A slice of strawberry shortcake.

Strawberry Shortcake Mead

Written By Bray Denard, PhD
Disclaimer: These recipes are for personal use only.

Mead Master's Note

The goal of this mead: Cut strawberries dusted with sugar to pull out juices, then layered on yellow cakes and topped with whipped cream. So how do we do that? Breakdown of flavors:

Strawberry: Massive amounts of strawberries with strawberry gum powder to further enhance the aroma. The honey has strawberry notes as well.

Yellow cake: Soft Maple wood aging. It turns out soft maple wood tastes like yellow cake! It only works in secondary though.

Whipped Cream: Ash wood and lactose. I’m looking for an increased body with a background note of whipped cream.

Mead Specifications

Batch Size - 9 litres
ABV - 15.7%
Starting Gravity (SG) - 1.140
Final Gravity (FG) - 1.020
Style - Sweet Melomel

Ingredients

  • Wildflower honey - 2.4 kgs
  • Wyeast 1388 Smack Pack
  • Fermaid O - 18.6g, 9.3g per dose.
  • Potassium carbonate - 4g
  • Fermaid K - 3.7g
  • Potassium sorbate - 2.1g
  • Potassium metabisulfite - 1.2g

Spice Blend

  • Strawberries, frozen and fully thawed - 3 kgs
  • Strawberry gum - 1.3g
  • Honeycomb ash wood - 3.5”

Secondary Ingredients

Must Preparation

  1. To a sanitised 15-litre bucket, add the honey, first dose of Fermaid O, potassium carbonate, and Fermaid K.
  2. Add 4 liters of water. We highly suggest using bottled water to avoid chloramines found in tap water.
    Do not use distilled water.
  3. Mix until all the honey is dissolved.
  4. Add water until slightly shy of the 9-litre mark.
  5. Add the spices from the spice blend to the bucket.

Yeast Preparation

  1. Remove Wyeast 1388 packet from the fridge and allow it to come to room temperature.
  2. Burst the internal nutrient packet in the Wyeast 1388 pouch.
    Tip: It helps to trap it in a corner before smacking it.
  3. Allow the packet to expand for at least 15 minutes. It should swell to demonstrate yeast activation.
  4. Sanitise the pouch corner you will cut.
  5. Once the yeast and must are at similar temperatures, cut the corner off the pouch and pitch the yeast into the fermentor.
    Tip: Make sure not to cut the corner so much that the internal packet can come out into your fermentor!

Note: Do not allow the yeast to sit for longer than 15 minutes.

Fermentation

  1. Store the bucket at 22-24°C. The middle of this range is best.
  2. 48 hours after pitching the yeast, add the second dose of Fermaid O.
  3. Take a gravity reading every 3 days with a hydrometer until the gravity reaches 1.020 (7-10 days).

Secondary

  1. Rack off the fruit and yeast cake into a freshly sanitised demijohn. We generally get around 5 litres of mead after racking.
  2. Add the secondary ingredient list to the demijohn.
  3. Treat for 3 weeks or until the desired flavor is reached.

Stabilising

  1. Cold crash in a fridge until clear. Cold temperatures speed clearing, but clearing will occur without it.
  2. Rack the clear mead into a sanitised demijohn.
  3. Add the potassium sorbate and potassium metabisulfite to the demijohn and mix well. Allow to sit for a minimum of 2 weeks, ideally until clear.
    Note: After stabilising, there will be a harsh note resembling fusels in the mead for a few weeks. This is caused by the stabiliser and will age out as the stabiliser completes its protective purpose.
  4. A few days after mixing, cold crash in the fridge to speed clearing. (Optional)
  5. Bottle into sanitised bottles.

Tips & Tricks

  1. Place your demijohn into a larger container to contain any potential spill over from fermentation.
  2. If your home is cold, the top back of the fridge is great for keeping the fermentation warm.
  3. A spray bottle of diluted sanitiser is great for sanitising surfaces, especially hands.
  4. The first time you use a non-graduated bucket, add 5 litres at a time and draw a line for each.