Mead instructional

[Lamppa]

why isnt there a sticky mead how to? there are sticky's on other topics, not mead.




I had my first mead at the local home brewers meeting last night.....gotta have some of that.

[gplutt]

I just opened a bottle of 2 year old dry mead last week. It was horrible after 6 months, now I regret opening that bottle because its become pretty good. I'll open another bottle next year, maybe.

What kind of mead did you try?

[Lamppa]

wish I knew...im so green I didint know what to ask the maker...ask Sanders.

this guy had it in 12 oz bottles, so it wasnt too painful for him to open each one i spose.

[fireballmatt]

I made a batch of mead a year and half ago. After a month is was like jet fuel...just nearly undrinkable. After 6 months it was a little better, but not much. At the one year mark it was damn good, at the year and half mark it was amazing. I'm wondering if it can get any mellower than it is, guess I'll see at 2 years.

Oh, and I'll be making another batch and not touching it until the 2 year mark at least.

[christo]

why isnt there a sticky mead how to?

Kristen England did a great talk on why the Minneapolis Boys always win meadmaker of the year. Go to http://www.ahaconference.org/speakerspresentation_2008.html and look for Kristen's pdf.

The early hotness can be reduced and you can attain drinkable mead in a much shorter time with an aerate/nutrient addition regimen for the first week. We had a very high gravity mead (it was over 20%) that was out of this world that was only 3 months old at the time of consumption.

We hold a mead-only competition each year and we'll always pull out some very old "club" meads to see how they are holding up. The oldest this year was 7 years and it was fantastic. Some years the older ones have mellowed into almost a tasteless water with a kick but this year's metheglin still had lots of spices and subtle honey flavor. It would have probably been BOS if it had been entered.

[Evan!]

Making mead is my Brew Year's Resolution. I bought Ken Shramm's "Compleat Meadmaker", but I haven't gotten around to doing anything with it yet. But I recommend this book if you're serious about getting into this.

[ohiobrewtus]

I've always wanted to try mead as well, but I've only had it once, and it was jacked up with so much cinnamon that it tasted like Big Red chewing gum (at NHC 2008). I'd like to try a more 'normal' mead or two before I invest what looks like 2-3 times as much as I would into a batch of beer. Quality honey is not cheap.

[flyangler18]

Making mead is my Brew Year's Resolution. I bought Ken Shramm's "Compleat Meadmaker", but I haven't gotten around to doing anything with it yet. But I recommend this book if you're serious about getting into this.

That's a great book! I have it as well, but haven't yet gotten off my ass to actually get a batch of mead going. There are a number of apiaries in my area, might need to investigate a bit more closely. :D

[Evan!]

I haven't read too much of the book, but does anyone have any experience with the honies (damn, them some FLY honies!) from Northern Brewer? I'd like to source some local stuff but I'm afraid it will be prohibitively expensive to get enough for a batch.

[jirish]

My last batch of mead has turned out great so far. I used honey from 2 sources, one from fain's honey (http://www.fainshoney.com/honey1.asp) and the orange blossom from northern brewer. The Fain's honey was very light and so awesome. The Orange blossom honey is not as light in taste but still awesome. You can mix honeys or just use one type, up to you. But I will say the longer your mead sits the better it gets!

[vtchuck]

So the last time we were in this tourist trap "Country Store"
that overcharges skiers and other flatlanders for Vermont made
stuff, I bought a bottle of Honey Gardens Traditional Mead, produced and bottled in Shelburne. Paid about ~$14 for 750ml bottle.

Still haven't tried it, but it might be worth looking for at your local wine shop.

[gplutt]

Making mead is my Brew Year's Resolution. I bought Ken Shramm's "Compleat Meadmaker", but I haven't gotten around to doing anything with it yet. But I recommend this book if you're serious about getting into this.

Yeah, thats a great book. One piece of advice that he gives is to start out pretty simple. Just do a straight dry mead first.

(this is from Ken's book, but its basically the recipe I followed when I did my first one a couple years ago)

10 pounds high quality varietal honey
4 gallons water (enough to make 5 gallons of must)

Mix this together, you can warm it up a bit to get all the honey out of its containers and maybe to mix it up a bit but DON'T BOIL IT. If you boil it its gonna smell delicious...which means you are driving off all the volatile honey aroma, just warm it up if you need to to mix it.

He adds 2 tsp yeast energizer and 2 tp yeast nutrient to his must, I didn't and it turned out okay, but with honey I think its a good idea, off the top of my head I know it lacks FAN, probably some other important yeast nutrients, calcium? I'll have to look it up.

If you are going to use liquid yeast, I'd recommend making a gigantic starter (like if you were going to make a 1.080 beer). I used dry Red Star champagne yeast on mine; my LHBS owner likes D-47.

He suggest adding 4 oz of oak chips four to seven days before bottling. Again, I didn't; but I can see how the tannins and extra mouthfeel would be good.

My second batch I secondaried it with cranberries. I couldn't find fresh ones, so I used dried. I washed the sugar off of them and added them to secondary. Inadvertently I think I made something better than what I had in mind in the first place, It picked up tannins from the skins and it gave it a really light purplish tint (if you didn't know to look for it you probably wouldn't see it) and just a faint hint of cranberries. Happy accident.

Thats a basic mead. If you wanna start adding all sorts of flavors what Ken says is to add it to already finished mead, there is no sense in making 5 gallons of cinnamon sugar toast mead that you can't drink. reserve a gallon off and do it with that, or make a mixture and add it to a bottle after you open it to get the proportions correct. In my opinion, don't overdo it on the extra flavors, keep it simple, or at least subtle. Especially on your first batch.

http://home.comcast.net/~mzapx1/

I've seen this guy around on some forums, he seems to have a pretty good handle on whats up with mead I read through his page before making my first batch. Again, if you plan on getting into it, think about getting the Compleat Meadmaker.

[Lamppa]

im drunk....and this ias awesime...so thanks for the sweet stuff, im gonna make some,

[PseudoChef]

My favorite tip from Schramm:

Pour honey and water into bucket fermenter. Use a cake mixer to blend together.

[Joos]

I love mead!!! My buddy keeps giving me bottles he made in 05 and 06. Its freakin amazing! Now that I have the room for long term aging its second on my list after a lambic ( wanna get some gueze going)

[Diver Down]

I have been keeping bees for 12 years. And NO I don't like mead!

[DrunkTrucker]

I have a couple of meads that I made last year. The prickly pear is almost a year old. The blackberry one is about 9 mo. old. I usually just take about 12 lbs of honey from costco and and about 2 gallons of water and heat those up in a pot to get it mixed up. Then I cool that down and add it to the fermenter and top up to 5 gallons. I've only used the D47 yeast and it works pretty good. I plan on entering the prickly pear into a mead comp thats held here in Phx every year around July. I really want to hear some feedback on it. I don't know really what a good mead is suppose to taste like.

[Joos]

I have been keeping bees for 12 years. And NO I don't like mead!

wanna sell some honey?

[fireballmatt]

I have been keeping bees for 12 years. And NO I don't like mead!

Wow, I didn't know that. Do you by any chance sell the honey? I'm close enough to you to make the drive worth it and have been looking for a source of local honey.

[Joos]

Wow, I didn't know that. Do you by any chance sell the honey? I'm close enough to you to make the drive worth it and have been looking for a source of local honey.

thanks for 1uping me ;)

[fireballmatt]

thanks for 1uping me ;)

Didn't mean it that way, just figured if there was a waiting list I should get my name on it :)

[christo]

I've always wanted to try mead as well, but I've only had it once, and it was jacked up with so much cinnamon that it tasted like Big Red chewing gum (at NHC 2008). I'd like to try a more 'normal' mead or two before I invest what looks like 2-3 times as much as I would into a batch of beer. Quality honey is not cheap.

Gallberry, Saw Palmetto, and a few other honeys have an extremely high cinnamon spicy character to them without adding anything to them, almost like drinking a Red Hot. You might have drunk a mead with one of those varietals.

The varietal honeys make a huge difference in the flavors derived.

[sanders5x]

wish I knew...im so green I didint know what to ask the maker...ask Sanders.

this guy had it in 12 oz bottles, so it wasnt too painful for him to open each one i spose.

I think it was just a standard sweet mead, with some petulance(sp) or carbonation.

[karmabrew]

I heard an old Podcast of the Jamil Show the other day when he had Ken Schramm, author of the Compleat Meadmaker on as a guest. There was a lot of good info on that show. Now I'm really tempted to pick up that book. I would love to try my hand at making a mead someday.

[akboehl]

mead making seems pretty easy. I may give it a try.

[BlindLemonLars]

Zombie thread!

I've been meaning to start a batch of mead for a few years now, put one of these semi-retired 5 gallon carboys to good use. Maybe I'll check the other site for a mead instructional thread, who knows. Damn...if I'd started it when I first thought about it, I'd be drinking the stuff by now!

Is there any krausen to speak of? Just wondering if I need to allow some headspace, or can I ferment 5 gallons in a 5 gallon bottle?

[hubie]

Is there any krausen to speak of? Just wondering if I need to allow some headspace, or can I ferment 5 gallons in a 5 gallon bottle?

I just started making them myself. In fact, I've got one started this evening, a pomegranate melomel. I've got four one gallon jugs going at the moment because I wanted to figure this mead making out before I commit to buying 20 lbs of honey at a shot.

Anyway, I haven't seen a large amount of krausen, however one place you will have an issue is when/if you do a stepped nutrient addition. If you read Schramm's book or look at a lot of older recipes, you add all your yeast nutrient and energizer up front. What the current practice is, is to break that nutrient amount up into thirds and add them 24 hours apart. When you do that, you stir your must and it can degas quite a bit. That is where having little headspace is going to give you problems. It fizzes up like soda at first.

Since I've been doing 1-gallon batches, I've been doing primary fermentations in a 2-gallon plastic bucket, then when the gravity is down around 1.010 or less, I transfer into 1-gallon jugs. I do have one 5-gallon batch going right now, made from honey my sister gave me for mead making, and for that I picked up a new 6.5 gallon bucket. I was warned to not use plastic fermenters used for beer making because you can pick up flavors from the hop oils that have leached into the bucket (it would be OK to use one, I presume, if you were making a braggot).

The place to check is over at GotMead.com (http://www.gotmead.com/). Lots of great intro info there. The aforementioned Jamil Show interview with Schramm (http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/membersarchive/Jamil12-01-08.mp3) is excellent as well. Schramm's book is very good, and I recommend you get it if you want to make meads, but the real meat of that book is covered in that interview.

EDIT: Forgot to add that when you bulk age, just like with big beers you want as little head space as you can, so that's where your 5-gal bottle will come in handy for a 5-gal batch.

[BlindLemonLars]

Thanks Hubie, good info. I'm doing some reading over at GotMead.com right now.

[maltdiznee]

I haven't read too much of the book, but does anyone have any experience with the honies (damn, them some FLY honies!) from Northern Brewer? I'd like to source some local stuff but I'm afraid it will be prohibitively expensive to get enough for a batch.
the honey's from northern brewer are pretty good i use the orange blossom honey in a beer recipe. but i've come to find that some of the best tasting and highest quality honey's come from local honey farmers in my neck of the woods (central & southeast wisconsin) or else in minnesota. it can actually be cheaper buying it right from a honey farmer. there is a honey farmer right up the street from my folks house and we buy honey from him for general cooking and he charges us $10 a gallon it's alfalfa honey and it is light and floral the best shit i've ever had. NB charges like $43 a gallon but the stuff they have is also really good it's just expensive. so if you can find a farmer they like cash like the rest of us

[christo]

A word of caution on head space. If you follow the current line of fermentation thought with the stepped nutrient additions, you WILL get lots of foaming for a short period of time, so using a 7 gal bucket for the first several weeks is not a bad thing to do, plus it makes it easier to make the additions and to stir in. Then rack to the secondary for long term conditioning.

If you don't do the stepped additions, then typically it is a very low krausen.

[BlindLemonLars]

Thanks Christo, sounds like good advice. I'll definitely start with a bucket.