Tonight I began making an experimental one-gallon batch of strawberry guava melomel (fruit-flavored mead), adapted from a recipe for kiwi fruit melomel in Making Wild Wines & Meads: 125 Unusual Recipes Using Herbs, Fruits, Flowers & Moreby Pattie Vargas and Rich Gulling. I’ll list the ingredients up front, and then post each step of the recipe as I do it.

3 pounds ripe strawberry guavas
3 pounds lover honey
1 cup sugar
Sufficient water to make 1 gallon
0.5 g potassium metabisulfite or one Campden tablet
1.25 gram grape tannin
4 grams acid blend
5 grams pectic enzyme
5 grams yeast nutrient (diammonium phosphate)
0.5 g Fermaid
5 g wine yeast

Mix one part honey with two part water. Boil for 30 minutes, skimming off scum (coagulated proteins that will cloud the wine). While the honey is boiling, wash strawberry guavas. Crush in ricer over primary fermenter.* Pour hot water and honey mixture through remaining pulp, then empty ricer into cotton straining bag, tie securely, and dump into fermenter. Add sufficient water to make one gallon. Add all the other ingredients except the yeast, yeast nutrient, Fermaid, and grape tannins. Let sit for 24 hours at 75° F, tightly covered.

Time required: 2 hours.

* Your local hardware or paint store will have 2-gallon high density polyethylene (HDPE) buckets with liquid-tight lids, which are an ideal size for fermenting a gallon or so of must.