Making mead, difficult or easy?!

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Martin1209

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Hello there, I've been doing some research into mead and intend to start a batch in about a month when I'm back from holiday. Problem is just googling it returns very mixed results, some people saying it's incredibly simple to others saying it's rather complicated. My brewing experience is rather limited, basically only beer kits and watching a friend make beer from hops and malt. So is it as simple as fermenting water and honey, or is there a need for all sorts of stabilizers and periodical turning of the fermentation vessel(something like that mentioned?).
And also, I understand mead is essentially honey wine, is there a special kind of yeast for this or would a generic wine yeast be suitable?
Thanks in advance
 
you can make it as dificult as you want ;).

I have been making some different meads and the dificult part is to create or choose a recipe. If you want a easy mead brew then google for joe`s Ancient Orange Mead. This shows how easy making a mead can be.

The basic recipe that i use for 5 liters:
1.8 kg honey
yeast nutrient
yeast.
Optional fruit, tea, spices

first i pour 2 liter of water in a big pan and pour in my honey and warm this slowly whils stirring in the honey. When the honey is mixed in the water i pour it in my DJ and put in some flavors (fruit, tea, spices) top this off with water and leave some headspace when using flavoring in the mead. Then add yeast nutrient and the yeast and i give this a little shake and let it ferment.

the intitial fermentation can take a while say 2/3 weeks and then rack it and leave it at least 3 months in secondary to clear and age.

Choosing your yeast is always dificult but I use special mead yeast. I dont know the exact name or number will have a check on that when i get home and will get back on that.
 
Thanks very much for your reply! When using extra flavourings, do they have to be put in in a certain form? So for example I was looking at using vanilla or cinnamon, and I see in your signature you have made it with vanilla, so how did you go about doing that? One of the things that I was slightly confused about was the so called sugar or aeration breaks, but not everywhere mentioned these. What difference do they make, and are they the same as the ones you would do for wine? (I know they also have something similar, and if that's the case my friend would be able to assist!).
Also when you say racking, would it be to another vessel or would it be okay to start bottling, presumably after a few weeks the main fermentation will have slowed down and not as much CO2 will be produced(?)
And finally, would you think it is unsuitable to use the standard wilko wine yeast and yeast nutrient, as these are the cheapest and most convenient things for me! Thanks again!
 
The vanilla mead is realy good i have to say. started this with making a basic mead, mix honey, water, yeast nutrient and yeast. Let this ferment and then rack (transfer) to a clean bottle. This way you will get rid of all the dead yeast. Then i added 4/5 vanilla pods cut open into the wine and let this sit for about 8 months and then bottled the wine. I will PM you a link where i have some pics.

Treat mead like a wine it is a wine and its best to do the secondary fermentation as a whole in a DJ. There is always some yeast living in the wine and this way you get a universal taste. there are probably other reasons for transferring it but i never asked why and just follow the recipe.

I cant tell you wat the sugar or aeration breaks are sorry.

The wilco wine yeast and nutrient are fine :) my vanilla mead was made with allround white wine yeast and it turned out great.
 
I had some nice pods at home left over from making icecream and using it in other desserts so used them :)
 
@ashley,

Ofcourse you can use more honey the 1.8 kg is just a guidline.. I get my honey in 450 gram jars and i use 4 of them.

Just fermenting honey and water is great you get the basic honey taste with alcohol.

But inmagine the combination of flavors fruit with honey ;)..
 
Lampie said:
@ashley,

Ofcourse you can use more honey the 1.8 kg is just a guidline.. I get my honey in 450 gram jars and i use 4 of them.

Just fermenting honey and water is great you get the basic honey taste with alcohol.

But inmagine the combination of flavors fruit with honey ;)..
Click to expand...

I started the mead last night the recipe using 6 340g jars but didnt rinse them out. I got a whopping sg reading. Had to esimate it at 1.134 ish as mine only goes to 1.120... maybe this will be too sweet... can I add fruit later if I want to?

I always have a couple of 1/3rd pint glasses of mead at the nottingham beer festival which is usually very sweet. But I do like lindesfarne mead... mine looks too dark to replicate a lindisfarne I think...
 
it will be quite sweet because not all the honey will ferment. And if its to sweet you can always add fresh fruit or fruitjuice in secondary fermentation. Did this last year by adding frozen raspberries to the mead and it turned out great. The raspberries balanced the sweetnes of the honey. If you want to use fresh fruit put it in the freezer for some days this will break down the cells of the fruit so it gives off more flavor and color :). If you add fresh fruit then its advised to add some pectolase this will help breaking down the fruit.

In the beginning its quite dark but this will turn lighter and if using just honey and water the wine will be a nice golden colour.

Its not only fruit you can add, i am brewing a mead with tea, hops, cucumber and jalapeno peppers.
 
Lampie said:
it will be quite sweet because not all the honey will ferment. And if its to sweet you can always add fresh fruit or fruitjuice in secondary fermentation. Did this last year by adding frozen raspberries to the mead and it turned out great. The raspberries balanced the sweetnes of the honey. If you want to use fresh fruit put it in the freezer for some days this will break down the cells of the fruit so it gives off more flavor and color :). If you add fresh fruit then its advised to add some pectolase this will help breaking down the fruit.

In the beginning its quite dark but this will turn lighter and if using just honey and water the wine will be a nice golden colour.

Its not only fruit you can add, i am brewing a mead with tea, hops, cucumber and jalapeno peppers.
Click to expand...

I dont know if im ready for the veg/chilli mead yet but I am interested in the raspberry situation. Do I just add the raspberries whole whit frozen ir di I thaw them out?

Also I used a wilko sachet of wine teast. Uts only a 5g sachet should I add more or is 5g o.k.?
 
after first fermentation rack the mead and add the frozen raspberries and some pectolase.. I added 500 grams of raspberries but that was to much i would advise 200 grams of raspberries mine lost most of the honey taste but it has a great raspberry taste.

this was one of my first mead projects so still searching a bit with adding fruit but i would leave them in for 3/4 weeks and rack again and then leave it for some months to fully develop.

and the 5 grams of yeast is allright its a living organism so they will grow in numbers. I usually take about 2 grams and make a little starter with some water and little bit of sugar and leave that for a while. This will activate the yeast and give it a head start fermenting :).
 
good luck keep me updated :hat:

The hardest part is waiting untill you can taste the result.
 
well i used the recipe on this discussion today and used super wine yeast compound with yeast nutrients from vinclass and it started throttling straight away nearly
i only had that yeast and thought id give it ago as some people in reviews for the yeast used it for honey wine which is basically what mead is

also started strawberry & kiwi wine
and apple & peach wine
and 32 pints of young cider which I'm going to flavour some of it
also go a 6 bottle wilko black cherry wine on the go
conditioning in bottles a coopers stout and geordie yorkshire bitter
 

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