Classic Mead Kit

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murphysmum

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Just wondering if anyone has tried it and how the results were?

I am going to start mine off over this weekend!

Thanks.
 
If you're making mead, why not make it with honey from a supermarket? I made a gallon about 6 months ago using 2 x 908g jars of runny clear honey from Asda (£2.98 each) and 2 vanilla pods (£1.48) - you could add alternative flavours to suit your own tastes. Simply mix, add yeast (I used one designed for Apple wine/Champagne) top up with water and walk away. It takes a good few weeks to ferment out, then rack it and stand it somewhere dark and cool. Mine tastes epic now and keeps getting better as it matures. Got 6 bottles for well under £10 including all ingredients, spring water and cleaning materials.
 
Thanks for that - I hope to start one off based on your recipe over the weekend. I used a kit this time to have some ready for Christmas - plus I admit to a certain degree of fear when it comes to making mead! (I got very ill on a homemade mead that somehow seemed to have a salmonella type bacteria in it and thats all I can think it was - and before anyone says I had simply had too much I did only have 2 glasses!)

The kit itself is almost ready for the final stages over the weekend - is still very sooty looking from adding thee charcoal, so I'm hoping the finings sort that properly.
 
There are a number of good books and several dedicated websites available on mead making - just search online. It's worth a half hour of research to ensure you end up with a good end result. If you prefer your mead sweet, you will need to use a specific mead yeast or a bakers yeast (your supermarket bakery will probably give you a bit if you ask them nicely), whereas my mead fermented out quite dry, which I prefer. The vanilla honey combination works really well, but as the BBC would say - other flavours are available! If you do use vanilla pods, split them but don't scrape the seeds out and expect them to look a bit dodgy after about 3 weeks into the fermentation.

Hope that helps.
 
Good luck with the kit..hope it turns out well....keep posting on its outcome. I did my first mead last May using my beer making equipment and Spanish Orange Blossom honey you can buy in bulk from Paynes Beefarm in Sussex. I did some research on the internet first, inc. one of the beersmith podcasts, which highlighted some of the more modern mead techniques like staggered nutrient addition which is claimed to cut down the fermentation time. For a 21 ltr batch I used 17lb of honey, heated to 70 deg c for 20 minutes in my wort kettle, then cooled with the immersion chiller, then oxygenated well by vigorous shaking via 3 * 7ltr transfers in a plastic 25ltr wine fermenter (this is how I oxygenate my beer). I transferred to my fermenter and added 2 packs of Lalvin 71B-1122 wine yeast which had been rehydrated with Go-Ferm (from hop and grape UK) then added a 5 grams of Fermaid K spread over day one, day 3 and day 5...and the fermentation was complete in 4 weeks. Transferred to a secondary and left for 3 months then finally had to clear with the wilko A & B finings before bottling (end up 14.6% abv). After a few months in the bottle the flavour and aroma is really amazing, though it is on the medium sweet end of the spectrum.....next time I'll use less honey and try to go for medium dry. If you are successful with the kit and want to try the next batch from scratch, I found the Ken Schramm book, The Compleat Meadmaker a useful reference, even though it's a bit old. Good luck.
 
Nice reply tartan some very useful tips I wouldnt have found
Also if it interests you, you can use an aquarium pump to aerate the mead
 
The sooty appearance is almost gone and tomorrow I intend to go with the next steps. The kit itself has been easy enough - step sugar,, water, yeast etc then let it do its thang for a week! Then add the charcoal, wait a couple of days, then the finings - then its adding the stabiliser and flavourings and some extra honey if you want medium sweet. Will update again once I've done those steps ...................

Thanks for the recipes and tips - need to try a 'from scratch' now - well maybe two!
 
OK - bottled and tasted and the verdict?

Not great to be honest. Its ok but you can taste the alcohol far more than the honey (and thats despite adding the full cap of honey at the end). We had to syphon/filter twice to get rid of the lumps of stabliser and the charcoal too - which the instructions don't tell you.

We got 5 full bottles and could have had more I think but we binned what was left due to it being w-a-y- too 'charcolay' to bother with, as by this time we had lost the will to spend any more time and effort on something that isn't great.

Not one we'll be making again anytime soon - unless we want to power some rockets as it does taste very very strong (of alcohol!).

Going to put it away now and leave for a few months to see if the rough edges go away, but for a kit that says 7 - 14 days, I hardly think so.
 
Yeah..for mead 7-14 days is ridiculously optimistic....maybe taste a bottle after 3 months , then 6 months. I wouldn't bother with any more kits and have a go from scratch, but expect to wait 3,6 or even 12 months before it matures properly.
 
Here's a link I have bookmarked you might want to try this I haven't tried it yet so can't comment

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=429241
 
That looks really good. I'm not sure about the beer yeast, but it follows a lots of the stuff I saw on various US sites before I did my first full batch of mead. Common themes like rehydration adding go-ferm, adding nutrients (DAP) and fermaid k. Also on my previous comments I forgot to mention I'd added potassium carbonate. I loosely followed the base recipe from this presentation in an american homebrew conference except I only used fermaid-k and no DAP and fermented at 21 c.

http://www.bjcp.org/mead/VarietalMeadComparison.pdf

need to get a couple of beer batches done then will try another mead.
 
Thanks for the tips - I'm looking forward to making some 'real' mead now and not from kit. Went out yesterday for some filters, totally forgot to get them, but came back with a chablis kit, strawberry pale ale kit, dried rosehips, brewing sugar, some pink lady apple juice, brewing sugar, p.e.t. bottles - oh well - guess I'm going to be a busy girl between now and Christmas!
 

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