Anyone make any mead?

[duke76]

Well last year on this forum someone was talking about bees and getting honey, well I thought that sounded interesting so I got me a couple hives from nucs, well they did really well, ended up splitting them up and caught a swarm and now I have eight hives. I couldn't take alot of honey because they are going to need it to get through the Iowa winter. I did get 43 pounds and was thinking about making some mead. Kinda weird how my hobby of cast boolits got me into bees because of beeswax for boolit lube and now my bees are getting me into homebrewing, I guess one hobby leads you into another. Ha. Well anyway does anyone make any mead and have any suggestions? I really like ginger so was thinking maybe making some with ginger in it also,but if you guys have a great recipe that you like lets hear it.

[kens]

I have made several wines. I have not fermented a straight honey, that sounds too much like trying to ferment straight sugar.
However, I made a blueberry wine where I used honey to augment the sugars. Very nice.
What kind of harvest fruits are available in your area??
Your local harvest fruits will likely determine just what wine you are going to make.
Strawberry wine made with honey is good, as is blueberry, and grapes.
My advise is to make a fruit wine and substitute the sugar content with honey, you'll get a better taste, instead of a methanol chemical taste.

[GhostHawk]

I have in the past.

My best was a cranberry mead. I heated 2 bags of cranberry's to 165 degrees and added water to make a 5 gallon batch. Few pounds of honey. Back then was mostly buying my honey at Sam's club.

I also did one epic 55 gallon batch in a food grade barrel. Took forever to get the yeast started working but once it did it went well. We used a 5 gallon bucket of honey for that one.

Finding the right yeasts is part of it IMO.
Then get that yeast working in like a mini batch, couple quarts to a gallon in a big jar or jug. Start that a week ahead so it is rolling good. Pitch the whole works and your mead will take off.

I was a big airlock junkie back then. Made Beer, wine, mead, you name it. One of my best was a really big jar of strawberry jam, water, yeast and maybe couple pounds of sugar. Awesome flavor.

IMO the fruit flavors go really well with the honey. Blueberry, wild plum, strawberry.
Just get yourself a couple of carboys, and maybe 4 gallon jugs, break a batch up, try different things. See what you like. Wait until it is slowing down and add some fruit and water.

Distillers yeast will get you a bit higher up in the alcohol content.

[MaryB]

I rarely direct someone off this forum but there is a mead section over here http://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum.php that will have recipes and answers.

I have a batch aging... won't sample it until close to Christmas(plan is to take it with as a gift to everyone for Christmas ). I sampled as I bottled but it needs to carbonate to be really good. Mulberry Mead aka Morat as it is called.

[DerekP Houston]

Coworker of mine makes some fantastic mead, I've been meaning to make a batch myself. Apple cider mead is on the menu once I acquire the supplies. Let me know how it turns out!

[Whiterabbit]

Well last year on this forum someone was talking about bees and getting honey, well I thought that sounded interesting so I got me a couple hives from nucs, well they did really well, ended up splitting them up and caught a swarm and now I have eight hives. I couldn't take alot of honey because they are going to need it to get through the Iowa winter. I did get 43 pounds and was thinking about making some mead. Kinda weird how my hobby of cast boolits got me into bees because of beeswax for boolit lube and now my bees are getting me into homebrewing, I guess one hobby leads you into another. Ha. Well anyway does anyone make any mead and have any suggestions? I really like ginger so was thinking maybe making some with ginger in it also,but if you guys have a great recipe that you like lets hear it.

How funny. I have made exactly what you want, ginger mead. It's fine if you want to make it, but I have a better recipe now.

I use 1 lb per gallon of water for the honey sugars. That gets me to about 5% alc by volume after brewing. Roughly. You can fine tune as needed.

My recipe, I just use honey and hops. Nothing else. Rather than a true mead, it's just a honey beer. Brewed for 4.5-5%, and lightly hopped to balance the sweetness, it's not your over-sweet mead, but more like the best lager you've ever had. Light and refreshing, not over the top anything. Just balanced and crisp and delicious.

I don't really like lagers in general, but my mead/honeybeer is better than any lager IMO.

It's a summer drink, and I would not make it for keep, but rather just a summer's worth. I'm sure it would not age well over winter.

Using proper ale hops is of course critical, but does not need to be specific. It's a GREAT base for single-hops experimenting, to really understand the essence of particular hops species. I would stick to pale ale, weizen, etc hops varietals to start, most important is just to get the IBU's high enough to remove the sweetness, not make it hot enough to be a true pale ale much less an IPA or some other over-hopped ****. The star of the drink should be the honey.

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If I were brewing a winter mead, I would probably make it honey and water and NOTHING else. About 9-12% (2-2.5 lb per gallon of water). Then bottle just for storage, no carbonation. To drink, I would mull it on the spot with proper mulling spices to balance the over-sweetness with cloves and cinnamon. And drink hot as a digestif at meals. The goal would be to make it rich and thick, stand-a-fork-in-it rich, with the clove and cinnamon there to cut it just enough.

I imagine for this to work, water quality would be utterly critical. mineral water could make this a disaster.

But that's just me, and I'm not 100% sure this recipe would work well. But in my head, it feels like the right recipe to try. i think 9-12% is about right, but might need to be as high as 18%. Over 12%, I would switch to champagne yeast, over 18% I would switch to white labs high-gravity yeast and shoot for 24%. IMO a 20% mead would not be right for this drink, just a guess.

I would not try to mull it during brewing.

[MaryB]

All my brewing water is reverse Osmosis filtered then I add minerals back to match the beer style and get the PH where it should be.

[swamp]

I used to make a lot of mead. Mead is baasicly honey and water fermented. Some had herbs added for flavor. I used 1 gallon of honey to 4 gallons of unfiltered cider. I used champain? yeast to ferment. It has a high tolerance for alcohol.

Don't drink enough to make it anymore.
swamp

[Hick]

I have a reproduction copy of the original encyclopedia Brittanica (not sure I spelled that right). I dates to the 1600's and gives the original recipe for Mead. Add water to honey until it will just "bear and egg", then ferment. The thing about bearing an egg means you mix until the density is such that a raw egg neither sinks nor pops to the top-- that supposedly gives the right blend of honey and water. I tried it some years ago and it was pretty good stuff.

[kens]

I have a reproduction copy of the original encyclopedia Brittanica (not sure I spelled that right). I dates to the 1600's and gives the original recipe for Mead. Add water to honey until it will just "bear and egg", then ferment. The thing about bearing an egg means you mix until the density is such that a raw egg neither sinks nor pops to the top-- that supposedly gives the right blend of honey and water. I tried it some years ago and it was pretty good stuff.

To 'bare an egg',,,,well that is interesting.
I just googled the specific gravity of an egg, and lo and behold, it is 1.080"
1.080 is the majic number on a Triple Scale Hydrometer to start a batch of wine must.
The things the ancient people knew back then is phenominal.

[flyfisher66048]

I found several YouTube videos on brewing 1 gallon batches of mead. This allows you to experiment with recipes with out breaking the bank on honey for a 5 gallon batch.

I’ve started experimenting with various meads from basic Honey, Yeast, and Water, to more interesting varieties. Making mead is easy, and the results are yummy.

[MaryB]

I have a cyser I need to bottle, just a simple one, gallon of apple juice and 1 1/2 pounds of honey. Dropped clear this week so it can go in bottles, debating if I want to carb it or not...

Have a simple hard cider ready to bottle also.

[Moonie]

I used to make mead, loved the science behind it, as a diabetic I can't drink it however. Wife made me give up the hobby when I decided to start making knives again, one hobby for another. I do have a 3 gallon betterbottle full of 7 year old Mead I haven't bottled yet.

[MaryB]

Bet that is going tobe some smooth drinking mead! I would bottle and enjoy just one for special occasions!

[AllanD]

The Second batch of Wine I attempted after a Hard cider that basically makes itself, was a 5gallon batch of Simple Honey Mead.

The Cider I made was a 50gallon batch as my batches of cider go that was kind of a small batch and to date the only batch that would fit into a single barrel. I have made several "Batches of cider" that required six or more 55gallon barrels) Making mead is tedious as you are not fermenting simple sugar, there are other things in honey that the bees put in that inhibit fermentation.

So you start it with perhaps a third of the eventual intended amount of honey and add the rest about half a pound at a time, whenever you can go half an hour or so without seeing a bubble from the fermentation trap you add another half pound....

This is mind bendingly tedious.....

[MaryB]

Being a die hard beer drinker a cider or bottle of mead is more of a once in a great while thing...

[zymguy]

I'm a professional brewer now and i was lucky enough to be in home brew clubs Steve is when Steve was writing

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/p/the...SABEgJlIPD_BwE

Ill be happy to help but everything I know about mead is in this book

[Mr_Sheesh]

I've considered making mead, once I move and have my own place & have made some carboys full of wine & beer I probably will try it. This apartment is a little bit short in the room for a winery department, and too high in the rent department... Friends I camp with always bring mead and it's pretty good

[AllanD]

I have a cyser I need to bottle, just a simple one, gallon of apple juice and 1 1/2 pounds of honey. Dropped clear this week so it can go in bottles, debating if I want to carb it or not...

Have a simple hard cider ready to bottle also.

I long ago gave up on carbonating in bottles except for some beers.
I had a batch of "small mead" (Gingered 6% ABV) that I was distracted while adding the honey to prime the carbonation
and woke up in the night to what sounded like gunfire and hail as the bottles exploded one after the other on the patio.

Since then I acquired a dozen Cornelius kegs, so I switched to kegging and force carbonation.

But when I brew beer I do mostly Wheat beers, so...

[MaryB]

I keg my beer, currently have 3 styles on tap plus a 4th keg can carb at 30psi. But finding a 1.25 to 1.5 gallon keg is not easy... I don't do enough mead to need to keg 5 gallons at a time.