Strawberry Rhubarb Ginger Mead      
(Sparkling Mead Recipe for 23 Litres)       

Ingredients:           
3.5 kg honey          
1 kg corn sugar           
100 g freshly grated ginger root           
5 g citric acid (approx. 1� tsp)           
5 g yeast energizer (approx. 1� tsp)           
1.2 kg frozen rhubarb           
1.2 kg frozen strawberries           
100 g coarsely chopped lemongrass           
grated zest of 1 lemon and 1 orange           
2 packages Lalvin EC 1118 Champagne yeast           
1� g Irish moss (approx. � tsp)       

Procedure:           
Sanitise a 46 litre primary fermenter and lid.  Thaw frozen fruit and mix with corn sugar in the bottom of the fermenter and leave to sit for two days. (Don't worry about the fruit spoiling. The sugar acts as a humectant, preventing the growth of spoilage organisms. Also, if you buy or pick fresh fruit, freeze it before you begin.)  Bring 8 l of water to the boil. Add the honey, grated ginger, citric acid, lemongrass, yeast energizer and Irish moss, and boil for 15 minutes.*  Remove from heat and pour on top of fruits and sugar. Add grated zest at this point.  Allow to steep for 15 minutes and then add enough cold water to bring the level up to 23 l.  When temperature is 20 to 23�C, pitch yeast.  Primary fermentation should take 4 to 6 days. Rack to a carboy. Most of the fruit will be floating on top of the liquid. Use a siphon tube to rack the clear liquid, leaving the fruit and sediment behind.  Secondary fermentation will take 6 weeks. If mead is clear, rack, prime with 1 cup of corn sugar, and bottle. If it is still cloudy, rack to a clean carboy and add Enolophin 2 Part Finings. Rack, prime, and bottle when clear.  Age for at least a month before tasting. Mead will generally improve continuously for 2 to 3 years--if  you can keep it that long.           

*Or if you want to make your life a little more complicated, you can pasteurize your honey instead of           boiling it. If you pasteurize, your mead will retain more honey flavour and aroma.  

Pasteurization works by holding the honey at a specified temperature for several minutes. The temperature is high enough to kill wild yeasts and spoilage organisms, but not high enough to boil the honey. (And, given that honey is filthy with wild yeast and bacteria, you must either pasteurize or boil.) 

To pasteurize:            
At step 3, above, leave the honey out, boiling the other ingredients. After 15 minutes, bring the           temperature of the boiling mixture down to between 68 and 71�C (155 -160�F). (Adding 5 to 6 l of cold water should achieve this). Remove the pot from the heat, and dissolve the honey in it. The temperature should stabilize between 60 and 72�C (140-160�F). Apply very low heat and hold the temperature in this range for 5 minutes. Then proceed with step 4.  If you are in any doubt about your temperature for those last 5 minutes, give up pasteurizing and boil everything.  One side effect of this process is that your mead may have a protein haze after fermentation is  complete. You can get rid of this by fining with Bentonite.

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