Mead Recipies

[Alan]

Anybody got a good mead recipie? Also what type of yeast do you prefer to use. Any leads on where to buy 1 gallon carboys, stoppers, and airlocks for cheap? Let me know!

Thanks guys!

[flowerpower]

I'll have to dig out the recipes, but we always use champagne yeast. Don't forget that Mead needs to age at least a yr before you drink it.

[nightmist]

Actually it completely depends on the mead, a lot of foaming meads are ready in six weeks or thereabouts.

So far as yeast, it depends on the type of mead you want.
You can use bakers yeast, as with wine or beer. However as with wine or beer using a beverage yeast will usually give better results. You can use almost any good yeast, champagne, ale, sherry, most wine or beer yeasts will work, or you might choose one of the ones now sold as a "mead yeast". For a fast batch you usually will want an ale yeast, but as with beer or wine it will largely depend on the alcohol content you are aiming for.
You can make a batch with just water, honey, and yeast. I would suggest 5 to 10 pounds of honey to the gallon to start experimenting with. A good many people like to add a bit of acid, usually a lemon's worth of juice or less for a small batch.

Mead making is as broad a field as either beer or wine making, broader in fact since you can expand into braggots, melomels, methoglins, and so on that will encompass beer, wine, and mead together. Do remember that with mead your base ingredient is just as varied as it is with either beer or wine. The number of varieties of honey is just staggering, and at that I have seen arguments as to whether the same variety but from different hives is appreciably different amble on through many a horn of mead!
Beware the to boil or not to boil discussions.

So far as gear the basics are available everywhere from amazon.com to specialty shops. I live in wine country so it is no chore for me to find tools. You might want to hop over to www.gotmead.com and have a look at their newbee pages, as well as their gear. They have tightened up the site a bit in the past few years, more of it is restricted to "patrons", but you should be able to get some good info and a start on tools.

[flowerpower]

Alan, maybe try Craigs List for supplies. And do not use bread yeast for mead. Use a wine strain. And make sure to get out all of the bee parts and anything else that's not honey before you boil it. lol

[landarc]

If you want a fast mead, you can use the ale yeast route, you will find the mead is more harsh and is not as integrated. It will get you drunk though. I would go with the mead yeast, and I would allow at least a year. A lot of folks are telling me that going two years is even better as there is a second, and sometimes a third fermentation that occurs which develops more flavors.

If what you want is one gallon containers, I would go get some apple juice in 1 gallon jugs and hit the web for rubber stoppers and air locks. I use an old apple cider jug and a cheap stopper from the local home brew store for my yeast starters.

[flowerpower]

Mead is a wine, so it does taste better with age. We have some bottles that are 5 yrs old. And it does taste "smoother". We keep it in a dark area of the basement since it is a constant 55 F all yr round.

[Alan]

Thanks for all the tips guys, I've made mead once before but it was done rather haphhazardly, this time it will be done much more professionally. Some of the mead making sites and messageboards I have been reading up on suggest using a fast acting dessert wine yeast and only aging for six weeks. I'll probably experiment with several methods other than champagne yeast, I don't want bottle grenades going off anywhere and I don't want to have to purchase any special bottles. I'm all about doing this on the cheap and playing with it before I advance into actual beer brewing.


If anyone else has any suggestions then please let me know, I am open to anything and I will be using this thread in the near future to document my process in this ancient art form!

[Alan]

Will be starting the mead brewing this week, I bought the bare essentials and made some fermentation vessels out of some five gallon food grade buckets with lids that I drilled into and placed a stopper for an airlock, I also drilled a hole an inch up from the bottom of the bucket for the spghot in order to rack the mead, this will be a fun experiment, the first batch will be nothing more than a basic mead experimental run of about 3 gallons! I'll be sure to update soon!

[acidrain23]

I have been making mead for a number of years. Here are my recommendations. I like a semi sweet fruity melomel, so here is my basic recipe (for 5 gallons):

10-12 lbs organic, unfiltered honey
5-10 lbs of fruit, crushed, in mesh bag
Yeast, Lalvin 71B (yeast starter)
Filtered or Spring water to make about 5.5 gallons

To make a yeast starter: take an empty glass bottle, clean it well and fill about 3/4 full with fruit juice (i've used grape juice, apple juice, etc. OR make a small amount of honey water (the proportions escape me at the moment). Add dehydrated yeast to about 1/8 cup luke warm water and leave undisturbed for about 15 minutes. stir to incorporate all of the yeast and add to your bottle. Attach crude tube blow off to bottle and submerge end in a cup of water. Do this 24 hours before you start your mead. Using a starter makes the use of sulfite's or other chemical preservatives unnecessary. Just make sure you sanitize everything very thoroughly beforehand (including your hands, cookware, anything that will touch the mead).

OK, so heat the honey with about an equal amount of h20 in a large pot for about 15-20 minutes. do not let it boil, skim off waxy foam as it rises to the surface. Pour the hot honey solution over the crushed fruit* in the mesh bag in your plastic primary vessel.
Top with cold water to make about 5.5 gallons, slosh around a little with a ladle to dissolve some O2 and pitch your yeast starter. Attach bucket top with airlock and let it ferment for about a week or two. After that, transfer to glass carboy and rack off of sediment, (usually a layer about an inch to 1.5 inch thick). You are now in secondary fermentation, leave the carboy undisturbed for about three months. You can rack off the accumulated lees again, but I have found that step unnecessary. When mead begins to clear, add an ounce of toasted oak chips. Oak chips add tannins and give mead that barrel aged complexity lacking in meads without. Highly recommended. Wait at least 6 months to drink the finished product, but it is indeed much much better by a year. Wait longer if you can stand it.

RE: Fruit: I have had good luck with berries of all sorts. Frozen berries are fine as the freezing process helps break down the cell walls and allow the juice into your mead readily. And if you need 10 lbs of berries, frozen is definitely the way to go! All kinds of fruit can be added though. Some come out more insipid than others- I have had bad luck with mangoes and strawberries.

RE: Yeast- Lalvin 71B is a wine yeast that produces a semi sweet fruity and complex character that is lacking with some of the other yeasts (champagne yeast for example). Nothing else I have tried has even come close to making as tasty of a beverage.

Watch out! Mead gets you wasted quickly (and goes down easy). Additionally, mead can give you terrible hangovers because of the sugar content. But man, that stuff is tasty! Good luck with your meads!

[Alan]

Wow, even more great advice! Thanks.

Being as Christmas is all about Alchemy, yesterday I made batch one using my new fermentation vessels, five full gallons.

I did use Lalvin 71B for that batch, I think it will turn out well, I also added some pure maple syrup to the must for character and a good hand full of Alpine Strawberries, it should prove interesting.

I'm going to make five more gallons tonight using a mix of three seperate yeasts for experimentation, this will be nothing more than a straight mead.

Once I can afford some more honey and the equpment/supplies I need, I plan to make about 15 gallons, experimenting with different yeasts, varietal honeys and so on.

Hey CFF, if you read this, do you sell honey? For how much?

Keep the advice coming guys!

Your Friend,
Alan

[juliekru]

Alan,
Our good friend makes copious amouts of mead out of his house as well as ale. I'll link him to this thread, I'm sure he has something to add. Also, CFF's honey is the bomb!!
Julie

[Alan]

Thanks Julie, I appreciate it!

[flowerpower]

Dec 27, 2008 18:45:33 GMT -5 juliekru said:

Alan,
Our good friend makes copious amouts of mead out of his house as well as ale. I'll link him to this thread, I'm sure he has something to add. Also, CFF's honey is the bomb!!
Julie

CFF sent you honey? I am sooo jealous.

[cff]

Glad you liked it Julie

[mnjrutherford]

We made 15 gallons of meade for our wedding. Well, technically 10 gallons of meade and 5 gallons of elderberry melomel. I agree with the wine grade yeast.

We were mentored and tutored by Phil Montalbano of Fermentation Frenzy located in Los Altos California. He was an excellent source of information particularly about the yeasts. His shop has now "merged" with another shop but here is a link (I think it will become a link, if not, cut and paste) to his yeast page:

morewinemaking.com/search/103215/beerwinecoffee/coffeewinebeer/Wine_Yeast

We were married in 1999 and after the wedding we bottled a portion of the leftovers with specific drinking dates of 5, 10, 15, and 20th anniversaries. We'll be cracking open the 10th year bottle this year in July. We are expecting it to be very good.

Interestingly, we used the same must for both wines. We simply added the elderberry crush to one of the buckets. However, the meade became syrupy thick and sweet. Excellent for hot mulled wine at Christmas. The melomel on the other hand became light, dry, and airy. Almost like, hmm... a cloud upon the tongue? The bouquet as well is light and delicate. I was amazed at the difference that the fruit made.

Currently we have a 5 gal bucket going that is flavored with blueberry crush. I think Mike will be straining and racking it for bottling in a couple months. This batch is made from the first honey gathered by our North Carolina bees on our very own land. We are pretty darned excited!