brew my own mead

It used up an over supply of honey, and made for a good drink.

Last weekend I brewed up a batch of the witch’s alcohol free mead and it turned out pretty good. Her alcohol free mead was very sweet and almost like drinking honey, which I’m guessing is a bit sweeter than fermented mead. Now however since I’ve found a place to buy real alcohol mead, I’m going to mark this goal as done and reopen it again should I decide to brew real fermented mead down the road.

Yep I’m not joking as this weekend I’m going to be brewing up some mead using this mead recipe that I got from a witch I know that some people might find it cheating since it is a recipe for non-alcoholic mead but depending upon how things go I plan on doing it again for the real alcoholic version. This will be my first taste of mead so the main advantage of this recipe is that it will be ready to drink the same day that it is brewed instead of a few months later. Ideally I’d like to find a place where I can buy a bottle of alcoholic mead to make sure I like it before investing in the time and equipment to brew the “real thing” but unfortunately my local stores do not stock mead so this might be the closest preview that I can get.

One bottle cleared sufficiently for the Eurovision party and the general concensus was that it was tasty. I have five other bottles there – I’m waiting for them to clear (for now) before I open them.

Well worth it!

I managed to fill six bottles (with some left over) on Saturday morning. I’ve numbered them all and did them slightly differently (one with extra sugar added at bottling time, one corked instead of a plastic lid, etc) so I’ll keep a log of which method works best.

It’s pub night tonight… so:

1) Before pub, boil up sugar, add lemons, add water, cover.
2) Allow to cool while AT pub.
3) Add yeast AFTER pub (around midnight).
4) Bottle Saturday morning.

This has the advantage that I’m in for most of the day on Saturday to work out how often corks will pop and what to do about them. From what I read, by keeping the bottles cool (in the pantry) they’ll take a week to be ready; if I keep them at room temperature, they’ll take three days. So I should be able to work that to make sure they’re ready next Saturday evening. I might keep one at room temperature to sample it early.

It CANNOT FAIL, I tell you.

No sign of fermentation this morning. That’s rubbish. I think I may have added the yeast while the liquid was still too warm (it was late and I wanted to go to bed).

So at lunch-time, I added another quantity of yeast to see if it does anything this afternoon. But it looks to me like I’ll be needing to redo the batch anyway – we don’t want it tasting all yeasty now, do we?

I bought some plastic bottle stoppers, these seem more sensible during the in-bottle fermentation than cork. I can cork them when they’re done.

If I redo the batch, we’re looking at bottling Friday morning, which is pushing it slightly for Eurovision… but hey ho, never mind, eh?

I’m making a Finnish sima mead hopefully to be ready for my Eurovision Song Contest party. I’ve done the first steps this evening but need to pick up some raisins and maybe some more bottles and corks (I’m making 8 liters) before Thursday morning when bottling takes place.

I haven’t used corked bottles before, and on a couple of practise runs I’ve managed to end up with bits of cork in the liquid in the bottle… the corks say “do not soak” which is a shame because that’s how I’d worked out to not end up with bits of cork in the bottles. I think a little research is required here.

Anyway… bottling Thursday morning… then it should be ready to drink in one week (Thursday 10th) just in time for the Eurovision on the 12th.