| hopbarley.org | ^recipes |
|
comment | copyright |
Welcome to the Bee's Lees II. This is a collection of recipes posted to the Mead Lover's Digest mailing list. The original Bee's Lees was compiled and edited by Joyce Miller. Unfortunately, that was in 1994. A lot of recipes have been posted since that time, and this is my attempt at organizing them. I used Joyce's original method for choosing which recipes to include. Basically, the poster had to specifically mention that the resulting mead was at least "pretty good". I've tried to credit each recipe with the author's name and e-mail address as it appeared on the Digest. If I've made any mistakes, please let me know so that I can correct them. I've also added one section that wasn't included in the original Bee's Lees - a section with recipes for cooking with mead. This list is free to use & distribute, except for commercial purposes. Give this away - don't sell it! Enjoy!
Sheryl Nance-Durst
sherylnd@sound.net
November 1997
Source: DaveP@eworld.com
Mead Lover's Digest #414 13 June 1995
Get a good yeast starter going, and when it's ready, mix the honey, maple syrup and water in a fermenter. Shake like the dickens until it's mixed. Add the yeast starter. Relax.
It turned out very well, except for maybe being a
bit too alcoholic for some people's tastes.
Source: Gary Watts (Volt Temporary) <a-garyw@microsoft.com>
Mead Lover's Digest #425 20 August 1995
The 'must' came out like a porter.
Over the next week the fermenting stopped dead but the mead was still dark. It tested at about 8%. I added a pinch of yeast nutrient again and gently rolled the jug to unsettle the dead cells at the bottom. It blew off more than it did the first time.
I repeated this process for the next few weeks until the mead was clear as water. The resulting tests showed an increase to 12% them 15%. I usually let it go until at least 17% so I watched the airlock for another week.
To my amazement four days later, the airlock had stopped moving and the mead was very clear. It tested out at 20.3%. I was so shocked that I tested it three times and they all came out the same.
I botched an old recipe but the mead came out a very powerful 20.3%.
The resulting beverage tasted very much like a flat dry champagne.
During the act of creating this wonder the cats tried to kill each other and I added TWO CUPS of dark tea. (The correct recipe was 2 TABLESPOONS)
Except for a very dry taste, it turned out very palatable.
I took the bottles to a birthday party and they went in half
an hour with people asking for more. I'm starting a new batch
this weekend but unlike last time, I'm putting a few bottles away
to let them carbonate, this should wind up tasting like champagne.
Source: olson99@mack.Rt66.com (Gordon Olson)
Mead Lover's Digest #438 21 October 1995
Initially, only six pounds of the honey was added to preboiled water and pasteurized at 150 F for 15 minutes with the yeast nutrient and hulls. After cooling with an immersion chiller, the yeast starter
was added and air was pumped through the must for
25 minutes with an aquarium pump.
After one month the specific gravity dropped to 1.008, so the mead was racked and two more pounds of honey were added. After another five weeks, the gravity was 1.020, the pH was 3.2, and the acidity
was 0.7% acid. This was too acidic, so I added the
calcium carbonate. After another month, the numbers were 1.015,
3.7, and 0.6%. I then added the sodium benzoate to kill off the
yeast and another half pound of honey. Three days later I added
the sparkaloid and polyclar. Then one week later with a specific
gravity of 1.019, I bottled straight from the carboy. I should
have waited longer to add the clarifiers and even longer to bottle.
Then I would have had less sediment in the bottle.
This mead was started in August of 1994 and bottled
in December of that year. At the first round of the AHA National
Competition in May 1995, the judges (in Texas) did not recognize
the orange blossom aroma and thought it was "yeasty."
They scored it at 29 points. In June at the Mazer Cup Competition,
the judges thought that the orange blossom aroma was excellent,
but the mead needed more complexity. They gave it 36 points. At
the New Mexico State Fair competition for wines and meads it received
a gold medal and the best of show in the amateur division. The
wine judges were impressed by the wonderful bouquet.
This is a very simple mead that get all of its character
from the honey. This particular batch of honey had the best aroma
of any orange blossom honey that I have ever experience. It is
worthwhile to hunt out good smelling and good tasting honeys.
Source: "Charlie Moody" <chmood@photobooks.atdc.gatech.edu>
Mead Lover's Digest #465
5 March 1996
Fixed up the starter this afternoon: emptied the bread yeast into a ½ G Pyrex measuring cup (thank the gods for Pyrex!), whisked it into a cup of boiling water; added a cup of honey & whisked that in, then added water to 3 pints. When it had cooled t o about 80F, I added 2 packets of premier couvee yeast, poured it off into a half-gallon jug, capped it & shook. Within an hour, the lid was chattering away happily.
After sterilizing everything, I brought 2 G of spring water to a boil, added 4 quarts of tupelo honey from the local co-op, brought it up to 180F & kept it there for 30 min. Turned off the stove & added the "acid blend". I thought the lemon would be a n ice note w/ the tupelo, and the cranberries' tartness a nice contrast. The tea was added for 'depth' (?). Then the hulls & energizer got stirred well in, and the whole thing sat in an ice bath in the sink for an hour or so.
Poured the must into 1.5 gallons of cold water, & quickly scooped some up for the gravity test: 1.100, on the nose! The flavor is much milder than I'd expected, and there's less of a sense of sweetness than my other musts (generic/1.1225, orange/1.090).
I still have a quart of that same honey, and I'll probably be feeding this one as it goes along, if the premier couvee is as attenuative as everyone says.
I'd like this one to end up as a sippin' mead, with just enough sweetness to balance the tupelo signature & the "acid blend" ('course, who knows if there's enough of any of that to make a difference?). 03/13/96: bubbling once every 2 seconds. Smells remarkably like tupelo honey.... Opaque as anything, and very fizzy-looking, and thoroughly delightful-smelling. This I have no qualms about leaving alone for 2 weeks.
Average temp = 72F.
Sept 22 96 Both have turned out wonderfully [the traditional tupelo and a tropical ambrosia melomel]: after sitting in their carboys for six months, they both got thoroughly tasted at a Labor Day party, and at a Goodbye Summer party, two gallons of the melomel & one liter of the tupelo at each function. Survey says that each is a big hit with pretty much everyone who tasted them (a couple of Jack Daniels fans said they tasted like Mogen David). I got kissed a lot, and toasted a lot.
The both really are very good, I'm pleased (and amazed)
to say. Both a still, and clear as a bell, and each is a rich
deep golden color. The melomel is distinctively fruity, and the
tupelo is distinctively tupelo. They're smooth, mildly sweet,
and carry no off-flavors. I can hardly wait for them to age
enough to *really* show off!
Source: Ron Raike <ron@mail.creol.ucf.edu>
Mead Lover's Digest #500 26 September 1996
Started by generating ~4 gal RO water. Then treating it with ½ tsp. gypsum, ½ tsp. CaCO3, ¼ tsp. Sea Salt. Brought to a full boil in 8 gal. brew pot for 30 min. Heat off, added some orange and some lime peels and ½ oz coriander (all ground together), let sit and cool to 90C. Added Honey and maple syrup. Temp dropped to 80C. Back on heat. Added strained juice of 6 fresh off the tree Florida lemons and 4 fresh Florida limes - 16 oz.
Stirred a few times for 30 min. Temp back up to 90 - kept there. Added juice with pulp - 6 more lemons and 4 limes. Some hot break forming and moving. Chopped remainder peels and coriander in chopper and added. Let sit 10 min. Heat off. Final Temp at 90C. Stirred well (whirl pooled). Covered with saran wrap, put lid back on and ice bathed (lots of ice) for 2.5 hrs. Removed saran wrap to find a nice conical forming upward from the center of the brew pot - from whirl pooling. Clear with spices and fruit mostly in the center. Some haze in suspension. Racked to carboys. 2.5 gal. got the a champagne yeast starter and 3.5 gals. got the Wyeast Mead Sweet yeast starter. Both were started with a honey based starter solution at ~1.050 - 1.5 liters for 1 week repitched twice.
OG of the must was ~1.14 - only way to measure was to cut in half with water and measured 1.070. Nice citric smell and taste. Tried to keep temp at 68-75F for fermenting. Champagne carboy was racked at 40 days and bottled 35 days later, very clear and went straight into bottles. FG is 1.020. Kinda hot for my liking.
Racked the Wyeast Sweet carboy in 2 weeks down to 1.065 and bottled 2 months later, very clear and still, no prime - straight into bottles. FG is 1.045.
This may be considered by some to be a metheglin but the honey and alc's really comethrough and balance well with the fruit and spice flavor. No nutrients were used. This is the 1st place traditional mead for the '96 MCMC. Judge comments include: "Excellent cacophony of flavors this is so big yet well balanced to the Nth degree - clean, not burning or rough" - "Well balanced and very mellow - clean finish and big strength - great job!" ... Thanks.
Final scores - 41,38.
Source: Dave Polaschek <davep@best.com>
Mead Lover's Digest #590 2 September 1997
I heated the water to make things dissolve easier. It might've gotten as warm as 170F before I started pouring in honey, but no attempt was made to heat & hold to kill bugs.
After 7 months, the final comment in my log is: "Incredibly yummy" at which point I quit taking notes on it.
I'd call that a success, except for the not making enough part.
With 5 quarts (quick mental calculation says that's 11-15 pounds, depending on how far down it's been boiled), you've got enough to scale the batch up to 10 or 12 gallons with no problems.
The dark wildflower honey is a Minnesota woodland
blend. I suspect it was actually made of mostly of honey from
trees. The only other clue about its exact composition I have
is that a mead made just with that dark honey ended up tasting
of anise, in spite of no noticeable anise quality to the honey,
and no weirdness during the fermentation.
Source: Gordon L. Olson glo@beta.lanl.gov
Mead Lover's Digest #322, 1 July 1994
Ingredients were pasteurized at 165 F for 45 min. Then I cooled the must and strained out the spices. I pitched 10 gm of Lalvin K1V-1116 yeast. After one month the specific gravity was down to 0.997, so I racked it into a clean carboy and added 5 sodium benzoate stabilizing tablets to kill off the yeast. It was drier than I wanted and the nutmeg dominated the spices too much, so I added 2 pounds of honey and another 0.5 oz. of fresh ginger root after pasteurizing them for 10 min. The ginger root stayed in the bottom of the carboy right up until I bottled the mead. No problems. After another month, the balance still wasn't quite right so I added another 0.75 pounds of the desert honey. Two months after that, I bottled with a SG = 1.024.
Because of the spices, it doesn't taste as sweet as it sounds.
Here are my recommended ranges on these spices:
fresh ginger root: less than 4 oz., unless it is a very sweet mead
cinnamon sticks: up to 12 sticks, each 2 inches
cloves: up to 2 tsp. of whole cloves (I personally want gentle cloves)
nutmeg: not more than one whole nut
Source: Joyce Miller (jmiller@genome.wi.mit.edu)
Mead Lover's Digest #345, 1 September 1994
Dissolve sugar & honey in water, heat, and skim. Just before the boil, add ginger, mace, rosemary, bread, the grated peel of the lemons. Peel the pith from the lemons and throw it away. Cut the lemons in half, squeeze them into the wort, breaking them up into smallish pieces. Put them in the wort, too. Pasteurize all at about 180F for 20-30 minutes. Force cool, put all into carboy, top up to 5.5 gallon-mark with pre-boiled and cooled water, if necessary. Pitch yeast starter.
The bread was a weird idea I had to avoid using yeast nutrient. It certainly didn't seem to hurt!
09-04-93: O.G. = 1.086 @ 78F = 1.088.
10-07-93: S.G. = 1.028 @ 74F = 1.030. Mild lemon aroma, some bitterness from the ginger.
10-10-93: Bottled (had seemed to stop bubbling). F.G. = 1.026 @ 68F = 1.027 (before ¾ cup priming sugar). Tastes okay; young, not too dry (lemon seems to make it taste drier than SG indicates). 11-01-93: Pretty drinkable, very small amount of bitterness. Should be really good in 1 month.
08-15-94: This mead won 2nd place in
the Metheglin category of the 1994 Mazer Cup Competition.
Source: leighann@sybase.com (Leigh Ann Hussey)
Mead Lover's Digest #386 23 February 1995
Boil together honey and 1/2gal water for 5 min. Put flowers with citric acid and tannin in a gallon jug and pour the hot liquid over. Let cool in a sink of cold water to room temperature, then add yeast and nutrient and further water to make a gallon plus a pint. Add the airlock. Let ferment 1 week, then strain out flowers. Set the lock on again and ferment until all quiet. Bottle and age.
Source: rdevine@microsoft.com Bob Devine
Mead Lover's Digest #410
29 May 1995
I added the tea bags to 3 gallons of hot water and let the tea bags steep for about 20 minutes. I was aiming for lots of color, berry flavor and tannin in the tea. After removing the bags with a final squeeze to press out any remaining flavors, I added the honey for a pasteurization step. No acid was added, though I might change this for the next version - I'll know in a year or so.
Now at about 7 months later, the mead has a pale purple color and a fruity aroma and taste. It still tastes quite young, the tannins are low and a bit rough but it is shaping up nicely.
In conclusion: Tea works fine. Play around with
the levels. Other dried botanicals might work great too.
Source: Joel Stave <stave@ctron.com>
Mead Lover's Digest #429
7 September 1995
8/18/94
Heated water and honey. Skimmed and simmered about 5 minutes.
When cool, added acid blend and nutrient and pitched yeast. SG 1.080
8/19/94
picked and crushed basil leaves, put into a straining bag and added to the must. Ferment was going pretty well by this time.
8/24/94
Racked to a 4 liter jug - SG 1.042
9/20/94
racked to 1 gallon jug (4 liters to 1 gallon almost always works without having to top up or having any left over) SG 1.000 It cleared *very* quickly after this.
12/11/94
bottled in half-bottles. SG 0.996.
9/5/95
opened a bottle. pale green, crystal clear, *very* strong basil flavor and aroma. Definitely drinkable if you like basil - might be good with pesto.
NOTE: I made this metheglin for cooking, and so wanted
a strong basil flavor. It can be sipped, but only if you *really*
like basil. Also, when I say "gallon" I mean U.S. gallon.
Source: dkerfoot@freenet.macatawa.org (Douglas Kerfoot)
Mead Lover's Digest #442 2 November 1995
Boil 2 Oz of fresh ground ginger root and the grated peel of one orange in about 1 ½ gallons of water for 30 minutes. Scoop most of the chunks out. Turn off heat and pour in 8 - 9 Lb. of honey. Pour into carboy ½ full with cold water(I like to run my water through my $8.00 faucet filter to remove the chlorine). Add remainder of orange and 1 - 2 tablespoons of lemon juice or the juice from a grapefruit. (Because this ferments out very dry, a little sourness goes a long way, don't overdo it) Add some yeast nutrient, and top off with cold water. Temp should be below 90 degrees F. Add rehydrated Edme Yeast. Stand back.
Although I usually propagate my yeast from slants for my beer, I've had great luck with Edme dry yeast for VERY quick results. Edme is famous for overnight fermentations with beer ("I'm a new brewer and my first batch hasn't started yet, what could be wrong?") and will finish off a light mead in less than a week. I understand that it has three strains of yeast in it:
One for fast starts, One with high alcohol tolerance, and one that is a strong floculater that pulls the other yeasts down with it.
In two to three weeks it should be pretty clear.
I like to carbonate it in a keg. I brought a keg of it to my
homebrew club meeting when it was only three weeks from brew day.
They were amazed! ("I thought mead took a long time to ferment?")
Would it be better after aging? Probably, but I haven't personally
been able to keep a batch around for more than 2 months!
Source: kurt@iquest.net (Kurt Schilling)
Mead Lover's Digest #468 19 March 1996
Combine honey, water, quartered orange, grated ginger in brew pot and bring to boil. Skim froth from surface. Remove orange and ginger with a sanitized strainer after 30 minutes. Cool and pour into fermenter. Pitch yeast when must is 70-75 degrees F. Rack the mead when fermentation slows (after about 1 week) to secondary. Additional rackings may be necessary.
The mead is drinkable when cleared, but improves with aging. Total time till drinkable is about 2.5 months, hence the name Quick Mead)
This is an ale strength mead that is just fine for a medieval feast or for whooping it up on St. Paddy's Day or Lammas.
You can also ferment this one with a wine yeast or Mead yeast if you choose.
I have found that it is fairly dry and gingery. Quite
tasty in fact.
Source: "Charlie Moody" <chmood@photobooks.atdc.gatech.edu>
Mead Lover's Digest #465 5 March 1996
Creating an extraction from the herbs took pretty much all of 2/3/96 (9am-1am); double-container water bath method, three rounds.
Result: 3 quarts of fluid extract.
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sunday morning, the mead-making began in earnest:
flavorings:
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
So: I boiled 1 gal. water, added 1 gal honey, and
all the flavorings, and brought the temperature up; I figured
I'd let the scum rise & skim it off, but not actually boil
it. Didn't occur to me that a lot of the flavorings would float....
I skimmed off the scum (and most of the raisins &
mace & lime), and pulled out about half the ginger (the more
I thought about it, the more I began to doubt using so much...).
Eventually, the scum slowed down; I cut the heat off, added
the herb extract, and set it in the sink to cool (that was the
weekend it was 50 below in Minnesota, so no ice was necessary
;)).
Because of the herbs, I kept the pot covered. In
future batches, I'll just add the already-pasteurized extract
to the pitching bucket & save myself the extra grief.
When the must had cooled to 95F, I poured it into
the bucket, along with a half-gallon of ice water, snapped on
the lid, and shook it hard for a while. Pulling the lid off,
I dipped a test sample, and pitched the starter.
Original gravity is 1.1225 (!)
After repeating the shaking, I poured off into a
3-gal carboy. O gawd, it's filling up too fast - do I have another
jug? Found a half-gallon jug, did a quickie sterilization on
it (difficult to do w/ crossed fingers), and gave it the rest.
(Turns out I have almost *exactly* 3 gallons, but hey....)
Eighteen hours later, it's bubbling once every 10
seconds!
03/04/96 - After a month, it had slowed to once in
40 seconds, so yesterday afternoon, I poured the half-gallon into
the carboy, added 3 yeast energizer tablets, and 2 teaspoons of
yeast hulls. As of 19:52 today, it's bubbling every 7 seconds.
S.G. = 1.040, as of 15:00 yesterday.
03/13/96: SG has dropped to 1.010, which makes it
about 28proof, but it's still bubbling away once every 13 sec.
Taste has gotten sharper, but is still quite palatable; I wonder
if this will still be drinkable once it dries out all the way....
Maybe I'll feed it a bit more honey when I rack again.
4 Apr 1996 For a more general update, the metheglin
from an OG of 1.225 to 0.090. At only 2 months old, it tastes
very mature and civilized, and the herbal recipe definitely imparts
a zing! It took 22oz to the same party, and everyone walked off
smiling to savor their taste.
I've been interested in medicine and herbology (particularly Chinese) for a long time, and so when I read about metheglins, my interest (already high) definitely perked up. Naturally, I wanted to make a medicine-metheglin: one w/ tonic herbs, not just spices, but it seems that none of the recipes (save those, perhaps, of Sir Digbie) use, or even discuss tonic herbs...just flavorings.
Undaunted, I burrowed my way into my health shelf for info on tonic herbs, even while I was inhaling NCJoH and the MLD archives, and after a while, pieced together a tonic herbal recipe.
Your health, safety and comfort are YOUR responsibility:
mess around w/ Chinese herbs and you do so *entirely* at YOUR
*OWN* RISK!
Source: "Dione Wolfe " <DKEY@MEDUSA.UNM.EDU>
Mead Lover's Digest #572
14 June 1997
Strain into 3 gal carboy and pitch yeast starter (I used Red Star Cuvee)
Racked 2-3 times to clarify, then used Sparkaloid with excellent results.
Bottled after 2 months. O.G. 1.055, potential alcohol 7%
It had a very strong green chile flavor and a nice
heat when raw. Now, after six months in the bottle, it's beginning
to mellow and the chile heat is a nice back-of-the-throat warmth.
After at least another year, this should be great with appetizers
and chile dishes.
Source: Darin Trueblood <mtss@ptw.com>
Mead Lover's Digest #560, 9 May 1997
The cranberries were frozen, then thawed enough so that it didn't sound like a handful of ball bearings in the processor when I chopped them sufficiently to break most all of their skins. I pasteurized the honey and poured it over the chopped fruit in the primary.
I let it go for about three weeks, then racked it off the fruit. Poured the fruit into a nylon and squeezed the juice out. Racked it again in about a week. Again a couple more times over the next few months.
When I scaled it up to 5 gallons, I had to substitute plain old water, as it only snows on Christmas once every 10 or 15 years here in California's high desert.
The starter is about a third of a package D47 yeast,
a tablespoon sugar or malt extract, and a pinch of yeast energizer,
in a cup of water, done the day before.
Source: Robert C. Santore <rsantore@mailbox.syr.edu>
Mead Lover's Digest #326, 10 July 1994
Water was boiled to drive off chlorine, then nutrient and honey added to dissolve, brought back to just boil then heat turned off and rhubarb added. Allowed to cool covered in pan overnight. Next day the mixture was poured back and forth between pan and plastic fermenter to aerate. Then the yeast sediment from a 1 qt starter of yeast was pitched. SG of honey mixture (before fruit) 1.092. Racked to secondary after about 1 month, bottled when still with priming sugar.
I like fruited meads to have dominate fruit flavor
but I don't think that 7 cups rhubarb per gallon was at all excessive.
At bottling this was sour with some sweetness, hot alcohol flavor
typical of young mead. Overall very nice. I am looking forward
to tasting this in the future.
Source: Alex (last name unknown) (Lothar1@aol.com)
Mead Lover's Digest #348, 14 September 1994
Bring honey, raspberry leaves and citric acid and 1 gallon water to a full boil.
Skimming any scum which rises until there is no more scum (20 - 40 minutes).
Add boiled honey mixture to 1 gallon of frozen berries in primary fermenter.
Add cold water to 6 gallons.
Add rehydrated yeast when temperature is 70F - 80F.
Allow to remain in primary fermenter for 4-5 weeks before transferring to a secondary fermenter.
Rack secondary fermentation on 2 week intervals. Allow 6-8 weeks total secondary fermentation before bottling.
Sulfite 1 week prior to bottling (5 campden tablets).
2 days prior to bottling rack and add a syrup made from the juice pressed from the remaining gallon of raspberries and 1 lb. of sugar (I suppose that honey could be used here also, I just didn't have any on hand when I did this)
Fermentation temperature on this batch was high (70F-80F)
Source: Lee Bussy (BrewerLee@aol.com)
Mead Lover's Digest #358, 23 October 1994
Wash pumpkin thoroughly before cutting open. Remove seeds and stringy material. Peel skin. Grind or mash pumpkin into nylon straining bag. (Note: Extraction may be aided by freezing the pumpkin overnight to break down the structure of the fruit.) Keeping all pulp in straining bag, squeeze juice into primary fermenter, tie top and leave bag in primary fermenter.
Stir in all other ingredients except yeast. Cover and allow to sit overnight. After 24 hours add yeast. Cover primary.
Stir daily and press pulp lightly to aid extraction.
After 3-5 days (SG should be below 1.040) lightly press juice from bag and remove bag. Rack off of sediment into glass secondary and fix airlock.
This is one that has turned out quite well for me in the past.
Some people add traditional pumpkin pie spices to this but I feel it is a wonderful mead without any such additions. Darker honeys such as Mesquite do very well in this recipe.
This does much better as a still mead.
Source: mercese@anubis.network.com (Steve E. Mercer)
Mead Lover's Digest #369 5 December 1994
Ferment with Yeastlab Sweet Mead yeast M62 (Steinberg Riesling)
The honey was purchased in bulk at a nearby grocery co-op store. The raspberries were frozen to help break down the cell walls, and they were crushed by hand (in plastic bags) while thawing. The lemon and orange juice were to provide acids.
The tea was to provide tannins.
I do not know what the nutrient is, but I suspect that it supplied nitrogen.
Boil the honey in some water for 30 minutes, skimming off any scum, wax, bee parts, etc. that rise to the surface.
Remove from heat and add berries, tea, juice, and nutrient. Let sit, covered, for a few minutes to let the heat sanitize the fruit.
Chill to room temperature in an ice water bath.
Put into primary fermenter and add water to bring the volume of the must up to the appropriate level.
Pitch yeast into must. ( I just pour the liquid yeast into the must without making a starter.)
It was fermented at about 70 degrees F. (room temperature in my kitchen).
Rack after about three weeks, when the fruit pulp has settled.
Rack again at month 2, 4, and 6. Bottle at month 8. The mead had cleared and was finished fermenting by the racking at month six. During the last two months in the fermenter there was no airlock activity at all, and nothing more settled out. I waited the extra two months to be certain that the fermentation was complete. There is still some residual sugar, and I did not want the mead to continue fermenting in the bottles.
This is a sweet, still melomel intended for use as a dessert wine.
A word of advice learned from previous experiences:
If you use a carboy as your primary fermenter, use one with a LOT of extra headspace, or use a wide blow-off tube. If you do not, the raspberry pulp will foam up and will plug the airlock. This will cause a pressure buildup which can pop the stopper off of the carboy and spray your walls with sticky raspberry stuff. I hear that it can also cause your carboy to explode, leaving an even bigger mess.
The mead was entered into competition at age nine
months (one month after bottling. The competition included beers,
wines, meads, and flavored liqueurs. This mead won "Best
of Show". Judges comments included things like "Excellent
blend, couldn't improve upon it. A winner".
Source: mattm@teleport.com (Matt Maples)
Mead Lover's Digest #390 15 March 1995
mix all ingredients well makes three gallons.
24 hr. after adding campden tabs add one pkg. champagne yeast. as mead falls to 1.05 add another 3 lb.. Do this until desired sweetness is reached.
Yet another glowing testimonial for kiwi mead! The
following was one of the first meads I ever made. After it aged
for a year it turned out great. I only found one person who didn't
like it and she didn't care for the smell the yeast imparted.
I guess the apple juice would make this a cyser and not a melomel
but no need to pick at nits. I did manage to strain out 70% of
the seeds but in retrospect it wasn't really necessary.
Source: ScottK678@aol.com Scott Kaczorowski
Mead Lover's Digest #419
16 July 1995
1/29/95 - Added 10lbs orange blossom and 5lbs "California Desert Wildflower" to five gallons of boiling water. Brought back to a boil for 15 minutes, while skimming. Added 2 tsp. yeast nutrient near the end of boil. Cooled with an immersion chiller, aerated by beating with spoon in plastic primary, added two packs rehydrated Pasteur Champagne yeast. 6 gal (?), OG 1.100.
2/9 - Racked to glass secondary. Filled carboy almost to neck, 5+ gal. SG 1.023, still sweet, slight sulphery smell.
3/25 - Racked just less than three gallons to 3 gal Corny. SG 0.998. Mead was still very cloudy from yeast and still fermenting slowly. Strong honey aroma, no grav taken.
Added ~1 gal pomegranate juice to just less than 2.5 gal mead left in secondary. Juice was squeezed from ~14 lb. of previously frozen pomegranate fruit in a hop bag. Juice was sanitized by heating to 170F and left to sit for 10-15 minutes. Juice had a VERY grassy aroma during heating - not very pleasant. Juice was cooled in sink and added via funnel to secondary. Several hours later, the melomel had cleared considerably (!?) and a thick layer (1"-1.5") of white stuff formed in the secondary about 1/3 of the way up from the bottom. This looked almost like what I'd imagine an iceberg would look like. It was sort of flat on the "top", but underneath there were large voids, caverns, etc. Bluish-white; looked very much like paraffin. Deep red color with little white flecks suspended. Refermentation appeared to have started.
3/26 - Iceberg still present but had sunk to bottom. Fermentation appears to be no more active than the night before (that is: slight). Temps in the 40s last night might have something to do with this. Or possibly because the juice seems to have dropped the yeast and now the iceberg lies between the mead and the yeast cake. Hmm...
4/15 - Mead still contains quite a bit of suspended snow-like particles.
Prepared and added 3 tsp. bentonite.
4/18 - Racked to 3 gal carboy. Nearly filled the 3 gallon 'boy + 2/3 of ½ gal growler. SG 1.020.
Looked a lot like cranberry juice, clear and red. Unbelievably tasty. Still quite sweet, and still fermenting slightly. No sign whatever of the grassy/earthy aroma present in the pomegranate juice at its addition. Very slightly tart, pomegranate taste/aroma evident. A lot of honey taste/flavor. Flavor very reminiscent of Cranapple juice.
5/14 - Racked to keg. SG 1.008-1.010.
I cannot overemphasize the intensity of the grassy aroma coming from the pom juice during pasteurization. It was almost overpowering and the juice spent more time on the heat than it should have (almost 20 minutes) because I had to debate whether or not to add the juice to what I knew to be perfectly good mead. The memory of seemingly permanently juice-stained hands and 3 or 4 ruined T-shirts eventually convinced me to add the juice.
Any ideas on what the 'iceberg' was? The best guesses I got (in private correspondence with Pam Day and Mark Fryling, both hard science types) was that I set the pectin during pasteurization and this coagulated upon contact with the mead. Maybe with the suspended yeast? The base mead was quite cloudy when the juice was added and cleared almost immediately afterwards. Next time (and I think this is worth repeating), I'll not heat the juice.
I sent some of the pom melomel off to the Mazer Cup and was happy with my scores and with the judges' suggestions. It scored a 36 and a 39. The one judge thought the slight sourness was well-balanced with the sweetness and liked the tartness. He also wondered if I had "dry-fruited"! The other thought that there was too much tart and that perhaps I used too much fruit. Both said honey aroma/flavor were a little low.
All in all, one of my best, and certainly most interesting,
meads. It'll be very interesting to see how this mel ages, it
being only 7 months old at the moment.
Source: JLAUKES@CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU Jim Laukes
Mead Lover's Digest #422
31 July 1995
I started by boiling citrus honey with yeast energizer and 2 gal. of water then pitching champagne yeast into the primary for three days. Then I brought frozen strawberries to 170 F for 15 minutes with cinnamon and mace in 2 gallons of water which I cooled and added to the primary. The ferment continued for a week at which time I siphoned to a carboy.
It cleared nicely in six weeks when I bottled.
Source: Sam Bennett sam_bennett@om.cv.hp.com
Mead Lover's Digest #427
29 August 1995
This is a recipe that I invented, and has become one of my favorites.
It has a fairly strong flavor and is great when mulled. I didn't know whether to call it a metheglin or a melomel as it has both spices and fruit, so I decided to give up and coin my own word "melometh".
This can be drinkable after 3 or 4 months but its
best to wait a full year to age properly.
Source: David Prescott lprescot@sover.net
Mead Lover's Digest #576
6 July 1997
gypsum, nutrient, energizer, etc.
Red Star Flor Sherry yeast
It's really easy to make, and finished nicely. I am a stickler about aging, but after only three months in the bottle it's getting nice.
For my next batch, I would like to do the same thing,
but increase the honey. So, for five gallons I think I'll double
the orange and nutmeg and use a gallon of clover honey.
Source: Gregg Carrier stu_gjcarrie@vax1.acs.jmu.edu
Mead Lover's Digest #437
18 October 1995
Well, I just tasted my first mead ever to be fermented with an ale yeast. I like it a lot better...it's really good for so young an age. I was after a clean, very mildly sweet, weaker mead.
After 1 month...that's right one month, this stuff
is drinkable. Fermented quick and easy, cleared nicely and it
has this terrific red color. Grapey finish, mildly sweet. Pretty
tart. I can't wait to see what it's like after aging in the bottles.
I would highly recommend a plum mead to anyone who was curious.
Source: hall@galt.c3.lanl.gov (Michael L. Hall)
Mead Lover's Digest #444 18 November 1995
On 9/25/94, I put together the first three honeys listed along with a gallon of apricot juice and enough water to make 2.55 gallons. There was no reason for the strange selection of honeys; I was just cleaning out the cupboard. The apricot juice came from apricots from a tree in my backyard. I pureed the apricots to get a thick paste, froze the paste for about a year, then thawed it out and left it sitting in a gallon jug in a refrigerator for several months. >From past experience I knew that the solids would almost never clear out of the mead, so I waited until the juice separated and just used the clear juice. At any rate, I pasteurized this concoction for 90 min at 150 F and pitched the yeast. The SG was 1.115 and the must tasted rather sour, even with all that honey. I thought that I might need to correct the sourness somehow later.
I didn't touch the mead again until 4/15/95 (my son was born on 10/20/94, so I was very busy). At this point I racked the mead, which was still sour, but had a nice apricot character. I measured the acid content at 1.3% as tartaric, 8.5 ppt as sulfuric. The SG was 1.001 and the clarity was good.
On 5/16/95 I removed a sample and adjusted its acidity to 6.5% tartaric with CaCO3, decided that was too much (too chalky) and tried to adjust acidity of whole volume to 9.25% tartaric by adding one ounce of CaCO3. I measured it to be 9.3%. I then added sodium benzoate to kill the yeast and some extra clover honey (20 min at 160 F with 1 pt water) to counteract the residual acidity and give honey character. I let it sit overnight for the chalk to precipitate out before bottling.
I entered this melomel in the 1995 NM State Fair
as part of their wine competition (8/27/95). It received a Gold
Medal and a score of 6.80/10, which was the highest rated mead,
and the second highest rated wine (highest was 7.04). Judges noted
excellent acidity-sweetness balance, good apricot and honey character,
some spiciness (maybe the Questa honey?), and some sediment (the
chalk), but otherwise good clarity. In the future I will try to
wait until the chalk precipitates out to bottle, but at that time
I needed to free up the carboy. You can see a chalk layer in the
bottom of each bottle, but the mead can be easily decanted off
of it.
Source: MicahM1269@aol.com micah millspaw
Mead Lover's Digest #563
18 May 1997
The honey was rehydrated to 28 B and heated the Irish moss. It was then skimmed until clear, then yeast nutrient added and then force cooled. When cooled to 70 F and racked to a 10 gallon fermenter then yeast was pitched. After 2 days of vigorous fermentation the strawberries were added to the must. A extremely active fermentation followed. When subsided the must was racked to a carboy to finish out and clear. The vanilla was added at racking. After one month the mead was racked to a soda keg, chilled and force carbonated. A portion of it was C-P bottled. the rest on draft. This was/ is a very drinkable melomel, light pink in color with a definite strawberry flavor, you really cannot pin down the vanilla though but it may be adding some complexity. The acidity of the strawberries real help out the with the balance.
Last week I visited a fellow mead maker out in California and got to sample an excellent sparkling strawberry melomel , on draft in fact ! I got the recipe and permission to pass it along so here it is.
I think that this is a good, quick sort of mead (
4-6 weeks ) since the honey used is so mildly flavored. And there
is still time to get one started for drinking this summer.
Source: Matt Maples <mattm@ipacrx.com>
Mead Lover's Digest #575 28 June 1997
Slice bananas skins and all ( Don't let anyone give you that "banana skins have a psychoactive chemical in them" stuff, it just does not apply here), place everything in a press bag and tie it. in 1.5 qrts water boil them for 30 min. Remove pulp. Put honey into fermenter and pour hot liquer over it. Add remaning water (cool) Pitch. Age at lease a year.
This stuff is VERY harsh young. Reducing the tannin
and cloves should help that. (I don't care for cloves all that
much and they were quite strong.) After a year it starts to mellow
and have nice spicyness to it with and good but not overpowering
banana flavor and golden color.
Source: DFusion@aol.com Dave ?
Mead Lover's Digest #567
28 May 1997
The fruit was sliced and put in a fine nylon mesh bag, then steeped at 155 F for 20 min. Honey was added and simmered at 145 F for 20 min. I then lowered the temp to 80 F and pitched the yeast.
The primary fermentation (in a 6 gal plastic bucket with the nylon fruit bag) was like nothing I had ever seen before. There were bubbles the size of grapefruits!!!. I racked it into a carboy about 10 days later, removing the fruit bag. Fermentation slowed down, and I racked the mead off it's sediment into another carboy. After awhile, it started fermenting again, and to this day still is actively bubbling. It even still has a bit of foam in the neck. Since then, it has cleared dramatically to a glorious strawberry color.
It tastes pretty good right now (wow is it sweet!),
but in retrospect, I would have done the fruit differently. The
fruit flavors are hard to find. Hopefully two and a half years
aging will turn this stuff into ambrosia.
Source: ra@ftn.net (Robert Alexander)
Mead Lover's Digest #451
6 January 1996
Heated and skimmed the honey (with some water) for
about 20 min., and then added the chopped rhubarb and let simmer
for about an hour to extract the flavor and other components.
Actually, because of the size of my pot, I had to do this operation
twice, with half the ingredients each time.
94/06/11 This mixture was then put into a large primary pail, and topped up with water. BTW, my water comes from a well, and is VERY hard, so I didn't feel the need to add any minerals, like gypsum, to the must.
94/06/12 S.G. 1.080 Pitched yeast into primary
94/06/13 Going like crazy!
94/06/21 S.G. 0.996 ! Racked to carboy. Added ~ 1 K. (2.2lb)
honey, which raised S.G. to 1.016. Topped up with water. 94/08/01 S.G. 0.994 Rack. Clearing well. Tastes horrible, acidic and solvent-y. My notes say I added .5 K. kilo honey, which raised the S.G. to 1.016. Looking back, that doesn't seem to make sense, but THAT'S what the notes say. *shrug* :-)
My notes end here. The stuff tasted so bad, I just wrote it off as a bust effort. I know I racked and added honey one more time (what the hell). It seemed the yeast would NEVER poop out. After that the stuff was just ignored. I figured I'd get around to dumping it when I needed an empty carboy.
As it turned out, it's a good thing I have a few extra carboys. :-) When I next tasted the stuff, it was seven months later; March of 95. Most of the harsh, solvent tastes and strong acid had mellowed (probably due to malo-lactic fermentation, I'm guessing) and both the rhubarb and honey notes were present, though subdued. Good legs, too. The mead was still VERY dry, but that turned out to be OK; the overall presentation was similar to a chablis-steely, earthy, complex. Didn't check the finish S.G., just started drinking it, but I guess it was around 0.990. Alc. around 15%.
Much of this mead was drunk by just tapping it from the carboy, so there was considerable oxidation over the next few months. Though I know this is bad form, it didn't seem to harm the taste. (Why?) Maybe it helped? Oh, and about half of the quantity was stored in a small oak cask for about a month (Aug 95), then remixed back into the carboy. In any case, I finally got some bottled, and the few I have left are still improving. (I think the oak flavor was important.)
This mead was a real hit, especially among my grape-wine drinking friends (and especially among the ones who've been conditioned to turn their noses up at anything that's not BONE dry).
This recipe came about when I wanted to create a
mead that had a higher acidic content, but without adding a commercial
acid blend. I wanted to get the acid from a more 'natural' source.
So I got thinking, and maybe this is a weird concept, but, 'what's
the opposite taste to honey?' I finally decided that rhubarb was
probably the closest; sour and acid v/s sweet and soft. My goal
was a strong, balanced mead, with a bit of residual sweetness.
Considering the champagne yeast, I'd have to continue 'feeding'
it honey until the yeast pooped out.
Source: doantm@netinfo.com.au (Donna Maurer)
Mead Lover's Digest #453 20 January 1996
I can't remember what yeast I used, but it was possibly a Bordeaux yeast.
We tried this, chilled, at Christmas and it wasn't
bad. It was pretty acidic and kept a good lemon flavor. No sweetness
at all. I think it will improve with age.
Source: DoubleDDD@aol.com
Mead Lover's Digest #454 25 January 1996
B.P. acid blend. adj. to .71%
prisse de mousse yeast
Source: "Charlie Moody" <chmood@photobooks.atdc.gatech.edu>
Mead Lover's Digest #465
5 March 1996
What an incredible mess I've made!!!
Sevananda, the local co-op, had some real nice orange blossom honey, and the idea here is to use fruits that will support and enhance the flavor of the honey. I thought the cranberries would make a nice counterpoint to all the sweet fruit, and that the tea might add depth, or character, or something.
I heated 2 gallons of water, then added 5 quarts of the honey, got it all stirred in, then brought the temp. up to about 180F. Kept it there for 30 min. Everything went fine until I started adding the fruit to the must. I quickly realized that the pot I was cooking in was running out of room, and I still had plenty of fruit to go!
I grabbed my half-gallon Pyrex cup & scooped out about 3 pints, and added the rest of the fruit to it, stuck it in the microwave & zapped it several times, stirring after each zap, while struggling to get a completely-full 4-gallon pot off the stove and into to sink to cool. *sigh* Not all the must made it.
The stuff was thick as anything and *extremely* sweet (apparently even more so than my first must (SG=1.1225)), so I figured I'd better dilute it some...oops, then I had 6.5 G of must filling up my 6.5 G fermenting bucket! *sigh* Now it's a two-carboy batch...at least there was room for the yeast!
Ever try to pick up a *full* 6.5 G bucket & pour it *all* into a funnel perched on top of a carboy? *sigh* Of course you haven't, and neither have I: I started bailing into the funnel, and making an incredible wreck of the kitchen...which I managed to track all over the carpet....
By this time, I had fruit clogging the funnel, pools of fresh honey-glue creeping across my kitchen counters and floor, sticky spots on the floor throughout the house, and two open carboys, but I finally got the fruit distributed between the bottles, got the fruit *rammed* through the funnel and *into* the carboys (*grrr*), locks installed, and everything cleaned up (or at least, wiped down).
No, I'm fine, really...*pant*pant*pant*....
The result? I now have +/- 7 gallons of fruit-punch melomel producing CO2 in industrial quantities: bubbling about every 1.5 seconds. The stuff smells and tastes heavenly, but the must is really much too sweet for me to drink, even though the starting gravity is 'only' 1.090.
This batch was much more work than my first one,
even though the first batch took me a full 2 days, what w/ the
herbs and all. Partly, I was thrown by my miscalculation of the
must's volume, and that had me playing catch-up from then on.
03/04/96 - After 48 hours, it's bubbling once every second, and still smelling incredible!
03/05/96 - I just noticed what seems to be a crack in the 5-gallon carboy, and (very) minor seepage around it. Was this crack there before? Did I somehow knock the bottle against another, and if so, is there *loose* *glass* in my mead??? I suppose CARE FUL racking might take care of it.... I would *hate* to have to throw this out!
03/13/96: After blasting away @ 1 per second for a week, on 3/10 it dropped to 1 in 3 seconds, then to 1 in 7 seconds on 3/11; as of this morning, the rate is 1 in 49 sec! This is really a dramatic fall-off (sudden, too), and the must is actually beginning to fall clear! At least, it's become translucent, as opposed to the other batches, which are still utterly opaque. I'm leaving today for 2 weeks in Colorado; I hope it will be okay sitting here. I think I'll rack this as soon as I return. I wonder if I should add more hulls/energizer/honey when I do....
In the last several days there's been a change in appearance in the fruit:
it looked pretty wretched in there for awhile, but things have spruced up nicely, and now it resembles fruit salad! I wonder what it would taste like w/ a spritz of whipped cream or drizzle of honey....
Average temp = 72F.
The question of glass in this mead still remains unanswered. If some minor cavitation has occurred, will normal racking procedures leave any glass bits behind, or should I prepare to take extraordinary measures?
I'm not likely to have the chance to test SG before I leave, but I doubt there's been enough time for all 15# of honey to get chewed up. I've been agitating fairly thoroughly / frequently (no sloshing!), so I suppose fermentation may have been speedier as a result. Any feedback?
4 Apr 1996 It's just one month old, and has fallen from
1.100 to 1.000; fermentation virtually / apparently
ceased by 3 weeks. within a week of racking, it had fallen clear
enough to read book titles thru. It still has a lock on it, but
it bubbles only once every 20 minutes or so.
Took some to a party on 3/23 and shared tastes around 15-20 people. The consensus? Bright, yummy, fruity, just sweet enough. It'll be a pleasure to track this stuff as it ages.
Sept 22 96 Both [the melomel & a traditional tupelo mead] have turned out wonderfully: after sitting in their carboys for six months, they both got thoroughly tasted at a Labor Day party, and at a Goodbye Summer party, two gallons of the melomel & one liter of the tupelo at each function. Survey says that each is a big hit with pretty much everyone who tasted them (a couple of Jack Daniels fans said they tasted like Mogen David). I got kissed a lot, and toasted a lot.
The both really are very good, I'm pleased (and amazed)
to say. Both a still, and clear as a bell, and each is a rich
deep golden color. The melomel is distinctively fruity, and the
tupelo is distinctively tupelo. They're smooth, mildly sweet,
and carry no off-flavors. I can hardly wait for them to age enough
to *really* show off!
Source: Daniel Gurzynski <daniel@buffnet.net>
Mead Lover's Digest #472 8 April 1996
Skimmed and heated honey to 170 degrees in 1 gal water for 30 min. Added 6 oz.. ginger and OJ, and let sit for another 30 min on the stove with no heat.
Mixed in 4 gal. more water with must in primary.
Starting S.G. 1.082, on 11/17/95.
11/24/95
Racked off ginger mead, SG was 1.067, mainly to get it off sediment.
12/10/95
Took an a SG reading of the orange ginger mead. S.G. 1.030. Extremely sweet and gingery, should be really good when it goes dry. Approx. 6.5%.
12/17/95
Racked off Orange-ginger mead into one 5 gal. carboy. Small bottle we tasted last week had an S.G. 1.020 and large carboy had S.G. of 1.040. Loads of crud on the bottom of both containers. Tasted both. Big bottle sample way too sweet, small bottle sample sweet but getting to a drinkable stage. Strong ginger taste in both samples. Time will tell. Small sample already at 7.8% alcohol and is not nearly done.
1/6/96
Tested Orange-Ginger batch. S.G. 1.026. Still very sweet but getting there, need time for this batch to mature.
1/14/95
Racked off Orange-ginger mead. S.G. 1.020. Ginger taste is becoming prominent., honey taste is quite noticeable. Overall fruity and sweet, honey Moselle kind of flavor.
2/5/96
Racked off Firewater mead still at S.G.1020. Fine fruity and gingery smell and taste.
2/25/96
Bottled Firewater. S.G. 1.020. A poignant smell,
certainly can taste the ginger in it.
quite drinkable in a reasonable time, and won't knock
you down.
Source: sobol@ofps.ucar.EDU (Rebecca Sobol)
Mead Lover's Digest #473
14 April 1996
Heat honey with water to almost boiling. Add gypsum and yeast nutrient. Skim scum. Keep hot for about 10 minutes to pasteurize. Add juice and let sit covered (heat off) for 20 minutes. Cool, pour into carboy and add water to make 5 gallons. Pitch yeast. Stir and store with blow-off tube.
¾ cup corn sugar boiled with 1 cup water. Pour liquid sugar into pail, rack mead into pail and stir before bottling. Bottled October 12, 1995.
This mead still has a nice red color, but it's fading
to orange. Good pomegranate flavor comes through nicely. It's
pretty dry and doesn't really sparkle. Still has a bite that
I associate with a young mead that needs more aging. The last
few sips from my glass tasted better and more like pomegranates
than the first few sips. Try a gourmet grocery store, or possibly
a middle-eastern grocery store for the pomegranate juice.
Source: chuckmw@mcs.com (Chuck Wettergreen )
Mead Lover's Digest #502 10 October 1996
heated to 140 deg F for 15 minutes
immersion chiller cooled to 75 deg F
pitched dregs of previous batch of pyment (red star champagne yeast) oxygenated with airstone for about 10 minutes (pure O2)
fermentation begins within 3 hours
OG 1.090
8/4/96 - racked off of blueberries (which went into
other half of cherry juice, now being made into 10 gallons of
cherry wine) added 2 pounds of wildflower honey ferment slowing
down pH 3.5, added 2 tablespoons of CaCO3
8/5/96 - ferment back to active, pH 3.9
8/6/96 - ferment slowing down again, IG 1.010, tastes
sour, pH 3.6, added 1 tablespoon CaCO3
8/7/96 - ferment back to active, added 1 pound wildflower
honey 8/16/96 - Ferment slowing down, pH 3.6 added 1 tablespoon
CaCO3 8/17/96 - added 2 pounds mixed brush honey 8/21/96 - fermentation
really slowing down, almost finished!
8/23/96 - At this point it appeared that the melomel was not going to ferment any more. IG was 0.998 and it still tasted a little sour and it didn't have as much honey aroma and flavor/sweetness as I wanted. I figured that if I added one more pound of honey I'd be where I wanted to be. I added 1 pound wildflower honey, the was pH 4.0. FG was 1.013 and the mead refused to ferment further from this point on. 8/27/96 - The mead is done, but hasn't started to clear. I don't feel like waiting, but I don't want to use gelatin/bentonite/sparkalloid. Into the refrigerator at 32 deg F. Three days later it was crystal, read a newspaper through it, clear. Five gallons racked to corney keg with potassium sorbate. The balance (1.5 gallons) went into a 3 gallon corney keg to be later frozen to make cherry jack melomel. I may have missed a few pH readings and CaCO3 additions. I watched it pretty closely. It appeared that when fermentation slowed down, the pH was about 3.5 - 3.6. I'd add CaCO3 and it would take off again. I've since done a traditional that had 12 pounds of honey that both fermented out and cleared in a month and a half.
I bottled this melomel 9/15/96. I've received enthusiastic
comments on it since then, and while it may not be a contest winner,
I certainly do enjoy drinking it! The only flaw that I can detect
is that it's a little hot, but I'm hoping that this will mellow
with age.
Source: Jimi (darkrose66@aol.com)
Mead Lover's Digest #505 26 October 1996
Dump the honey and water into a large pot, and stir over a medium heat (DO NOT BOIL THE SOLUTION!!), scraping the white scum off the top as it appears. This usually takes about 30 mins or so.
Once ready, bring to room temperature in the Carboy, and pitch the yeast. Let the must sit for 2 weeks, then open it up and throw a good cupful (I never measured) if the orange peels and the juice in the must (Note: Do *NOT* use the entire orange peel, or the mead will turn out bitter. Only use the white part of the peel.). Let the mead ferment in the Carboy for another 4 weeks or so, until the bubbling slows to 1 bubble every 10-15 seconds.
At this time, you are ready to rack. Strain the must through a fine sieve into bottles or mason jars (I found a housewares place in a local mall that sells 4 qt mason jars that are perfect for this)..
Once the must is in the jars/bottles, add a small pinch of Champagne yeast and an even smaller pinch of confectioners' sugar to the mead. (Skip this step if you prefer dead meads. Rack the bottles for another 3-4 weeks, and enjoy!
(This mead has a mellow orange taste to it, is a
wonderful combination of dry and sweet (not too sweet, though),
and works well as a table mead. )
Source: FGriff6722@aol.com Fred & Leigh Griffith
Mead Lover's Digest #505
26 October 1996
Final size of batch was about 4 ½ gallons
Potential Alcohol Reading at start was 16.2% - Final Potential Alcohol
Reading was 1.5% for a Specific Gravity of 1.011 - with 14.7% Alcohol
This mead settled quickly leaving a beautiful, clear dark golden amber color.
We heated the honey with a little water, and then added the Pomegranate Juice (4 hours work to get!), lemons, tea bags, beet liquor (for coloring - filter it through a coffee filter!) and the cardamom. After it was off the burner, we added cold water until we got the right reading on the hydrometer. When it had cooled to below 90 degrees Fahrenheit we added the yeast, mixed it and poured it through a funnel into the carboy.
The batch took less than a month to go to 14.7% alcohol,
at which point the mixture quit working. We find that we like
sweeter meads rather than dry meads because we felt this was so
bitter we were even cooking with it while it was green. About
nine months after we made the mead, however, we submitted a bottle
to a wine competition, along with others we had made more recently
which we thought were better. To our surprise, out of almost
100 wines, this mixture took fourth place in the overall DRY
category. When we tasted a little of it at this point, we found
that it really had mellowed out well and understood why it scored
so well. We still prefer sweeter meads, but now we're sorry we
wasted so many green bottles by cooking with it!
Source: Linda or Darin" <mtss@ptw.com>
Mead Lover's Digest #570 7 June 1997
After two weeks, rack off fruit and add one more mango, treated as above.
After another 2-3 weeks, rack off fruit. Rack 2 or 3 more times over the course of the next year, as needed, then bottle.
BTW, the must was pasturized and skimmed, then poured over the fruit in the fermentation vessel.
IMO, it was a bit sour. It went more or less dry,
but due to the fact that I was in my "pinch of this, dash
of that" mead-making mode, I have no hard data on gravity,
acidity, etc. As is often the case with melomels, the final product
wasn't easily recognizable as mango, though it did have a rather
pleasant flavor. Linda refered to it as "ale-like."
I will do it again, though I'm sure I'll be using plain old local
honey, and I'll probably boil a couple of orange slices in the
must instead of adding acid blend.
Source: Joyce Miller (jmiller@genome.wi.mit.edu)
Mead Lover's Digest #343, 28 August 1994
Dissolve the honey in 2-3 gallons of water, heat to just boiling, skimming the whole time. Remove stems from grapes, wash (watch for little worm holes!), and crush them with a potato masher. When the honey-water mixture is hot, add yeast nutrient and grapes, and stir well. Check to be sure that the temperature is 160+F, and hold to pasteurize for about 30 minutes. Force cool, put into fermenter, and top up to 5.5 - 6 gallons with pre-boiled & cooled water. Aerate by shaking vigorously, pitch yeast.
09-13-93: O.G. = 1.085 @ 82F = 1.087-8.
10-07-93: S.G. = 1.021 @ 74F = 1.023. Very heady wild grape aroma, high tannin, fairly astringent. Tart. Still somewhat sweet, but it's not very evident.
11-10-93: Bottled. Added 2/3- cup corn sugar (for 4.5 gallons). S.G. (w/corn sugar) = 1.018 @ 72F = 1.019. Bottled 3 gallons as pyment, bottled remaining 1.5 gallons as hippocras:
Spices added to 1.5 gallons:
*Note* It is necessary to stir up the spices frequently while bottling the hippocras.
The Pyment and the Hippocras each one first place
in their categories in the 1994 Mazer Cup Mead Competition.
Source: barat@ionet.net (Stephen Pursley)
Mead Lover's Digest #433 29 September 1995
Yyeast Sweet Mead Yeast.
Bring 2.5 gal. water to boil. Remove from heat. Stir in 12 lb.. honey. Return to heat. Bring to a boil then immediately reduce heat to a light simmer. Scum will form (white to light tan). Skim it off till it stops showing up (10 min. to and hour and a half. Depends on the honey). If the scum forming is dark tan or brown, turn the heat down fast. Remove from heat and immediately add the concord grape concentrate. Cover and let sit for 15 min. This pasteurizes the juice, but is not hot enough to set the pectin (not much pectin in the grape juice, it's mostly in the skins). Fill your carboy with a little less than 1 gal. of cold water. Add the must to the carboy. Add yeast nutrient and energizer. Put an airlock on the carboy. Do not agitate it at this stage. When the temperature is down to 70-80 deg. F pitch the yeast. Let it sit for a day. Then use the shaker method to up the yeast count (more on this in a moment)
When fermentation tapers off, feed it. Treat the extra 3 lb.. the same way you do the first 12 lb.. You will need about ½-2/3 gal. of water. Add this to the fermenter (did I mention that I use 7.5 gal. carboys for 5 gal. batches?) If you have to, remove some of the pyment from the fermenter and store it in a 1 gal. bottle (with an airlock). You can then add this 1 gal. back into the main batch at bottling time.
Procedure:
The color is a deep, dark bluish purple. It tends to be crystal clear (without adding any clarifying agents, use them if you like). Wonderful flavor. Be warned, I prefer sweet meads (dry meads are mostly modern in design), and this is a sweet mead.
Where to get concord grape concentrate? The highest quality source I have been able to find is Welches Concord Grape Juice Concentrate (really). This stuff is made with the best concord grapes around, has no preservatives (except for a small quantity of added vitamin C). Sometimes you can find wine grade concord concentrate, but both brands I have found are produced from the same vineyards as Welches grape juice, and taste just the same.
This stuff is good straight out of the fermenter,
no aging required. Sometimes you will get a little acid tang.
If this happens, just let it sit about two months in the bottles
before drinking. I have just finished a batch of this mead sparkling.
Oh My!
Source: Brian Ream <osiris@net-link.net>
Mead Lover's Digest #587
19 August 1997
Dump juice and honey in the 1 gallon carbuoy, add water to the top, pitch 1/8th of the package of yeast, and shake well to aerate. Lock it up and watch it bubble. When it's done, throw in what you believe is a decent amount of corn sugar (about ¼ cup) and bottle.
The resulting product is very sweet, almost syrupy
sweet, with a pleasant aftertaste. I popped the first cap at
4 weeks to see what happened and it seemed to have settled out
nicely. This Thursday will be its sixth week.
Source: "Dione Wolfe " <DKEY@MEDUSA.UNM.EDU>
Mead Lover's Digest #568
1 June 1997
I used the Duncan & Acton technique of feeding the must with ¼ pound per gallon of honey every time the S.G. dropped to 5 until fermentation stopped. I pasteurized the original 12 lbs of honey with the raspberries and ran it in the primary with Red Star Cuvee yeast for about two weeks then racked to the secondary and ran it to completion. I included yeast nutrients and kept the pH in the 3.8-4.0 range with calcium carbonate. I cleared it with Solu-Brite (bentonite works, too) and bottled it after about two months. That particular yeast will tolerate 18-20% alcohol, so it's rocket fuel and must be taken seriously when drinking.
I drew off sufficient must to make room for the honey
additions and drank it chilled. It started out fair and became
fairly good at the end. The cyser is quite drinkable now, but
I've stashed a case to age for at least a year.
Source: scox@factset.com (Sean C. Cox)
Mead Lover's Digest #341 23 August 1994
Pour the honey into the fermenter (1 gal juice jug). Fill the now mostly empty honey jar 1/3 full with warm water and shake vigorously to dissolve the honey remaining in the jar. Add juice to fill 2/3 full. Pitch yeast into jar and cover loosely with cap (just place cap on, don't turn).
Add juice to fermenter and shake to dissolve. Top up most of the way with water and shake to mix/aerate. Once yeast is started, add to fermenter and put on airlock.
Primary ferment: 1 month
Secondary ferment: 1.5 months
It was a little harsh at bottling and has great aroma
& flavor. The color is a rich amber with red/purple tones,
it looks really good!
Source: Gordon L. Olson (glo@beta.lanl.gov)
Mead Lover's Digest #332, 27 July 1994
I mashed the grains at 120 F for 15 minutes, then at 150-155 F for 90 minutes. The water collected from sparging the grains was boiled for 60 min. with the hops. The Irish moss was added for the last 20 min. After turning off the heat, I stirred in 9 pounds of the honey and the acid blend and let them pasteurize for 20 min. Then I cooled the mixture with a immersion chiller, racked it into a 5 gallon carboy, topped it up with preboiled water, and pitched Lalvin K1V-1116 yeast that I had started the previous day. Using an aquarium pump and air stone, I bubbled air through the liquid for 30 min. The yeast was slow to start up (at 62 F), but after 2 days there was a vigorous fermentation.
One week later fermentation had slowed, so I racked the mead into a clean carboy. I was disappointed that the specific gravity had only dropped to 1.032. So, with the 3 additional pounds of pasteurized honey that I had already planned to add, I dumped in a teaspoon of yeast hulls.
Four weeks after starting I added the sparkaloid to clarify the mead. One week after that I bottled it with the corn sugar. The specific gravity at bottling was 1.022.
I had assumed that with all the malt in this recipe it would ferment fast, and it did, but I was perhaps too impatient and bottled it early. So far (3 months later) it is still only slightly carbonated and tastes much more like a mead than a beer. In fact, the beer character is very understated. For this sweet of a braggot, I should have used another ounce of hops. But it was my first attempt at a braggot and I didn't know how it would turn out.
If you are not into mashing grain, substitute two 3.3 pound cans of hopped extract, one light and one amber, for the grains. If you use hopped extract, then you don't have to added the Saaz hops. Boil the extracts briefly in 2 or 3 gallons of water before adding the honey.
This mead is aging and mellowing out faster than a traditional mead, but not as fast as a fruit mead.
Next time, if I want to emphasize the beer character more, I may use an ale yeast for the first week and then add a wine yeast.
I have served this mead to friends and they rave
about it. After I enter it into a couple competitions, I'll update
you as to how well it does.
Source: Steven Rezsutek <S.Rezsutek@baloo.gsfc.nasa.gov>
Mead Lover's Digest #374 17 December 1994
I collected about 9.5 gallons of liquid from the mash/sparge into the brewpot, to which the honey was added, making the total volume roughly 10 gal. The hops were added at the beginning of the boil, which was allowed to proceed for about 55 min.
The cinnamon, vanilla bean, and 1.0 oz of the raspberry leaves
were added 5 minutes before the end of the boil, with the
remainder of the raspberry leaves being added at the end. [I
don't know if this made much of a difference.]
About 8.5 gallons of liquid were collected into the fermenter,
along with a healthy portion of raspberry leaves and hops. [I got
fed up with the siphon getting clogged, so I just tipped the pot
into the open fermenter, being careful to stop before the trub
came out. :-)]
Add the cherries, which were soaked in water for a few minutes to remove the coating of vegetable oil, to the fermenter at this time, and pitch the yeast.
After about 3 days in the "primary", I racked into carboys, where the fermentation was allowed to go to completion (a couple of weeks). After things clear up (another couple of weeks), bottle.
For priming, I used a mixture of honey and malt,
and hence got a lot of sediment in the bottles :-), but the sugar
content is roughly the same as ¾ cup corn sugar. NOTE-do
not scale this for volume! It is "3/4 cup for 8 gal.".
I also used fresh yeast, Epernay 2 in this case, which I pitched
into the priming solution, and allowed to "start" for
24 hours before I used it.
Let it age a couple of months (min), and enjoy!
O.G came in at 1.075. Final gravity was very nearly 1.000.
Estimated alc. content is 10 % by vol.
I did my best to keep the proportions of honey vs.
malt extract close to 1:1, based on my usually getting a mash
efficiency of about 28pts/lb/gal. If you get high than this,
then you may have to alter the proportions a bit to still be a
"braggot".
Source: Fred Hardy <fcmbh@access.digex.net>
Mead Lover's Digest #500
26 September 1996
For both recipes, first make a pound of amber malt. Using pale malt, spread to a depth of ¾ inch in a glass or aluminum foil lined baking dish. Preheat the oven to 100 degrees C (230 F) and bake for 45 minutes to dry the malt. Increase the temperature to 150 degrees C (300 F) and continue to bake for another 45 minutes. Cool and set aside for a week or so in an air-tight zip lock bag. This allows the malt to mellow and avoids possible harsh flavors.
Crush malts and mash in to stabilize at 60 degrees C (140 F). Hold for 20 minutes. Raise temperature to 68 degrees C (155 F) and hold for 60 minutes for full conversion. Mash out and sparge with 4 ¾ gallons (US) water.
Boil 60 minutes. Add 1 ¼ tsp. Irish Moss for the last 15 minutes of the boil. After 60 minutes, add 6 pounds of wildflower honey and boil for 15 minutes, constantly skimming and discarding the foam.
Force chill, aerate and pitch with 1 qt. yeast starter.
I used (and recommend) Wyeast # 1728 (Scotch Ale).
Primary fermentation: 30 days at 18 degrees C (165 F) in glass
Secondary: 130 days (same temp,
in glass)
At bottling, make up a cup of yeast starter, and inoculate with a pack of Wyeast # 1056 (Chico ale) a day before bottling. Adding this fresh yeast to the bottling bucket will get carbonation going faster. Carbonate with ½ cup white table sugar (sucrose) boiled for 5 minutes in 1 ½ cups of water (cool before adding to bottling bucket). Sample after 2 weeks. Improves greatly with age.
1996 Mazer Cup - 1st Place Braggot
At judging the braggot had been in the bottle 6 months.
For using malt extract:
Make and crush amber malt as above.
Soak crushed amber malt in ½ gal. water at 65 degrees C (150 F) for 30 minutes. Pour the water and grains through a kitchen strainer into at least a 3 gallon pot. Rinse with ½ gallons of hot water, catching the rinse water in the pot. Discard the grains. Add another ½ gallon to the pot and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and add 7 ¾ pounds of amber dry malt extract and dissolve completely. Return the pot to heat and bring to a boil (watch for boil-over). When malt mixture has settled into a nice boil, add the honey, boil and skim for 15 minutes.
Have ready a fermenter with 3 gallons of cool water
in it. Dump the honey/malt mixture into the cool water, aerate
and pitch yeast when temperature is below 25 degrees C (77 F).
It helps to cool the pot a bit before dumping into the fermenter.
Proceed as above.
doburoku@freenet.fsu.edu ("Doburoku Jiji")
Mead Lover's Digest #334
4 August 1994
As an experiment, I tried making bread with about 300 ml of lees that were left on the bottom of the carboy after bottling a strawberry wine. Came out wonderful, except it took almost two days to get through two rises! Has a nicely understated strawberry flavor and light texture, though.
Mix and knead normally, let rise twice (be prepared
to wait), and bake for 30-40 minutes in a 375 F oven. Frying
on a griddle might be nice too.
Mead Lover's Digest #384 6 February 1995
kussmaul@dunkel.ucdavis.edu (Clif Kussmaul)
Thought I'd pass along the results of a recent culinary experiment. I've made several batches of mead along the lines of a recipe in Papazian's book - 12 lb. honey, 4 gallons water, yeast, nutrients, and Irish moss. I bottle it after 3-4 months, and it clears a couple months later - the first batch is still getting drier and better-tasting.
I adapted a recipe from the Frog Commissary Cookbook
for a Pear-Riesling sorbet (a bottle of Riesling, several pounds
of pears, ¾ cup sugar) and used a pint of mead, 5 pears,
and ½ cup sugar (since the mead was sweeter than the Riesling,
though not nearly as sweet as the few commercial meads I've had).
Peal, core, & chop the pears, mix with the mead and sugar,
and boil while stirring. Once the pears are soft, pulverize everything
to a homogeneous liquid, chill in the fridge, and the freeze according
to direction in an ice-cream maker. The result was good, though
a bit too sweet - next time I'll use less sugar, or a drier mead.
The mead flavor goes nicely with the pears!
Mead Lover's Digest #433 29 September 1995
Steven Rezsutek <steve@synapse.gsfc.nasa.gov>
Last night, I "invented" a chicken dish (recipe, such as it is, attached below), and, in a spirit of inventiveness, used a bit of a mead I had open where I would have ordinarily used a white wine. What surprised me was not so much the way the mead lent itself to the overall flavor, but the way it changed the nature of the sauce. It came out resembling a slightly sweet glaze, and were it not for the different flavors, I might have mistaken it for a variation on "sweet and sour" sauce.
The mead I used was a "quick" mead I made up this spring. I used a bit of red currant (the mead itself is pale, pink rose color) and some local Takoma Park, MD honey. The honey is light, on the order of clover, but it has an unusual aromatic quality and taste that I can best describe as "Teaberry gum".
I was pleased enough that I'm planning on experimenting
more with this, to see if I can come up with interesting dishes
where mead isn't just an ingredient, but a *key* ingredient.
I'd be interested in hearing what others have come up with.
Steve
Oh, the mead, slightly chilled, was a wonderful accompaniment
to the meal as well. ;^}
--------------- Garlic chicken with Mead ------------------
(they look like jalapenos, but they're not)
Brown the chicken thoroughly on one side (the skin side) in the olive oil. Turn and add garlic and shallots. When you get a aroma of roasting garlic, add the butter. When that has melted, add the chiles and basil. Simmer a bit while agitating the pan. Deglaze with the mead, and add bell pepper, scallions, and black pepper. Reduce heat and cover.
Cook until done. Remove chicken and veggies from pan.
Raise heat and reduce liquid by 1/3. While stirring,
slowly add corn starch mixture until the liquid becomes glaze-like.
Spoon over chicken. Eat.
Mead Lover's Digest #505 26 October 1996
lprescot@sover.net David Prescott Shaftsbury, Vermont
With Christmas not too far off in the wings, I thought I'd post a recipe for an outrageous liqueur that I'll be using for presents this year. The original recipe was published in a British book called "Honey Wines and Beers" by Clara Furness. I have tried it and was really happy with the results:
take the orange and score it with a knife sixteen
times, placing a coffee bean in each score. Place all the ingredients
in a container wide enough to get the orange into. Allow to sit,
turning every day to keep it mixed up. I let mine sit eight weeks.
The results are great. I have not had Grand Marnier in six years,
but I remember it being like this.
(I just threw this in because there was a big discussion
about it on the digest & I thought that some of the names
were great! -- Sheryl)
| Bottle Names | (in liter sizes) |
| Piccolo | 0.1875 |
| Split | 0.375 |
| Bottle | 0.75 |
| Magnum | 1.5 |
| Jeroboam | 3 |
| Rehoboam | 4.5 |
| Methuselah | 6 |
| Salmanazar | 9 |
| Balthazar | 12 |
| Nebuchadnezzar | 15 |