Bloody hell! This is magnificent KF brewing 'tism: are you pressing all the fruit yourself or using juice/concentrate? If you have a straight up mead recipe that works, please share: I have access to raw honey and comb, but haven't been arsed to get a batch on yet.
For my first shitty fruited batches that I'm trying to save, I used whole fruit that was pectinase'd and also cold macerated. Unfortunately, whole fruit is a lot of annoyance. It floats in the carboy, sometimes to the extent that it's entirely dry and starts clogging your airlock. It also has to be punched down 1-2 times a day to prevent mold from growing. And strawberries specifically create a disgusting flavor and smell that is almost identical to the smell of a Bandaid if you use them any longer than a few days. My passion fruit batch used puree in both the primary and secondary, and its fruit flavor is extremely pronounced, but without the pain of using larger chunks. Honestly, until I decide I want to try a grape wine, I'll probably stick to puree or juice. It's so much less annoying.
Avoid comb in brewing. While some beekeepers convinced me that my first batches taste bad because of thymol taint from my wife treating her hives for mites, I'm convinced it's because she waited too long to bring the frames to me for extraction and the honey began absorbing moisture from the air and prematurely fermenting in the comb, pulling nasty pine sap or propolis flavors out of the wax. Just get some quality honey from a seller with unique varietals. Honeycomb is really absorbent and tends to pull odors and flavors from its surroundings.
If you want a "straight up mead", the recipe is just a good honey, good water, and an appropriate yeast:
-My favorite honey on earth is Lehua ($50 per 10 pound bag from Wao Kele). It has a distinct tropical fruit taste.
-Go to any grocery store and buy gallons of filtered spring water, not distilled; tap water is perfectly fine, but it depends on your local water quality, and you want to get a publicly available report to find out the amounts of chloride and chloramine in it to avoid their effects on fermentation (which can be mitigated if your water is high in these).
-Go read Lalvin's spec sheets on their yeasts and use one that preserves varietal flavors of whatever ingredients you're using. DV10 and D47 preserve honey varietals. QA23 and 71B preserve fruit notes. These can all be bought in 5g packets, and you only need about 2g per gallon. But they have about 30 strains, so read the spec sheet and see if another one sounds more appealing than what I suggested. And then there's White Labs and SafAle and Red Star and a few other big brands with lots of other strains.
If you want a simple but great one:
-2.4 lbs of your favorite honey
-Filtered water to 1.0 gallon, stir and aerate well.
-Hydrate 1.3g Go-Ferm, then throw in 1g of DV10; I'm sure you know to let it adjust to temperature and SG before pitching.
-This starts at 1.086 (11.5% when dry). Once it's dry, let it sit on lees for a week until it floculates, then rack onto stabilizers, wait 24 hours, and backsweeten with 5 oz of the same honey.
-Acid/tannin/oak to personal taste.
That's as basic as it gets, but still tastes amazing. DV10 is really good at letting the honey's uniqueness come through.
