I have a strong mead (close to 16%) that I just racked to the secondary. I plan to add some strawberries very soon. How long should I leave it on the strawberries? This is a loooong term project so I won’t cringe if someone says a year or more.
I recently asked this exact question on another forum. What I was told is that your mead will get everything from fruit within 1 to 2 weeks. Leaving it in after 2 weeks supposedly doesn’t make much difference.
After 1 1/2 weeks I checked and the smell of the fruit from the mead was VERY strong and it was a dark red instead of the normal golden color of mead. So I went ahead and pulled the fruit out.
Additionally some of the things I’ve read suggest that if you leave strawberry seeds in the mead too long (more than a month) they impart a bitter flavor. So I went ahead and racked the mead off the seeds/sediment a week after I pulled the fruit out.
I usually leave my meads on the fruit for 10 - 14 days. I haven’t seen any advantage to longer contact time. Know going in that you will need a lot of strawberries to get a substantial amount of flavor. You will need apx 2X the amount of strawberries than you would raspberries or currents to get the same flavor profile.
