brew mead

I need to see if someone else can house the equipment, maybe use it while we can’t.

Completely worth it. Mead takes a while to ferment (there are exceptions), and taste is vastly improved for many types with aging. Give it a try, it’s worth it and not that hard.

but now I have two other people who can help me figure this out: an acquaintance who is quite good at brewing mead (plain and flavored) and beer, and my son’s godmother, who also has all the equipment. I need to find some time to pick both of their brains.

Yum!

I now have three batches going. Dry Mead, Black Mead, and Ancient Orange. One gallon of each. The Ancient Orange is the easiest of any recipe I’ve seen. Very newbie friendly and it is ready to drink fairly quickly, say 2 months.

I drank some of my first attempts this weekend. The best was the easy to make hard cider. I made a batch of mead with chestnut honey that was quite bitter actually, the final product was extreamely fragrant, quite fruity, and sweeter than I would have liked. I think for the price of the chestnut honey it wasn’t really worth it. Better stick to slightly more neutral products.

Well, the mead has cleared, and I’ve siphoned off a glass for taste testing. At room temp, it seems a little too dry for my taste. We’ll see how it fares after chilling. Next step, one of the following:
1) keep it as is and bottle
2) decide to sweeten further, by adding extra honey and allowing to referment before bottling
3) decide to sweeten further by adding campden tablets and extra honey before bottling.

Any advice?

UPDATE: OK, I did the campden (sodium metabisulfite) and potassium sorbate thing. It took 2 pounds of honey to even sweeten the stuff enough to drink, so I’m glad I didn’t try to tire out the yeast. It would probably have taken another 6 pounds! Anyway – it’s bottled and I tried one last night. It’s ok. Probably needs a bit more acid (I’ll try serving it with a slice of lemon), and it definitely needs a little time to mellow. I don’t know if it’s the stabilizing chemicals or the spices, but it has a bit of a harsh edge. We’ll see what it looks like around Christmas time. Anyway… I’ve completed this task I set myself! Good luck to the rest of you!

I’ve been wanting to do this for several years…ever since I was not able to get my favorite blend from my twice-yearly source.

I now have some of the equipment, have married someone with brewing experience, and have become friends with someone who brews mead and beer on a regular basis.

The next step is to figure out what other materials I need, and to find a good source of honey (since I’m not brave enough to start my own hive).

It was my first attempt at mead. I found an cyser(apple cyder mead) recipe. There is so many ways to make mead there doesn’t seem to be any one absolute proper way, just as long as honey is envolved. Dry, sweet, with fruit, spiced,- its all good.

I think that’s the proper term for spiced mead. I found a recipe in an old receipt book that sounds good. (it can be found here: http://thefishmongersplace.blogspot.com/2006/02/for-my-next-trick.html ). I plan to bottle it in beer bottles, since I’m set up for beer bottling already, but don’t have any wine bottling equipment. Besides, it seems like mead needs champagne bottling equipment, which is even more expensive.