Mead: Make Now For Christmas Drinking!

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ben

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Hi all.

Since I've been helped out by quite a few people on this forum, I thought I'd share a Mead recipe with you. It was created after reading many different recipes and is a combination of all of the ingredients that I thought sounded nice in the various different recipes. I did 5L of this last year and it is probably the best brew I've come up with - it keeps very well, the taste & colour are amazing, its fairly strong at *around* 12% and it doesn't make you feel rotten in the morning like TC's do.
Most people think of Mead and assume that they should expect it to be ready in a few years time, but if you start this in the next couple of weeks, it will be more than drinkable for Christmas. According to some fairly vague notes, I started this early November last year and had the first glass on Christmas eve. I found 2 bottles of it hidden away in April and whilst it was ever so slightly better than it was in December / January, it’s really nothing to worry about.

The below instructions make 5L but if you're buying things like the spices and not using existing stock, it shouldn't cost that much more to bump it up to 10L - you'll regret not making more once you've tasted it.

Ingredients:

4 lemons
500ML strong tea (I can't remember exactly what tea was used, but it won't have been anything that fancy)
2 tsp cinnamon (Ground)
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp grated ginger
2.1KG honey (The consensus is that clover honey is the best for mead)
Champagne yeast
1 tsp Acid blend (I had this left over from another brew - it’s basically a mixture of citric, tartaric and malic acid in one pot)
2 tsp yeast nutrient

Instructions:

0: sterilize everything.

1: make a yeast starter.
Find a cup, put some warm water in it and add some of the honey, cover and cool to 37°C. Add the yeast, weight for 5/10 minutes and give it a stir. Leave in a warm place for a while until it starts working - I usually forget about it for an hour or so whilst I'm prepping the rest of the brew.

2: Boil 5L of water, weight for a bit and turn the heat off.
3: poor this into your FV, add the honey and start stirring it - it needs to dissolve otherwise it just sticks to the bottom.
4: slice the lemons and add them along with everything else except the yeast to the FV.
5: Leave it for a while - when you touch the FV it shouldn't feel warm or cold.
6: Stir the starter mixture, add it to the FV and put the lid on.
7: After an hour or so remove the lemons.

Fermentation starts very quickly and is very violent - I did this in a 5 gal bucket so those of you who are using 5L FV’s might want to be a bit careful.
Leave for 5 days and taste; if you find it’s too sweet then leave it for another 2 and taste again. I found that after a week it was just right; the taste difference between a 5 day ferment and a week is very noticeable.
When you're happy with the taste, strain this into bottles. There will be various bits and bobs floating around and straining it at this stage means you can drink it as soon as you open the bottles later on.

I left the bottles in a cold place for just over a month and opened the first one on Christmas eve. Seasoned brewers will probably know what I mean when I say that the kitchen needed a bit of a clean afterwards - in other words, this stuff goes every ware, so make sure you open it over a sink with a glass handy.

There you have it, an amazing brew that isn't that hard to make. Having never tasted mead before I can't honestly say that it tasted how mead should, but as I said above, it’s a great Christmas drink - the smell is just amazing and I highly suggest that everyone tries 5L of it at least.

NB: I used lots of different recipes for this Mead so if you think I've used one of yours let me know and I'll edit the post to include some credit.

Cheers,
Ben.
 
Hi Ben,

Thanks for the recipe. Just a few quick questions. Did the brew mead still have yeast in suspension when you drank it?

Did you take a gravity reading before bottling?
 
mead.jpg


Edit: I've tried a few dfferent img codes but I can't get any of them to work sorry.
Hi,

It didn't taste like there was any yeast left over; the ferment was very active for the first 4 or 5 days and had stopped after a week which was when I bottled it.
I'm blind which makes using a hydrometer on my own impossible so I don't always make a note of the og/fg numbers. My notes say that it was around 12%, so I'm assuming that when I started it & when it was bottled someone was available to read it to me.

Sorry I couldn't be of more help.
 
Mine took about a week or so to ferment out and cleared by itself, now been sat maturing for a couple of months after racking. Going to half and half it as i have 2 5ltr dj;s of it so thought i would bottle one lot in wine bottles flat (may add spices and warm it at xmas) and carbonate the other lot and bottle with beer bottles for a fizzy version.
 
I think I'm gonna try this, but removing the lemons before I pitch the yeast so I can then stick it in a demi. I'll just do everything up to pitching in a big saucepan and strain into the demi when it's down to pitching temperature. And if it's in a demi, I'll use as little water as will dissolve the honey since you say it's pretty vigorous, topping up after, say, 3 days. Reckon that'll work ?
 
hi ben!

cheers for the post. great advice for mead. its goin to be my first time, question though...

how much did all that honey cost you and how would you personally adapt the recipe for 5 gallons of mead?

i cant wait for christmas when the apple wines, ciders, meads and ginger beers all come out for a week or two.

:drunk:
 
I really want to give this a go, but am very nervous about making anything sparkling at the moment. I'm terrified of having a bottle blow up in my face!

Can this be made none carbonated? Use a regular yeast and Potassium Sorbate when the job is done? Would it affect the flavour much?
 
Coolsox said:
I really want to give this a go, but am very nervous about making anything sparkling at the moment. I'm terrified of having a bottle blow up in my face!

Can this be made none carbonated? Use a regular yeast and Potassium Sorbate when the job is done? Would it affect the flavour much?

I'm going to try to make it flat. If I'm happy with the taste before all the sugar's gone sorbate+Campden should sort it.
 
2kg of honey seems a lot - how sweet does this end up? If it only goes 12%, there's a lot of sugar left over, surely?
 
I'm glad a few people are going to give this a go; it really smells & tastes like a christmasy drink if you know what I mean :)

To answer peoples questions:

@screamlead:

Sounds like a plan, I didn't really intend for it to come out fizzy since I was hoping to drink it warm like you want to. You shouldn't need to add any more spices than the ones in the first post - I wouldn't say it’s an overly spicy drink, but you can definitely taste them.

@oldbloke:

Yeah that should be fine, just so long as the honey is completely dissolved like you said. I considered leaving the lemons in for longer; I wanted to get a slight lemon flavour but nothing to overpowering hence only using them for an hour. In hindsight its hard to say how much of a difference they made - I think its one of those things where it does add something to the taste, but its not prominent enough for someone to say that its lemon unless they knew there were lemons in the recipe.

RAFKev:

The honey is probably the most expensive part. Sainsbury's don't seem to have the exact jar of clover honey that I bought - the closest seems to be 340G of clover honey for £2.99!! Obviously this would be a bit of a problem for 5 gal - if we say that you require 9.66KG of honey, you would have to buy 31 (30.76) jars which works out at £91 worth of honey! *Calculations were done in head and I'm sleepy*.
Even though I love this, I probably wouldn't ever do 5 gal of a brew that I hadn't tasted before just to be safe. If you did want to do a large amount, I'd probably spend as much as you can on expensive honey and then bump it up to the required quantities with something much cheaper. Strangely, you can smell the honey when you have it in a glass but it’s not as powerful when you taste it. Baring this in mind, you could probably get away with something a bit cheaper - I'm fairly sure that honey was nowhere near as expensive when I last did it (Bloody bees) otherwise I probably wouldn't have bought clover. As far as everything else goes, I'd just * everything by however much you need to until you get to your desired quantity - only use one packet of yeast though.

Coolsox:

These do get ever so slightly fizzy. So long as you bottle it in bottles that have had fizzy drinks in them before then you should be fine - having said this, I only ever use plastic bottles just in case. If you think that Champaign makes a big fizz when it opens this mead will alter that perception. I haven't tried making a still version; I haven't really wanted to deviate from the original recipe just in case it turns out bad.

Cheers,
Ben.
 
I put on my own version of spiced orange mead the other day. For a gallon, I used 1.5kg blossom honey which is the best I could get locally, it was £1.81 for 500g jar blossom honey in Lidl so 3 of them came to not too bad a price :) Will post the recipe later on when I have the notes to hand :)
 
I started a batch a few days ago. Used some oranges and also added some cloves as I had some lying around. Smells absolutely amazing!
 
My mead recipe goes a little like this...

1.5kg honey
1 large orange (cut into 12 segments)
2 x Mulled Wine Spice Bags (have cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves in them- also makes straining easier)
1 tsp Pectolace
1 tsp Citric Acid
Cup Cold Tea
Yeast & Nutrient

Make yeast starter
Put 1L cold water into DJ
Pour honey into large jug, use enough hot water to dissolve
Add honey mix to DJ
Add orange segments and spice bags
Add pectolase, tea & Citric Acid
Top up to 1 gallon with cold water
Pitch yeast starter

SG: 1.143

Started this on Tuesday, it's merrily bubbling away and looking good so far :)
 
Hi Ben

This is my first attempt at Mead. I just assumed it wouldn't do any harm to put it in to clear some of the haze, since it has oranges in it. I'm guessing from your question that you wouldn't recommend adding it?

Ingrid
 
oops, sorry oldbloke!! first got marrsy & Davey H confused, now you and ben lol! must pay more attention to who I'm replying to lol!! :)

I'm not really sure, I just assumed really, goes into most recipes with fruit in it, so thought it would need it in mead too :) possibly not, hoping it doesn't do it any harm now :eek:
 
Here's what I've done, inspired by Ben's recipe:

My version has less honey and only 3 lemons as Ben's 5l water plus honey plus tea comes to about 7.5l - too much for a demi, and I don't want it too sweet.

About 1.5l boiled water into large pan. 50 ml into a glass for rehydrating yeast, with a bit of honey.
4 jars honey (about 1.36kg) added to pan, more boiled water used to get last bits out of jars. Stir!
Gervin GV10 yeast added to glass when at 35.
Mug of Earl Grey added to pan. 3 lemons sliced into pan. Stir!
1tsp grated nutmeg to pan. Stir! 2tsp ground cinnamon to pan. Stir! Tiny piece vanilla pod to pan. Stir!
2tsp nutrient to pan. Stir! 1/2tsp tartaric to pan. Stir!
Yeast stirred at 15 minutes, bit of the must added to make it a proper starter.
Pan heated gently to about 60 to get everything to infuse - no higher, to preserves honey's flavour. Much stirring.
Left to cool for about an hour, to approx pitch temperature.
Strained to fermenting bucket, made up to about 4 litres with boiled water, stirred.
Yeast starter added and stirred in, lid fitted.
After a day and a half it had a nice healthy yeast cap but wasn't trying to get out of the bucket so I dissolved another jar of honey in some boiled water and stirred it in.
The cinnamon was mostly on top of the yeast cap... If I do this again may well use a cinnamon stick instead of ground. Dunno why I didn't this time: I have some.
On Saturday I'll transfer to demi, and depending on taste either fit a lock and let it go, or sorbate it and leave it to mature.
 
After 10 days of bubbling away at room temp, my mead has slowed right down. Took a reading earlier and it has dropped right down from SG: 1.143 to FG: 1.004. According to my calculations, this makes it approx 18.9% A small taste from the trial jar was pretty good, the taste of the spices are really coming through, although it is a little drier than I would prefer. I plan to rack and stabilise later on today, leave a while to clear, rack again then possibly backsweeten with a little honey or sugar syrup, then leave to mature until next xmas although I'm not convinced I can hold off that long!!! Might be a while till the next update lol!! :)
 
Hi All,

Got a slow or stuck fermentation I think....

I Followed the recipe from Ben's and I used a Youngs wine super yeast compound.

Does not appear to be a lot going on though,

Details of start off:
Began 31/10/2011
1 Gallon in a 5 Gallon fermenting bin
SG 1.070

Currently Airlock bubbling approx every 60 Seconds

I just took a reading and the the gravity is down to 1001 (9.1%)

Wow, so maybe I missed the fermenting??
So, I need to take another reading tomorrow and the day after to see if the gravity keeps falling.....

Exciting !!

Chris
 
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