Making Strawberry Mead with a 16-Month Tasting

[Applause] in this video as a follow-up to our popular strawberry wine video we're going to make a strawberry mead hi i'm charles and welcome to diy fermentation your site for doing fermentation issues during budget okay to make our strawberry need we will be using the following ingredients anywhere between three to five pounds of strawberries fresh frozen or whatever i'm gonna actually be using four pounds for this recipe we're going to use three pounds of honey i'm going to be using red star premier classic wine yeast if you don't have it use whatever you got i'm going to be using straining bags this time we're going to be using enough water to get to bring our level up to at least one gallon we need something to do primary fermentation in in which case i needed something that's going to have a wide mouth opening so i can put in those straining bags we're going to need something to do secondary fermentation in jug jar demijohn carboy take your pick we need an airlock with stopper for that we are going to be using a hydrometer to let us know what our initial gravity reading is going to be and at the end what our final gravity reading ended up being so we can determine how much alcohol is going to be our wine and before we do anything we're going to start to make sure that everything has been sanitized which in my case i'm going to be using star sands you can use whatever sanitation method you choose but it helps to have a very clean environment before you start making your meat now i'm using fresh strawberries or rather they were fresh before i decided to give them a good rinse and then put them in the freezer until i was ready to use what i neglected to do was that i should have removed the foliage on top of the strawberries so i'm going to go ahead and do that now and we'll go ahead and move on from there yeah let's put those over here all right with that being done we're going to go ahead and give these one more good rinse before we put them in the streaming bags now one good thing about using fresh fruit or frozen fruit or fresh food and then freezing the food is that when you thaw them out the fruit itself in this case the strawberries are now nice and soft they're not firm like they would be if they were just something fresh fruit which is great because if they were just fresh alone we would probably have to chop these berries up before we put them in the put them in the fermenter instead all i'm going to do is that i'm going to get them in streaming bag hole straining bags hole and i'm just going to give them a quick mash with a potato masher let's see i've got three bags so that should be enough go ahead and give them quick tie get fingers out the way that aren't being used and yeah i could just drop them in the in the fermenter call it a day but i want to break down this structure just a little bit more by giving just a quick little mesh and then without making a mess get them in our fermenter and repeat the process till we get all the berries in [Music] now taking the opportunity to warm up our three pounds of honey so they'll flow more easily out of the bottles and i've also warmed up 10 cups of water which was what we're going to need to give us our full gallon not including what we've got in terms of strawberry juice now what i want to do now is to go ahead and mix the honey and water together yeah i could have done it in the fermenter first and then put in the strawberries but it really doesn't matter either way [Music] one of our subscribers showed me a trick of actually using a straw inserting a straw down to the side to give the mixture air so that it can flow more easily through the funnel unfortunately i don't have any straws in the one well i've got straws but they're real big and they're real thick and they're silicone and what i really needed was just a regular plastic straw but it's trying to get away from plastic straws and i'm going to rinse what remains of the honey in those bottles a little bit later on because all i want to do now at this point is put the cap on and let's go ahead and get this mixture mixed up yeast will enjoy that okay with that having been done all we need to do at this point is to go ahead and add that to our formula [Music] [Music] a little bit of a swirl i could have stirred it because what i want to do now is i want to take a hydrometer reading yeah i know it's got a spigot yeah i know all i needed to do basically was just to turn the spigot to pour to pour it in there but you might not have one on whatever container you're using so i don't mind taking the opportunity to use plan b okay going to the top is not going to be required all right it's right and kind of high looks like 1.1 looks like 1.10 it's going to be our andromeda reading in a moment i'm going to pour that back in and we are going to no better yet i'm going to do this i'm not going to pour that back in i'm going to take out my hydrometer carefully i'm going to take some of our must and i'm going to pour it in a bowl and i'm going to add our yeast we're going to bloom our yeast i think this time i'm going to use a half a teaspoon of wine yeast as opposed to my normal one-quarter of a teaspoon because a half a teaspoon is about all i've got left in this bag so let's just go ahead and get that going and besides it's good because the honey and the water are still kind of warm so we'll go ahead and let that do its thing for the next few minutes and then we'll add that to our strawberry honey juice mixture and begin the process of converting that into y all right now that our yeast has begun showing signs of life it's time to go ahead and add that to our firm enter and oh by the way yes that is a continuity error all right so let's go ahead and add our yeast and because a lot of it is just floating on top of the straining bags let's go ahead and just incorporate the yeast a little bit more into the mix i want to put on our cap it doesn't have to be on there tight oh by the game by the way again this particular fermenter does have an air vent so that i don't have to worry about pressure building up but right now i'm more interested in the yeast being able to get as much oxygen as possible it is now time to label our creation what we've got here is strawberry mead started on the 13th of this year and an og reading i corrected og reading of 1.116 despite what i said earlier let's go ahead and label that real quick all right all we need to do is to for the next three to five days go ahead and give it a little stir to add a little bit more oxygen to the mix the yeast will appreciate that after that we want to rack this into our secondary and begin the long-haul process of secondary fermentation one year from now it's strawberry meat time where's my wine glass so there we go strawberry made okay this is going to be a 16 month taste testing of a batch of strawberry me that i made it completely slipped my mind to do a video at the 12 month mark this being the sole survivor of the five bottle batch that i made apparently i have been drinking it over the past oh six months at least i don't remember what it tastes like but it must have tasted pretty good because i went through four of those bottles the fact that this one has a cap on it basically means for me that this was a bottle that i was going to say for special guests well i think you as my as my viewers you all a special guest so we're going to crack over my last bottle of strawberry mead whilst i contemplate the purchase of some additional honey strawberries to uh to make the next batch happen again i'm going to try and get right to this one and although i've got the proper waiter's key to do it normally i don't go through this process here of scoring the top of the cap of which i think i'm doing a halfway job of it before inserting the corkscrew end of it normally i just go for the corkscrew and the cap generally comes off with it top of the cap comes up with it so using the waiter's key instead of my winged corkscrew which is what i'd rather be using for this reason and that's why i like using my wing corkscrew because this doesn't happen all that often when it happens but it doesn't happen all that often so let's uh let's try that one again i see daylight yeah yeah okay so this one doesn't want to give up the goods all that easy got to work with it got to finesse it got to talk to it all right a couple of things one having stirred up a little bit of sediment that was on there uh strawberry me born 120 21 avb came in at a healthy 15 okay uh and it's been pasteurized i also know it's been pasteurized in the bottle and not in the cardboard because i've got all this sediment sitting on the bottom of my uh my uh my my bottle but that being said let's go ahead and crack open a little taste not too concerned about the sediment it's just honey solids that have separated out i'll deal with that later uh apart from the solids that are sitting in the bottom of the bottle actually they're kind of floating up a bit uh the wine is clear um it's not a sparkling wine which was which was the intent uh no surprises there um you don't really smell alcohol actually you smell the strawberries pretty strongly okay uh you don't know until you taste it if it's good or not must have been good because i had drank four bottles prior to this one so let's see how it tasted 16 months i can say right now from the onset at january of 2021 i was still using more than twice the amount of acidity that i think i should have been using so if i was using a half a lemon at that time as my acid blend substitute i would definitely cut that in half to my quarter of a lemon or a squeeze of a quarter of a lemon which has become my new standard apart from that it's pretty smooth not too much of a honey finish at all [Music] which for me you would expect but no not too much of a honey finish here strawberries definitely use the right amount of strawberries in this batch it's got a nice crisp taste to it when i did a taste testing comparison between a pasteurized meat and an unpasteurized meat the pasteurized meats came in to add just a little bit softer of a of a taste as opposed to the unpasteurized meat but this one still has a nice crisp flavor to it i think one thing that i was not doing at this time when i was making this batch was that i was not using a a homemade yeast nutrient or a yeast nutrient of any sort but once i realized just how simple it was to make a yeast nutrient uh all of my subsequent wines and these are now using that so definitely i would make i would add that to the mix reduce the acidity use the homemade yeast nutrient yeah uh one other thing uh prior to me starting this video or realizing that i needed to do this video i was tasting or rather finishing up the last of a two year batch of plum wine and i was perusing through my content my uh content to find out what i need to do to make that uh initial video plus the add-on of the tasting video and i stumbled across this one thinking that i had already done a standalone tasting video in and of itself but nope turns out this is one that got missed uh don't know why and i'm glad i did it before consuming this last bottle or gave it away doubt that i would have given it away this was when i was shared among friends not like this and the funny thing is you don't really smell the alcohol even at 15 i will feel it later i'm sure but no you don't really taste it or rather smell it you kind of sort of taste it it's probably why you're not really why i'm not really getting a a lot of that honey forward flavor in order priorities strawberries definitely well strawberries acidity i would have to say the alcohol and honey come through kind of equally they kind of balance each other out i would have preferred a much more honey forward forwarded meat but this ain't bad at all yeah this ain't bad at all uh if you've never really given me to try uh basically it's just like just like making wine except that you're using honey instead of sugar basically that's pretty much the real fundamental difference and and yeah it's definitely worth the effort most of most of what i've made if i had to make give it a choice between which do i prefer uh wines or meads i paint some pretty decent ones to be sure and i've also made more pretty decent meads in fact it's kind of hard to get them that corn habanero and what was the other ingredient the oddity that i did uh uh sometime back that was a strange one that's probably one that didn't quite work out but beyond that it's kind of hard to mess up a bee so with that being said short video because i know the original video kind of ran a little bit long uh strawberry me definitely a winner i like it a lot and if you've seen my videos you know that if i don't like i'm gonna let you know about it not everything i make is gonna be all that great so um yeah this is pretty good um we'll definitely be making it again uh not on camera this was more like personal consumption i might end up making i want to say i want to make like two gallons ish but honey i this is this is still a channel that tries to do things on a shoestring budget so honey is kind of on the on the pricey side so two gallons if i'm feeling if i want to treat myself okay but uh um there you go uh strawberry made uh 16 months tasting last bottle out of four uh definitely a winner and i will see you in the next video [Music] you

Channel: DIY Fermentation

Views: 4,161

Keywords: Wines, homemade wine, how to make wine, fermentation, diy fermentation, african-american, fruit wines, homebrew, brewing, wine making, homemade wine recipe, homemade wine making, make wine at home, strawberry mead, strawberry mead recipe, strawberry

Id: GmqhNchojHY

Length: 20min 29sec (1229 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 31 2022