I’ve been talking about using jam to brew for long enough. So today I did it. Similar to the mead recipes, this uses a couple of jars of strawberry jam. I hope it will taste nyom.

It was really quick to make too. Just heated up everything to melt it, added ingredients, and pitched the yeast. Simples!

  • 2 jars of Oak Lane Strawberry Conserve = ~900g of jam
  • A 411g tin of John West Strawberries in Light Syrup (drained, making it about 150-175g of strawberries plus some leftover syrup)
  • 5 litres of Crystal Springs Stillwater
  • Approximately 200g of Gem granulated sugar
  • 7g of Tesco Fast Action Dried Yeast

As you can tell, I really didn’t go for top-quality products here, let alone precise measurements for pretty much anything. I don’t even have a hydrometer handy, so who knows how strong this baby is going to be.

The label on the jam says that there’s 66g of sugar per 100g of product, so that’d mean there’s almost 600g of sugar already there. I added some extra sugar (around 200g, at a guess) bringing it to a total of 800g. The tin of strawberries also has sugar in the syrup, and of course the strawberries themselves will have some natural sugar.

So first of all, I chucked about a litre or so of the water into a pot and heated it up. Once it was nicely warm I threw in the two jars of jam. I let it heat up further – but never boiling – and mixed it around so it melted nicely.

Grand bit of jam in there. I skimmed off some of that white stuff.

After about 15 minutes of pissing around, stirring, and trying to make up an “expert opinion” on how to brew this one, I opened the tin of strawberries, drained most of the syrup out and put them in the pot. The pot was almost overflowing at this stage. I need to plan these things better.

Using my wooden spoon I gently squeezed some of the strawberries, to release juice, and to allow fluids to pass through them.

After another 5 or 10 minutes I emptied out an extra pint or so of water from the 5 litre bottle, scooped the strawberries out of the pot and put them in the bottle. Following this, I poured the rest of the stuff in with a funnel.

Finally, I pitched the yeast straight in on top, and gave the bottle a gently jostle to spread the yeast over the top layer, and to slightly get in under the surface of the liquid itself. It’s fizzing away nicely there now.

No airlock, so tied a folded sheet of kitchen roll over the top with some string.

And that’s that. Job’s a good’un. The strawberries all sank to the bottom of the bottle, but some are rising really, really slowly to the top. It’s like watching a giant fruity alcoholic lava lamp.

The finished product. Job.

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