Cherry Mead
Brewing Progress
Brewing Data
Ingredients
- 3 lbs Maker's Mark Premium Wildflower Honey
- 1.5 lbs whole frozen cherries (with pits) — primary
- 1.5 lbs whole frozen cherries (with pits) — secondary
- 1 packet Red Star Premier Blanc yeast
- ¼ tablespoon FermAid K (yeast nutrient)
- Distilled water to volume (used straight tapwater for this batch)
Instructions
Gather Equipment and Ingredients
Before starting, gather everything you need: your fermenter, airlock, mesh bag, honey, frozen cherries, yeast, and spring water. Having everything ready and sanitized will make the process go smoothly. I'm using a 1.5-gallon fermenter for this batch. The Maker's Mark Premium Wildflower Honey provides a rich, smooth backbone, while the frozen cherries will contribute both flavor and a deep red color. The Red Star Premier Blanc yeast is a reliable choice for fruit meads — it ferments cleanly and lets the fruit character shine through.
Prepare the Cherries
Start by pulling the stems off all the frozen cherries. You don't need to pit them — the pits actually contribute a subtle almond-like complexity during fermentation. Once destemmed, lightly crush each cherry with your fingers. You want to break the skin and release some juice, but be careful not to crush the pit itself. Crushing the pit can release bitter tannins that would make the mead harsh. The goal is to expose the fruit flesh to the must without damaging the pits.
Load Cherries into Mesh Bag
Place all the crushed cherries into a mesh brew bag. Using a mesh bag makes it easy to remove the fruit later — after primary fermentation, you simply lift the bag out rather than having to rack around loose fruit. Tie the bag securely so the cherries stay contained. The bag will go directly into the fermenter with the must, allowing the yeast to work on the fruit while keeping everything contained for easy removal.
Add Honey to the Fermenter
Pour the three pounds of Maker's Mark Premium Wildflower Honey directly into the fermenter. The quality of your honey matters a lot in meadmaking — it's the primary fermentable sugar and the dominant flavor component. Maker's Mark Premium Wildflower Honey has a rich, floral character that pairs beautifully with cherries. If the honey is thick and hard to pour, you can warm the jar in a water bath to make it flow more easily, but avoid heating it too much — excessive heat can drive off delicate aromatics.
Add Water and Mix the Must
Add tapwater to the fermenter, leaving enough headspace for fermentation activity. Mix thoroughly to dissolve the honey completely. This mixture of honey and water is called the must. Stir vigorously to ensure the honey is fully incorporated — undissolved honey at the bottom of the fermenter won't ferment properly and can cause issues later. This batch used straight tapwater — no brewing salts, no Campden tablet for chlorine removal. Just tapwater, honey, fruit, and yeast. Sometimes the simplest approach is the best teacher.
Check Original Gravity
Before aerating and pitching the yeast, take a gravity reading with a triple scale hydrometer. Draw a sample of the must into a test jar, float the hydrometer, and read where the liquid surface crosses the scale. This first reading is your original gravity (OG) — it tells you how much sugar is in the must and lets you calculate the potential alcohol content. For this batch, the OG came in at 1.092, which should yield around 12% ABV if it ferments to dryness. Take note of this number — you'll compare it to your final gravity reading later to determine the actual ABV. Make sure the must is well-mixed before taking the sample, otherwise you might get an inaccurate reading from honey that settled to the bottom. Note: This reading was taken before adding the 1.5 lbs of frozen cherries to primary. The cherries were still frozen solid when added, so they contributed minimal sugar to the must at this point — you can see in the photo that only a tiny bit of color had leached out. The full sugar contribution from those cherries (roughly 0.007 SG) would come later as they thawed and fermented, bringing the true starting gravity to approximately 1.099.
Aerate the Must
Once the gravity is recorded, aerate the must by shaking the fermenter vigorously. This is a critical step — yeast needs oxygen to reproduce and build healthy cell walls during the early stages of fermentation. Shake the fermenter for several minutes, periodically removing the cap to let fresh air in, then shaking again. The more oxygen you introduce now, the healthier your fermentation will be. This is the only time you want oxygen in the mead — after fermentation begins, oxygen becomes your enemy.
Add the Cherry Mesh Bag
Place the mesh bag of crushed cherries into the fermenter with the must. The cherries will float and release their juices gradually as fermentation progresses. The yeast will work on both the honey and the fruit sugars simultaneously. Over the next one to two weeks, the cherries will give up their color, flavor, and sugars to the mead. Primary fermentation with fruit tends to blow off a lot of the volatile aromatic compounds — this is normal and is why we'll add a second batch of cherries in secondary.
Pitch the Yeast
Add one packet of Red Star Premier Blanc yeast to the must. Make sure the must temperature is in the recommended range for this yeast before pitching. Red Star Premier Blanc is a dry yeast strain that ferments cleanly and produces esters that complement fruit meads well. Once the yeast is in, install the airlock on your fermenter. Within 12-24 hours you should see active fermentation — bubbles in the airlock and a layer of foam forming on top of the must.
Primary Fermentation
Primary fermentation runs for roughly three weeks, though the cherries will not stay in that long. Early bubbling in the airlock is vigorous, then gradually tapers as the yeast settles into its work. The fruit bag releases color and flavor quickly at first — by day three the must had already taken on a deep ruby hue. **Note:** In the video below, notice the skewer at the bottom of the airlock holding the fruit bag submerged. CO2 produced during fermentation fills the bag and causes it to float, which can block the airlock if left unchecked. The skewer keeps everything in place. This fermentation kicked off within an hour of pitching yeast — the fastest start I have ever seen. It also turned out to be the most aggressive. The yeast activity built so much pressure that it blew straight through my airlock, popping it off entirely and spilling krausen down the side of the fermenter. I came down to find a sticky mess on the counter and an open fermentation vessel. After cleaning up and sanitizing the airlock, I reinstalled it and refilled the chamber with Bacardi Gold rum. The alcohol creates a hostile environment for any microbes trying to work their way in, and honestly, it smelled a lot better than the sour, yeasty water that had been dripping everywhere.
Remove the Cherry Bag (Day 12)
Around day 12 of fermentation — projected for early August — I will pull the cherry bag out of primary. The mead should have extracted plenty of color and flavor by then, and leaving fruit on the yeast cake much longer can pull harsh tannins from the pits and risk spoilage if the bag breaks the surface. After the bag is out, I will lift it carefully, let it drain back into the fermenter, and discard the spent cherries. The must underneath is already a deep garnet-red and the yeast still has work left to do. Once the bag is removed, the plan is to allow this to finish the time in primary and then transfer the mead to secondary and add a fresh batch of cherries for a second round of flavor and color without the violent CO2 blow-off of primary.
Primary Fermentation Completed
After letting the mead finish its full three weeks in primary, I took a final gravity reading to confirm fermentation was complete. The hydrometer settled at 1.000, which tells me the yeast has consumed virtually all the fermentable sugars from both the honey and the primary cherry addition. The original gravity reading of 1.092 was taken before adding the frozen cherries — once those cherries thawed and contributed their sugars (roughly 0.007 SG), the true starting gravity was approximately 1.099. With that corrected OG and a final gravity of 1.000, the primary fermentation contributed approximately 13.0% ABV using the standard calculation: (1.099 - 1.000) x 131.25. This is a textbook dry finish for a traditional mead, and it's exactly what I want to see before moving to secondary. The deep ruby color from the cherries is already stunning, and now it's ready for the next phase.
Secondary Fermentation
With primary complete, I racked the mead off the yeast cake into a clean secondary fermenter and added another 1.5 lbs of fresh frozen cherries (still with pits). This second addition is all about boosting the cherry aroma and flavor that can get blown off during the vigorous primary fermentation. The transformation was immediate — the mead went from a light, clear reddish liquid to a deep, dark red that looks almost opaque in the fermenter. The cherries also contribute additional sugar. Based on the sugar content of sweet cherries, that 1.5 lbs should add roughly 71g of sugar. Dissolved in 1 gallon, that raises the specific gravity by approximately 0.007, putting the mead at an estimated 1.007 (up from 1.000 after primary). If the yeast ferments that sugar back down to 1.000, the additional ABV from secondary would be roughly 0.9%, bringing the total estimated ABV to around 13.9%. I will take another gravity reading after secondary to confirm. The cherries stayed in for 10 days before I removed them and transferred the mead to a conditioning fermenter for 90 days of bulk aging.
Remove Cherries
After 10 days in secondary, I removed the cherries. The mead had extracted plenty of color and flavor from the second addition — the liquid was already a deep, dark red. I lifted the cherries out carefully, let them drain back into the fermenter, and discarded the spent fruit. With the cherries gone, I took a final gravity reading to see where things stood. The hydrometer settled at 1.000, confirming the yeast had fermented all available sugars. The ABV calculation breaks down like this: the original 1.092 gravity was the honey must alone. The 1.5 lbs of cherries added in primary contributed roughly 0.007 SG of additional sugar, bringing the true starting gravity to approximately 1.099. That primary fermentation contributed (1.099 - 1.000) × 131.25 = 13.0%. The secondary addition of another 1.5 lbs of cherries added roughly 0.007 SG worth of sugar, contributing another 0.007 × 131.25 = 0.9%. Total estimated ABV: 13.9%.
Transfer to Conditioning
With the cherries removed and the gravity confirmed at 1.000, I racked the mead into a clean conditioning fermenter for 90 days of bulk aging. The color is a deep, deep dark red — so dark it looks almost opaque in the fermenter. It's not cloudy at all, just intensely colored from all the fresh cherries. Hopefully some aging will clarify it a bit, but for now it's a beautiful dark ruby-black. The mead needs time to clear and mature before bottling.
Initial Taste Test
I pulled a sample for an initial taste test. The mead hits with an extremely heavy punch of cherry — bold and forward. You can definitely taste the youth of this mead in the alcohol heat, but it also gives off lovely floral notes from the Maker's Mark Premium Wildflower Honey. The clarity is still developing; it's not cloudy, but there's some haze that should drop out with more time. With some age and maybe a little back sweetening to balance the dryness, this is going to be really, really good. The foundation is solid — it just needs patience.
Notes
This is a live batch — started on July 22, 2026. This post will be updated as the mead progresses through each stage. Check back for updates on the cherry bag removal, secondary fermentation, bottling, final gravity, ABV, and tasting notes once it's drinking ready.
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