A mead brewing project

[Okbrewer]

Well, I finally did something with my base mead! I split it into 4 different projects! I took one gallon and mixed it with some Rose Hip syrup I had, pretty color, hope the flavor and aroma stay evident.

Into a 3 gallon carboy I poured about a gallon of pear juice and pulp, and about a half gallon of apple cider that I mixed some additional honey into, and then racked the mead onto that. (Oh, and I put 3 crushed campden tablets into the must.)

Into another 3 gallon carboy, I racked my base mead and into that put 2 T each of coarsely crushed black pepper and grains of paradise. This "Black Pepper Mead" is a winner!

Into the remaining mead I added apple cider, apple and black currant juice and some elderflower syrup. We'll see...

I also made a wine from a chenin blanc kit, but the juice was oxidized so it finished more coppery brown in color, so it is my Chenin Brun! Tastes and smells good, just kinda...brown! I filled about 12 bottles, and still have almost 3 gallons remaining that I may add honey to to make into a mead/pyment.

Bob R in OKC

[cdh]

Sounding great, Bob!

I have a 6 lbs of honey sitting around now awaiting mead inspiration... maybe 2.5 gallons of your pepper mead might be the thing... One way or the other, I have to get it fermenting sometime soon. I still really like how the batch fermented with witbier yeast came out... maybe I'll use some of that to get it going.

[FoodMan]

If it is not too much to ask, for reference, can one of you expert meaders post a recipe in RecipeGullet for mead? I enjoy these slow long projects that require very little effort and a base recipe would be great to start from at some point.

Oh, yes and some pictures of a finished mead would be great here too .

[Okbrewer]

The first page of this thread lists equipment and supplies needed for mead making as well as a basic recipe, found here:

http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...ndpost&p=696936

Bob R in OKC

[cdh]

May as well report in on the meady doings I've begun lately...

I ended up making a full 5 gallons, and I like my mead dry, so I shot for about 2 pounds of honey per gallon. I used 9 pounds of Trader Joe's Desert Mesquite and a pound or so) of 1976 vintage pitch black home-made Pennsylvania countryside wild honey from my parents' stock. I find that tea tannins play well in mead, but I didn't want to heat the honey up to black tea steeping temperatures, so I decided to use green tea instead. I heated 2.5 gallons of water up to 160 and added all the honey, which dropped it down to about 145. I added some green tea leaves to one of my honey cans and filled the can with the honey water and let it steep for 3 minutes and then strained the leaves out and put the liquid back in the pot. I repeated that procedure a couple more times, as these tea leaves produce multiple good infusions. I took a bit of the must and diluted it with cold water and added some yeast slurry to wake the yeast up and get them going a bit while the bulk of the must cooled down. I decided to repeat an earlier succesful experiment and used a belgian white beer yeast to ferment the mead.

After the bulk cooled down, I diluted it out to 5 gallons and added my yeast starter at 66F, and added in a teaspoon of urea and ammonium phosphate to feed the yeast. Then it went down to the basement to let the yeast do their thing.

[Malkavian]

I've heard mesquite makes for interesting meads Chris, be sure to keep us updated on how it progresses

I hope to get a Cyser going here soon with fresh pressed apple juice and sourwood honey along with cinnamon and nutmeg.

The black pepper mead OKbrewer posted also sounds intriguing. May give that a shot with some of the 2004 clover honey I have sitting around.

[FoodMan]

This is all very interesting and I really appreciate all the info/experiments. How do you know how much juice to add to your mead after the initial fermentation? are you mainly going by taste here or is there a more accurate scientific explanation?

[Mallet]

I thought I would bump this thread up, since I've been musing about making mead myself these past few days.

A friend and I made maple syrup this year, and after a few weeks of labour ended up with about 35L of the good stuff. I'd love for some help developing a maple mead recipe. I've barely every tasted mead (maybe 1-2, and I think those were sparkling), and certainly never made it (although I've been making beer with the help of cdh's course).

I'm looking for a beverage that has a medium amount of body, and that will convey the aromatics/subtleties of our syrup.

Upthread, it seems like brewing batches as small as 1 gallon is a viable proposition, which would be ideal as I don't want to sacrifice too much of the maple syrup .

[lemniscate]

I wonder if any of the previous meads in this thread aged well and were heartily consumed?

 

I did a micro-batch of homemade mead, I wanted dry.  I also used a Belgian beer yeast. And a good quality honey.

It's been aging 8 months on now.

Boy, did I get dry, I mean acidic dry.

It's vinegar.   But mead vinegar is a very trendy item now, so chalk it up to experience.