Pewter_of_Deodar said:
Vicky,
You might want to put the fruit into a second fermentation to help retain more of the flavor in the final product. I am doing this with my Blueberry Wine where the first ferment is reaching about 1.020 right now and I am ready to add the fruit and additional honey so the yeast can ferment to completion with some residual sugar. I hope that the end result will be more blueberry flavor than if I had added it first.
I've always (since the first time not doing it) put the fruit into the secondary. The bummer thing is, some fruits just don't give a lot of flavor for the same amount as others. The blueberry worked great, and I got a mead that was one of my best ever. With the plum I was going for a sort of plum wine type flavor, and it finished out a lot dryer and a lot less 'plummy' than I wanted. Adding back honey is no worries, but I'm going to have to run it 'round again with another can of plum to get the flavor I'm looking for. Too bad I can't get Japanese plums!
Strawberry is another that you lose much of the character, even in a mild yeast ferment. I tend to use about triple the strawberries to what I use in an equivalent blueberry mel. I *have* found that freezing strawberries helps, but they are pretty fragile.
On a side note, they don't last long in aging (or at least mine didn't). My strawberry mel was pretty good at about a year. I opened the last bottle about a week ago, it was (I think) 5 years old. Not good. Of course, I've since moved from corks to capping, because I just can't seem to find corks that don't oxidize too much. And I'm also bottling in champagne bottles with the plastic champagne stoppers (corks?), since a meadery gave me 12 cases of bottles he couldn't use.
I'm *really* wanting to make a strawberry-rhubarb mead. My gramma used to make awesome strawberry-rhubarb pies, always my favorites along with her cherry pie. So I'm thinking I'll do a sweet strawberry, and a semi-sweet rhubarb and then blend them. I have a hard time finding the rhubarb tho, here in the south it doesn't grow well, and folks don't really use it as much as they did back in MI, where I grew up.
Think I'll do up a batch of Joes Ancient Orange too. I owe a buddy a batch of mead, and I think he'll like that one.......and it would be ready for our week-long performance in Manteo this spring, around May, if I get it started now.
Vicky