Blend fruit when making melomel?

Hello everyone!

A little background info-- I made my first 1 gallon mead batch a while ago and recently drank it. Boy was it amazing. As a result of that success, I decided I would make 5 gallons of mead, and then split it up into 5-1 gallon carboys and make different melomels with it.

I used 15 pounds of honey, so it's going to be really strong. I will probably end up diluting it a little bit to make it less string, because that's how my girlfriend likes it. By the time that I dilute it a little bit and add the fruit, do you think I will be able to get 6 gallons of melomel?

As far as the fruit goes, how much of each fruit should I add? I'm looking to make strawberry, raspberry, blueberry, blackberry, and pineapple. How do I go about adding the fruit? To get the most flavor out of the fruit, should I blend it? And do I put the fruit it first and then siphon the mead on top of it, or do I siphon and the add the fruit?

As far as the timing goes, it's been in the primary fermentor for about 2 weeks. Should I add the fruit and separate it into the 1 gallon carboys at the 1 month mark? Then leave the fruit in for a month, and then rack it to get rid of the fruit, and then let it age and rack it every month?

Is it alright to back sweeten with honey before bottling? I plan on investing in a good filter to get rid of all the yeast so there wont be any bottle bombs.

Sorry for all the million questions-- Just trying to be successful.

Thanks!

Don't blend the fruit. Especially your berries. The flavor of the seeds will cause bitterness if done that way. I Recommend freezing and thawing a few times to soften the fruit up, and then adding it. Also, I don't think your filter idea will work, but I could definitely be wrong since I'm a pretty big noob. As far as secondary goes, it's really up to you. Some people don't use it at all, and some go through many secondaries. It's all personal preference.

When fruit is frozen the cellular structure of the fruit breaks down, allowing it to release its juicy goodness into your must. Everyone does things differently, I made a strawberry melomel and used hulled, whole berries in a sterilized paint filter bag (or you can get a muslin bag). Tastes AMAZING and the paint filter bag made cleanup a snap. Meadiator touched on a lot of key points about the seeds. Blending will make a huge mess and you will make your racking and cleanup experience that much more difficult. Hull the fruit and don't wash it (This keeps the fruit from freezing together)! Freeze the fruit for a few days, thaw to room temp and add to must. If your worried about germs and other nasties, sulfite 24 hours before pitching yeast.

There are also purees that you can buy, or World Market even sells flavored syrups that you can add to your mead after fermentation is complete so that it will retain all of the fruit taste, as the fermentation process will take most of it away (not that this is always a bad thing either!), and sometimes this is the cheaper route for the brewer on a budget. Many routes to take, all of them good.

Wait, I'm going to need to pitch more yeast? I'm pretty sure there's still yeast floating around in there.

Freezing the fruit is a great idea.

Also will using a very fine filter get rid of the yeast? My goal is for there to be no sediment in the bottom of the bottles.

Did a similar thing last year, brewed about 10 gallons of traditional mead and then racked onto various fruit. Given that fruit flavor intensity varies regionally, seasonally, and by type of fruit, coming up with an amount to use is not an exact science. What I did was review a few recipes to get an estimate of how much to use and then kept a few gallons of plain traditional mead on hand for blending to taste. Good thing, because all of my melomels were too strong initially, but tasty when blended down a bit.

I just chopped the fruit up and added to empty fermentors then racked onto the fruit. The added sugar from the fruit will probably cause a secondary fermentation to kick in at this point. So, if you want a good idea of the ABV get a hydrometer reading after racking. I did not, but the secondary ferm definitely bumped up the alcohol a bit. Racking off of the fruit was no big deal. I just used a racking cane with a bit of mesh over the end. This certainly wont get rid of yeast, but was good enough for me.

To remove yeast cells, you'd be needing commercial grade type filtration, of a sort (or at least size) that would not only remove yeast cells, it will take out some flavour elements/chemicals and pigmentation.

It's one of the reasons why only white wines are sometimes "sterile" filtered, there's less to lose in the first place.

You'd need to be thinking in the 0.5 micron or smaller.

Hence, if making batches (irrespective of whether the fruit is in primary or secondary/tertiary) with fruit that impart colour as well as flavour you wouldn't want to filter smaller than something like 5 microns (even 1 micron would likely remove some pigmentation). So to confirm removal of all yeast cells, well as far as is possible/practical, I'd say finings and/or racking would be the way to go.

Getting rid of the coarser particulates from the fruit is pretty straight forward, but with time, you can still get some pigments, tannins and even dead yeast dropping out.......