Now that your fruit and water mixture has been sitting for 7-10 days, its time to strain it and
add the honey and nutrient. I take a large bucket and put a strainer across the top. I then put a piece of cheesecloth over the strainer so that all the little pieces get strained out of the liquid. Once I dump all the liquid through the strainer, I let it sit for a couple hours to be sure that all the juice gets out of the pulp. Next I add the honey. The recipe calls for 3 lbs of honey per gallon of the final amount of mead. Since this is going to be a 5 gallon batch, I would use 15 lbs of honey. However, since watermelon is very sweet, I'm going to try to only add 2 lbs of honey per gallon for a total of 10 lbs. This should make the mead more flavorful and less percent of alcohol. This should still be
plenty strong enough because the standard 3 lbs per gallon makes fairly strong alcohol. I have yet to actually measure the alcohol content of my mead, but it is obviously quite potent. I like to add the honey when it is slightly warm so that it blends in well. It shouldn't be hot because it will kill the yeast. The next thing you add is the yeast nutrient. The kind I have says to add 1/2 teaspoon per gallon, but a different kind may vary in amount needed. Mix this all up really well and put the lid on the bucket with the airlock in place. At this point you do not want any bacteria getting into your mead because you could end up with vinegar. Let this mixture sit in the bucket for another 7-10 days and stay tuned for the next step!
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