habanero, madame jeanette, strawberry mead

[lampie]

I got these flavors from an bucket of icecream i had a while back (without the honey).. I like a bit of heat and these chillies have a great fruity flavor if you are used to the heat. I knew the madame jeanette from some trips to south america and i knew that they have a great flavor.. I also saw on the wiki page about habanero that the best way to preserve them is to slice them and put them in honey. This will keep the fruity flavor of the chillies but it reduces most of the heat.

A note of warning:  When cutting these chillies use gloves or other protection these chillies can give a chemical burn.
to give an example: tabasco sauce has heat of 600 to 800 and habanero and the madame have a heat between 100.000 and 350.000 so be carefull handeling these!

I been thinking about this recipe for a while and how to make sure that i dont make any fruit flavored fire wine.. I hope i have found the solution and that is using the chillies as a whole and dont cut them up.

I hope that my chillies arrive today so i can start this brew.

recipe for 5 liter:

1.8 kg honey
1 habanero
1 madame jeanette
100 gram strawberries
0.5 tsp yeast nutrient
mead yeast

I will use the same proces as the jalapeno, cucumber mead. So first bring 2 liters of water to the boil and cut the strawberries in half and add them and then i will put the whole chillies in. I will put in the whole chillies in to get the nice fruity aroma and not all the heat and will get this off the heat and let it stand for 30 to 45 minutes to get out all the flavors. Then i will get out the chillies and the strawberry and mix in the honey.

I will update and change this topic as i make this brew.. And yes garry i will send a bottle if you let the rest know how this turns out

[Wexbrew]

This sounds great.

Did you make the mead after?

[lampie]

The above idea did not work out well so started again a few weeks ago.

recipe:

2 kg strawberries
1.8 kg honey
1 habanero
1 madame jeanet
1 tsp citric acid
1 tsp yeast nutrient
1 tsp pectine

Cleaned and cut up the strawberries and put them in a big pot



added a cup of water and slowly warmed and mashed all the strawberries



then cut up half the chilies (with rubber gloves) and added them to my strawberry mash



added the honey to the strawberry mash stirred all the honey in the strawberries and then it was time to put it in the dj. The mash was a bit thick so had to use a chopstick to get it all trough.




put in the yeast, citric acid, yeast nutrient and mead yeast into the bottle. I did not have any pectine at home so have put an order in for that, i dont have a brewshop nearby so had to order this online. Kept a lot of headspace before I have my pectine. There is still a lot of fruit in there that will try and leave the bottle somehow.

Here the bottle is in a big pot in case of a strawberry vulcano .


this is after three days



I racked the mead after 3 weeks to get rid of all the strawberry pulp and its still fermenting now and will rack again soon to clear. Had a little taste when racking and its realy turning out great. Its a very sweet strawberry with a little bit of heat when swallowing but that is cooled down again trough all the sweetnes at the beginning . when i have my own pc back again will upload some pictures again

[lampie]

It has been quite busy with a lot of things but not brewing . But finaly found some time to do some botteling and this mead was the first one.. Bottled it yesterday made some pictures and had a little taste..

and its absolutly amazing!

had a good friend over today and I opened a bottle and could smell the strawberry straight away and it has a nice colour and the taste is great.. there is a real nice strawberry flavor medium dry in the beginning and when swallowing the heat comes on the back of the mouth and throat and the heat is just perfect, not to weak and not to hot..

I have been getting compliments about this wine for over an hour now and she just left and she just called me on the phone to tell me again that the mead is great 

I will post some pictures later on to show how this turned out.. To have a taste you have to brew it yourself ..

[LordEoin]

sounds good
what kind of ratio lees/mead did you get in the end?