Strawberry Vanilla Melomel
Strawberries and cream, but make it mead.
ABV
12% ABV
Time to bottle
~4 months
Original gravity
1.100
Final gravity
1.010
Strawberry aroma is fragile, so this recipe ferments clean and then loads the fruit into secondary where the alcohol pulls flavor without blowing the aromatics off. A single split vanilla bean ties the fruit and honey together into something dangerously dessert-like.
What you'll need
- 3 lb (1.4 kg) orange blossom or wildflower honey
- 2 lb (900 g) ripe strawberries, hulled and halved (secondary)
- 1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise (secondary)
- Spring water to 1 gallon
- 1 packet Lalvin 71B-1122 yeast
- 2 tsp yeast nutrient, staggered
- ½ tsp pectic enzyme
- Batch size
- 1 gallon (3.8 L)
- Yeast
- Lalvin 71B-1122
Taste profile
What a finished batch should taste like.
Aroma
Flavor
How to make it
- 1
Mix honey and water to 1 gallon, add pectic enzyme and the first nutrient dose, and pitch yeast.
- 2
Ferment at 62–68°F (17–20°C) for 3–4 weeks until gravity is stable.
- 3
Rack the clean mead onto the strawberries and vanilla bean in a sanitized secondary vessel.
- 4
Leave on the fruit for 10–14 days, tasting at day 10; pull the vanilla bean the moment it reads "enough".
- 5
Rack off the fruit and bulk age 8–10 weeks until it drops clear.
- 6
Stabilize, back-sweeten to about 1.010 if it finished drier, and bottle around week 18.
Brewer's notes
- Overripe farmers-market strawberries beat perfect supermarket ones: aroma lives in the ripeness.
- Vanilla extracts fast; a bean left in for a month tastes like perfume.
- Strawberry drops a lot of fine pulp, so an extra racking before bottling saves your bottles from sediment.
After bottling: 3–6 months. Strawberry fades with time, so this one is best on the younger side.
Brewing this one? Let MeadMate keep it on track.
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