Fruit meads are a nice way to make a good "wine-like" drink without all the effort that goes into making wines (meads are tough to mess up). I don't really have a recipe for making fruit meads. Usually I just add what looks like a reasonable amount of fruit (~1# blueberries per gallon). The steps to making a fruit mead:
1. Boil the honey, acid blend, yeast nutrient, Irish moss and water for about 15 minutes. During the boil, scoop off the foam (it's mostly protein that will give it an off-flavor).
2. While that's boiling, I'll crush the fruit. You don't have to juice it, just crush it to break the skins.
3. After the boil is finished, turn off the heat and add the fruit and juice while it's still hot. This will sterilize it. Don't continue boiling the fruit, or you'll end up with a hazy finished product - or worst case spiked jelly.
4. It's easiest to start the primary fermentation in either a 5 or 7 gallon bucket with a lid. That will make it easier to filter out the fruit later. Once it's cooled off, pitch the yeast.
5. After 3 or 4 days, rack into a carboy and filter out the fruit (I use a big funnel with cheesecloth over it. Try to do this before the end of the heavy fermentation that way the yeast is still active and you can minimize introducing bacteria.
6. After fermentation stops and you're ready to bottle, if you want to make it carbonated, add about 1/3 cup sugar per 5 gallons.
For the most part, the more "complex" flavor of the fruit, the longer you need to let it sit before it's ready to drink. Fruits I've done:
mulberry - best fruit mead I've ever made and it's ready to drink right after bottling
blackberry - almost as good as mulberries. It works really well even with wild blackberries that don't taste good (we have lots of those in Florida).
blueberry - really good, but takes a while to mellow. About 6 months before it's ready to drink.
carambola (starfruit) - doesn't add much flavor to the mead, but it does make it undrinkable for about a year.
If you have access to pomegranites, they're supposed to make the best mead and wine. I"ve got three trees in my yard, but with the Florida climate, I hardly get any fruit that make it all the way to maturity.
And Scot that is some rough crap for a RIB much less 20 miles of it!!!..damn!!!
