I just made my first mead which is 5 gallons of a basic sweet mead. It is currently in the primary and I was wondering if I could add fruit to it when I go to rack it to the secondary. I couldn't find any recipes that don't include fruit in the primary so I wasn't sure if it was too late to add fruit to it.
My friend, you either didn't look hard enough or just in the wrong places.....
Anyway........mead and recipes.......
So, if you put fruit in primary, the fruit flavour will change.......often quite a lot. The fermented fruit flavour is often one that we're unfamiliar with.
Think of the difference between grapes and wines (and remember that wine grapes are usually very much sweeter than eating grapes).
If the fruit goes into secondary, especially if there is no fermentation activity, you'll read of the taste being more "fruity" or possibly more cordial-like.
So presuming that you select your fruit because you like the original taste, that then begs the question how much? and how long?
What I aim for is to use the same amount of fruit as a recipe for XXX fruit wine will use. I stabilise the base brew and have found it easier to aim for higher alcohol levels as it becomes increasingly hard to calculate % ABV. Yet if you know what the base was you can just call it as max X % ABV. It will lessen as you're adding non-alcoholic fruit/liquid.
If you then put the fruit into a carboy (it may need chopping up some), you can just rack onto it. If its a fruit that goes off easily/quickly, then you may need to think about rinsing it in sulphite solution first.
I like to rack the liquid onto the fruit so the liquid level comes to just below where the base of the stopper will sit.
Equally, I also like to swirl the batch at least once daily, preferably twice, so you don't get any cap build up of fruit that can dry out and go mouldy (yes, even in that environment). If possible, I like to leave it in till it sinks as it will eventually, if it floats.
Some fruits give a visual indicator. The skins become paler as they give up their pigmentation.
Of course, the above is generalising. Taste, smell and appearance are important.
Equally, its possible that you'll have to back sweeten too, to get the fruit flavour you like.
There's no real maximum time you could leave the fruit in there, but as with yeast, after a while it can break down and give autolysis off flavours.
