Strawberry Melomel Eruptions

You know how this one is going to end already

Ingredients list:
18lbs clover honey
18lbs semi-frozen strawberries
1t Irish Moss
1T Gypsum
2T Yeast Nutrient (Brewcraft brand)
4632 Wyeast - Dry Mead Yeast
Tap water to the 5 gallon mark

Procedure:
1. Break open the Wyeast smack pack and let it sit at room temp (70F) for a couple hours.
2. Combine all ingredients except fruit and water; bring the honey/nutrient mixture to a full rolling boil for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Temperature reading after 5 minutes boiling was around 220 degrees fahrenheit.
3. Remove from heat and let cool for awhile. Our guide here was whether or not we figured the mixture would harm the primary fermenter when poured in...
4. Once sufficiently cool, pour must over semi frozen strawberry mixture into the 6 gallon primary fermenter.
5. Cool to pitching temp. Pitching temp was around 75 degrees fahrenheit. Can you tell we were impatient?
6. The OG was 1.130, and from that we came up with a 17% potential alcohol.
7. We pitched the yeast, stirred like crazy, and proceeded to ignore it.


This is where the fun begins. This batch was made in July I believe (don't have records in front of me...), and of course, what happens the day we pitch? We begin a heat wave, of course! Outdoor temperatures were getting into the mid 90's some days; indoor temperatures, including the meadery, mid 80's.

Day 1: No activity.
Day 2: Fermentation begins.
Day 3: BOOM! There is a combination of strawberries and honey covering every surface within four feet of the primary buckets. Yes, there were two. The first one went off on its own; my roommate discovered it and I got the strangest text message: "dude something blew up in here". Between the heat and the undersized primary and the chunks of strawberry in the mix, we had ourselves a rather dangerous combination. Some chunks of strawberry rose to the top of the bucket on top of the krausen, and some of the material plugged up the airlock. Pressure built. And built. And built. Thankfully the airlock seal was the weakest link, and not a seam on the bucket or something. When he found the first one, my roommate informed me that the second bucket was bulging and looked like it was about to explode as well. I told him to do the only sane thing: relieve the pressure yo! So he sets down his phone... I hear a *THUMP*, and then nothing but laughter for about 20 seconds. He comes back on the line... "Dude! That s*** hit the ceiling! Oh my ... " etc etc etc. ;D

This story wouldn't be complete without an illustration...

If the image doesn't show inline, here's a link... http://cid-fcc2e13084bdcfcb.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/strawberrymess.jpg

So, as you can imagine, we started paying *a lot* more attention to temperature and primary fermenter size after this little incident. We also replaced the carpet with linoleum... While we haven't actually put in a floor drain yet, it's definitely on our wish list!

Fast forward to yesterday evening, 03/28/10. We took a few readings: PH 3.3, Temp 71 degrees, SG .998. Taste is sharp, with some strawberry nose. Flavor-wise I think it's the near the worst mead we've ever made. It went completely dry, while being fermented for a week around 85 degrees fahrenheit. After the first week we went out and bought the AC unit that now protects us from repeating that mistake at least... It's also when we invested in a couple 8 gallon primary fermenters.

So, what to do? We racked it for the second time yesterday, removing a fine layer of lees that were not yeast-colored; appeared to be fruit sediments still coming out of suspension. Once we determined that both batches showed near identical readings, we used one to top up the other in a 5 gallon carboy, then put the rest in a 3 gallon carboy. The head space on both we flooded with CO2. All this to say, it's ready to sit around and age for as long as necessary. So, considering the conditions during fermentation, how long are we looking at? Anything we can do to help with the flavor? We're definitely planning to backsweeten at some point; are we correct in that we should wait longer bulk-aging first? The abv on this stuff is 17%+!

Thanks in advance for any thoughts or suggestions.

-SIRES

Heh, I was laughing too, until I got home that evening and had to tear out the carpet... ;D

More strawberries sounds like a good idea to me, assuming the ones already in there aren't gonna start popping out anytime in the next couple years... I don't think I want to age much of anything more than two years, as we have historically been terrible at actually allowing things to age. If they're tasty, it's bottoms up!

We're definitely going to need to back-sweeten, as the taste now just isn't pleasant. I'm thinking that the back-sweetening ought to be done after any new fruit additions, correct?

Akueck: Was using them for spare parts, thankfully nothing terribly important in the room was ruined, just the room.

I uploaded three more shots of the damage just so yall can see what you should NEVER EVER EVER do... learn from our mistakes on this one, trust me! Honey doesn't come out of porous materials very easily. Add strawberries to it and you have something that looks like it's straight out of a cheap slasher flick, and it's NOT coming out. I felt a little like one of those disposal guys, cutting up and carrying out a rug covered in big sloppy red stains... :glasses7:

The good thing that came out of it: when we fixed up the room, it became a semi-fulltime (brew/wine/mead)ery. I'll have to post some pics sometime...

7/24 - added 2lb 3oz to add 10 points of gravity to 7 gallons of mead. Dosed it with 1/4 tsp of potassium metabisulfite in the form of powdered campden tablets. 8lbs strawberries are thawing right now, and will be added to it along with sorbate in the corny kegs. Since there's 7 gallons the batch is split semi-evenly between the 2 kegs. We'll roll the kegs around multiple times daily to keep the strawberries sanitary and we've flushed the headspace with co2.

We've been aging it in bulk, waiting for strawberries to become available around here, and then ended up waiting a little longer so I could recondition a couple of "new" corny kegs to use for adding fruit in secondary. We pressure tested the kegs yesterday then shortly thereafter split the batch between the two.

Good call on the bag, we've got some so we'll probably give them a try since this'll be our first fruit in secondary experience. I'm expecting to leave it on the fruit for about a month, at which point we'll move it to carboys for clearing again. Hopefully at that point the flavor is a little more pleasant.

Right now it has been sulphited, but not sorbated. Will add the sorbate when we add the strawberries.

edit: hydrometer prior to honey addition: 1.000. PH 3.7.

The flavor now is still quite alcohol-hot; the nose is huge strawberry. If it tasted how it smelled we'd be working on our best batch yet ;D If the additional honey and berries doesn't fix this, we've got oak and vanilla to throw at it as well; anything to tone down the alcoholic kick to a less dominant level. All of this is just more arguement for proper fermentation management to a predetermined alcohol level followed by sulphites, sorbates and back sweetening. Many a lesson learned the hard way on these batches.

7/27 - Added the strawberries to the corny kegs. Bagged the fruit in a mesh bag. We added 1/8 tsp of potassium sorbate to each keg. We're keeping them at 5psi to make it safer to roll them about. We'll be rolling them at least once per day for one month, when we currently plan to remove the fruit.
The packaging for the sorbate said 3/4 tsp per gallon! Is that even close to a correct dosage?

We bottled this mead a few days ago. The nose is all strawberries. The flavor is huge strawberries, followed by an alcohol kick that's not unpleasant. Much thanks for the advice, we managed to turn this stuff into something great!