Keep Calm and Marion

Process

1. Add berries and honey to a bucket fermenter. Do not use a carboy for primary with this much fruit. My ~9-10 gallon buckets were a little too small for all of this at once. You might be able to fit this into 2x5 gallon buckets if you let the fruit defrost a little before adding honey, but while still hard as a rock, there berries won't be able to compress enough to make room for the honey. It's easiest if you can just get one fermenter big enough for the whole thing.

2. Place a lid + airlock on the bucket and allow the berries to begin defrosting and cold soaking in the honey, checking in periodically to monitor the warming process. How often you check in is a bit of a judgement call - a variety of factors like ambient temperature will dictate how quickly the berries warm up. Defrosting during a summer heatwave will require more frequent check-ins than defrosting during a winter storm.

3. When the mixture is fluid enough to mix in a powdered addition, add the Lallzyme EX-V. As the must warms up, it becomes helpful to take temperature readings so you can ballpark how much longer you need to wait before you can pitch.

   • If your berries are defrosting but the must is still not fluid enough to stir, you can add 1 quart of fermentation-grade water (no chlorine, etc). I suggest temperature readings for an objective sense of how defrosted your berries actually are - don't jump the gun and add water early if it's not needed!

4. As the must approaches room temperature, rehydrate your 71B yeast using Go-ferm by the package instructions. A strong pitch is recommended with this high starting gravity, around 3.5-4 grams per gallon. Since 71B is most readily available in 5 gram packets, I'm suggesting 40g.

5. Once you reach a pitchable temperature, pitch away and seal up the bucket to commence primary.

6. During the first week:

   • Punch the cap down 2-3 times daily to ensure it does not dry out - a dry fruit cap can mold.

   • Add your 2 nutrient additions.

   • Keep an eye on your fermentation temperatures. Temps above ~72F at the center of your bucket won't ruin the mead, but it will be a more stressed fermentation and the end product will likely require some additional aging.

7. After the first week, you should leave the mead to sit for an additional 3-4 weeks. During this time, try to avoid opening up the bucket, as this could expose the mead to additional oxygen or mold spores. This part of primary may be a little intimidating, but the berries should stay wet on their own this late in primary, and the alcohol levels should be high enough to guard against mold. The additional 3 weeks should ensure that fermentation finishes, allow sediment to settle out, and provide the right amount of time for tannin development.

8. When it's time to rack, just remember that these berries are horribly inconvenient for racking so good luck!

   • I ended up "pressing" mine by literally pouring the must into a brew bag and then squeezing the heck out of it over a fresh, sanitized bucket.

   • This pressing method is an intense forearm workout and not ideal as far as possible oxygen exposure is concerned, but it got me a MUCH better yield than I would otherwise have had, as well as higher tannin levels that actually balance out quite well in this mead.

   • To help mitigate oxygen exposure, you can add 1.5g potassium metabisulfite to act as an oxygen scavenger.

   • Take a gravity reading during this process so you can confirm your FG.

   • I rough-racked about 10 gallons total of product, so I used 2x5 gallon carboys. Because of the pressing and fine sediment left by these berries, there will be a lot of fruit gunk falling out of solution in the early stages of secondary.

9. Be prepared to perform an additional racking after the sediment has started to settle out and the mead begins to clear. I wouldn't wait too long before racking again, though (I'd suggest 2-3 weeks) - although normal lees takes a very long time to impart off flavors, if it imparts any at the homebrew scale, my experience has been that thick layers of heavy fruit sediment don't taste great, and I'm hesitant to leave them in there for too long.

   • On my second racking, I got about 7 gallons of product. Be prepared with containers to rack about that much volume, but also be aware that means both of the 5 gallon carboys I rough-racked into had about 1.5 gallons worth of sediment in them. That high volume of fruit detritus - over 20% of the container's volume - is why I do not recommend staying in the 5 gallon carboys overly long, even though normally I am not particularly concerned about aging on lees.

10. Until you are ready to bottle, that's it, you're done! If your fermentation was smooth and clean, this should be ready to drink very young for a mead of this ABV.