Blueberry Mead Question

Hello all, long time lurker, first time poster.

My question is, I recently made a pretty standard mead recipe, 12 pounds local honey dissolved in 5 gallons water. After cooling and racking to 6 gallon carboy I pitched the yeast and topped the fermenter with 3# of frozen then thawed blueberries which I ran through the food processor until I had a thick paste or sludge.

The sludge has now formed a think layer on top of the fermentation. I have a very strong fermentation, but I am worried about the berry sludge layer on top rotting during fermentation.

I plan on racking the mead away from the fruit after one week in primary. Could any of the more knowledgeable posters around here let me know what they think? Thanks in advance.

Nathan

Thanks for the info Wrathwilde. To answer some of your questions, I used EC-1114, and I was actually looking for a dry mead. I plan on bottle carbonating in champagne bottles, and if things go my way, I will have a dry sparkling mead around 12-14% abv, with a nice reddish color and just a hint of actual blueberry flavor. I can already taste it in my mind.

I will most likely rack to secondary this upcoming weekend, but it is good to know that my berries wont go bad in the meantime.

Thanks

um ya, ec-1118, thats it. That is what I get for not looking at my brew notes before I try to guess what type of yeast I used.

For all of you that care, this mead has now had a very strong fermentation for going on 3 days, but is just now showing signs of letting up. It seems that equal parts of the fruit have sunk to the bottom while the rest remains on top.

Thanks for the advise and I will let y'all know how this turns out.

Nate