Y.U.M. (Mk1) - Strawberry Mead

Yak's Uplifting Mead! I may quit this beer thing all together if this mead tastes anything like I think it's going to taste which is simply AWESOME! Started it on 20 February - added (A LOT) strawberries on 18 March and the fermentation kicked back into high gear - the entire pantry smells like strawberries now! I literally have not brewed anything that has tested my patience as much as this mead with the desire to taste it; stoked.

Here are the basics of what's in Y.U.M. and how I put it all together.

Ingredients:
- 20 lbs of Grade A fancy White Clover Honey (SueBee Honey) - I went cheap
- 1.5 Gallons of fresh filtered water (additional as required to fill fermenter)
- One Vial of White Labs Mead Yeast (sweet mead)
- 5 medium packages of ripe strawberries (just cut the tops off of them - and as required to get in the secondary)

Process:
- Brought about 1.5 gallons of water to boil while the honey "loosened up" in a sink full of hot water
- Let Water cool to ~160 degrees F (maintained at this temperature)
- Added all honey and kept at ~160F for 35 minutes
- Poured the pot into the fermentation BUCKET (had cream ale in the primary and the barleywine in the secondary).
- Added cold water to fill to the 5 Gallon line - took temp reading and pitched yeast (might have been a bit hot for the poor yeast ~75F)
- Sealed and put in the pantry - Fermentation was active for exactly 2 weeks.

That's it! To start with...then there is the strawberries!
For those, I sanitized the secondary (5 gallon glass carboy) rinsed it (yes somewhat taboo for a no-rinse sanitzer - I use StarSan - but we're working with ~11% ABV at this point and I was not worried about any last minute contaminants). Then I sat down with the strawberries and cut them up and added them one at a time to the secondary. Finally I siphoned the mead into the secondary over the top of the strawberries and put the stopper/airlock assemply on. Easy. Minus the damn fruit flies that are bugging the hell out of me - no pun intended. One finally made it INTO the airlock water?! Bothered me a fair amount so I added a couple dribbles of StarSan to the airlock to ensure the sterile barrier - again not worried, thanks to the excellent alcohol level!

Hard to tell but its actually RED now thanks to the strawberries!

Bottling soon...or maybe kegging - I'm running out of bottles! Look for an update to come on the flavor - speaking of, I sampled some of the dregs after I racked into secondary...already tastes like heaven; hence the anticipation! Y.U.M.!

Upship! out.