Strawberry mead recipe

At a glance

Style

Melomel

Alcohol

About 12.5% ABV

Finish

Semi-sweet

Difficulty

Beginner

Honey

Clover or orange blossom

Yeast

Lalvin 71B

Ready in

3 to 4 months

Batch

1 gallon, scalable

Ingredients

Quantities are for one US gallon (3.8 liters). Pick a batch size and every amount updates; one packet of yeast covers up to six gallons. Not sure how much honey your own twist needs? Use the mead calculator.

Swapping the fruit or changing the amount? Adding fruit to mead covers how much to use per gallon, when to add it and how long to leave it. The dose and timing of the enzyme are explained in how much pectic enzyme per gallon of mead. This recipe ferments dry and is sweetened at the end: how to backsweeten mead has the stabilizing doses and a honey chart for any batch size.

Equipment

• 1-gallon glass jug and a 2-gallon bucket for primary
• Airlock and drilled bung
• Hydrometer
• Nylon straining bag
• Auto-siphon and tubing
• No-rinse sanitizer (Star San)

New to this? Our mead making kit checklist covers what each piece does and what you can skip.

Step-by-step method

1. Sanitize

   Sanitize everything that will touch the must: bucket, spoon, hydrometer, funnel and jug. Most spoiled meads start here.

2. Mix the must

   Warm the honey jar in a sink of hot water so it pours. Stir the honey into about half the water in the bucket until no streaks remain, then top up with cool water to the 1-gallon mark. Take a gravity reading: about 1.088 is on target before the fruit goes in.

3. Pitch the yeast

   Rehydrate the 71B in 50 ml of 104°F (40°C) water with the Go-Ferm for 15 minutes, then stir it into the must when both are within 18°F (10°C) of each other. Fit the lid and airlock and keep it at 62 to 68°F (17 to 20°C).

4. Feed the yeast

   Add one quarter of the Fermaid O at 24, 48 and 72 hours after pitching, and the last quarter at the 1/3 sugar break (gravity around 1.060) or on day 7, whichever comes first. Stir gently to degas each time; it will foam.

5. Freeze and add the fruit

   Freeze the hulled strawberries for at least 24 hours (freezing bursts the cells and gives more juice), then thaw them in the straining bag. When the gravity has fallen below 1.010, usually in 2 to 3 weeks, rack the mead onto the fruit with the pectic enzyme.

6. Secondary on fruit

   Leave it on the fruit for 7 to 10 days, pushing the bag down daily. The fruit sugar restarts fermentation for a few days. Lift the bag out and let it drain without squeezing hard; squeezing pushes haze and bitterness into the mead.

7. Clear and stabilize

   Rack into a clean jug, top up to reduce headspace and leave it 4 to 6 weeks to clear. When it is clear and the gravity is stable for a week, add the crushed Campden tablet and the potassium sorbate, stir gently and wait 48 hours.

8. Backsweeten and bottle

   Stir in honey 1 oz at a time (about 0.002 gravity per ounce per gallon) until it tastes right: 4 to 6 oz lands near 1.012, where strawberry reads best. Bottle into five 750 ml bottles and give it at least a month in the bottle.

Timeline

1. Day 0Mix the must, pitch yeast
2. Days 1 to 7Four nutrient additions, degas daily
3. Weeks 2 to 3Rack onto frozen and thawed strawberries
4. Week 4Remove fruit, rack to clear
5. Weeks 8 to 10Stabilize, backsweeten, bottle
6. Month 4 and onDrink; peaks around 6 to 12 months

Why this recipe works

Fruit goes in secondary, not primary. The vigorous early fermentation drives off the volatile aroma compounds that make strawberries smell like strawberries. Adding the fruit once the honey sugars are mostly gone keeps more of that aroma in the jug.

Three pounds of fruit per gallon sounds like a lot, but strawberries are mostly water and have little flavor per pound compared with blackberries or cherries. Under 2 lb per gallon the result usually tastes of honey with a faint pink tint.

71B is a gentle, fruit-forward wine yeast that tolerates about 14% alcohol and is known for softening malic acid. It keeps the fermentation clean without the rocket-fuel notes a hotter ferment gives.

The semi-sweet finish is deliberate. Strawberry aroma reads as "fruit" only when there is some sweetness behind it; bone-dry strawberry meads tend to taste thin and slightly vegetal.

Variations

• Strawberry-rhubarb: replace 1 lb of the strawberries with chopped rhubarb for a tart backbone.
• Strawberry basil: add a small handful of fresh basil leaves for the last 3 days of secondary.
• Sparkling: skip the sorbate, prime with 1 oz of honey per gallon and bottle in pressure-rated bottles (see our sparkling guide).

Troubleshooting

More mead recipes to try

• Raspberry mead recipe: Big berry flavor from 2.5 lb of fruit per gallon, added in secondary and balanced with a semi-sweet finish.
• Blueberry mead recipe: 4 lb of berries split between primary for color and secondary for aroma, with acid adjusted to taste.
• Cherry mead recipe: Half tart, half dark sweet cherries in secondary, with an optional hint of almond.

More fruit mead recipes: Blackberry mead, Cyser (apple mead), Peach mead, Mango mead (and pineapple mead), Joe's Ancient Orange Mead (JAOM), Pyment (grape mead), Elderberry mead, Banana mead, Pomegranate mead, Pumpkin mead, Cranberry mead, Apple pie mead.

Or browse all our mead recipes. If this is your first batch, start with the traditional mead recipe or the step-by-step guide to making honey wine.

Frequently asked questions