Strawberry Orange Lemon Melomel
A welcome refreshment in the heat of late summer. Pour a glass and enjoy the sunset. It has all the flavors you would expect from freshly squeezed strawberry lemon-aid, but with a kick!
Servings Prep Time
1gallon 30minutes
Passive Time
12months
Servings Prep Time
1gallon 30minutes
Passive Time
12months
Ingredients
Instructions
Assemble your ingredients
  1. Before we begin, its time to wash and sanitize your storage container. This time we are using the standard one gallon container. This recipe may be best in a two gallon glass container. When done all the fruit will fill quite a bit of space in the one gallon carboy and will result in less finished mead.
  2. Gather your ingredients. Be sure to wash your fruit. It is going to be sitting in liquid for at least 2 months. Wash and rinse well to get off any residue left from production and transportation.
Prepare the fruit
  1. I have never tried this before. In an attempt to boost the citrus flavors I zested all three lemons and the orange.
  2. Time to slice and dice the lemons and orange. Slice them into smaller pieces. If you leave the slices large it will make removing them after the primary fermentation difficult. Typically, I will cut a slice three times so they can be easily removed.
  3. Measure out about four cups of strawberries. Frozen or fresh will work. Frozen can save you money at the store.
  4. Just like the lemon, cut them up tiny. You will have more surface area and they will be easy to get in and out of the carboy. After loading up the fruit in the carboy I did use less strawberries than pictured. Add as much as you feel is appropriate.
  5. Collect all the fruit and place them all into the carboy.
  6. Its now time to add the honey. Use a funnel and add the honey straight from the container. Its going to be very thick at first. This is expected. Splash some hot water in the honey container to dissolve the honey sticking to the sides of the container and add that to the carboy.
  7. As you can see this creates a gooey mess in the carboy. At this time we add warm / hot water. We want to add water that is warm enough to dissolve the honey but not too hot to kill the yeast we will add. Normally I take 2 cups of 112 degrees Fahrenheit and mix that with two cups of cold water. That combo has not failed me yet. Fill up the carboy to the level where the glass begins to taper in. Leave room for head space and for the yeast we will be adding next. When your water has been added, cap the carboy and shake it up.
  8. Prepare your yeast in a separate container. Today we are using two different yeasts at the same time. Premier Cuvee is aggressive, fast-starting, clean, and neutral. Pasteur Blanc has a neutral flavor that is recommended for making a dry wine. Both of these yeasts are very popular and have a high tolerance that can yield 18%+ Using both we will see an aggressive fermentation with little to no flavor imparted from the yeast.
  9. Pour the yeast in, cap it, and shake it up! When the yeast is evenly distributed, remove the cap, and attach the airlock.
Recipe Notes

Here is the first 45 minutes of the ferment.  It is quite aggressive and as you can see I did not leave enough head space for it to bubble.