding the pits, skin and any debris left in the collander. I was carefull not to crush the debris too much because there was a bit of bitterness in the skins and pits. I ended up with almost a gallon of persimon extract that looked like thick orange juice with a lot of pulp and had a nice sweet flavor. I probably wasted some fruit but didn't want to risk getting any bitterness in the mush. Persimons must have a lot of pectin in them because the extract started to jell within a half hour. Dumped the honey into the primary, poured in two gallons of boiling water, starter mix and the persimon juice. mixed and filled the rest of the way to five gallons. When cool pitched the yeast and gave it a good stir. The Starting gravity was 1.11 after everything was mixed up, I think that the pulp from the fruit might of affected the reading but at least it gives a baseline from which to work from. I'm a bit excited ;D and can't wait to taste the final results. I'll keep everybody informed on how it goes. Beeboy