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Newbie posting here, but I’ve been experimenting with meads
for a couple of years now and I have some ideas that may help.
First thing you should do is put the honey away and pick up Ken
Schramm’s “The Complete Meadmaker” and read. Also visit the BrewBoard’s (also
called the green board) wine, mead and cider section at
http://www.brewboard.com/index.php.
They have lots of threads regarding just starting out and have regular “group
brews” where everyone will make the same mead using the same or small variants
of the same recipe. Other good places to visit are Got Mead @
http://www.gotmead.com/smf/index.php?www
and Northern Brewer @
http://forum.northernbrewer.com/index.php?sid=a77a969c632ae2ac3b730017ed87e1be.
</span>Like wine, mead can
be made in many different ways dry, sweet and even sparkling. Keep in mind that
the sweeter meads will be ready to drinker much earlier then the dry but the
dry is well worth the wait. These are really best if you just hide them in a
corner and forget about then for a few years. By the way for those of you that
love oak, honey loves oak!
I have made Ken’s Fall’s Bounty Cyser and at bottling it was
terrific. I’ll bet the crab apples would add a nice twist and many meadmakers
have sparkled this one as well so you can really play with this particular
recipe.
The Falls’ Bounty Cyser recipe is in the book, but if you
just can’t wait to start here is the recipe and there are several group brew threads
on the brew board on this one so the recipe is pretty popular.
Fall's Bounty Cyser
5 Gal.
- 4.2 gallons Cider (Schramm calls for unpreserved cider but
I've used store-bought and it turned out great)
- 10 lb med-full bodied honey (use any honey you want, different honey’s will
change the taste a bit but it is still great)
- 1 lb dark brown sugar
- 8 oz raisins (chopped)
- 8 oz dates (chopped)
- 10g ICV D47 yeast (2 Packages)
- Yeast nutrient & DAP
Optional spices for the Secondary fermenter: cinnamon, nutmeg, whole cloves.
Ken recommends a muslin cloth & string to suspend the spice bag (if you add
the spices). I didn't add any in the last batch but I'll be adding some
cinnamon this time around. If you do add cloves, go real easy - a little goes a
long way!
Hydrate the yeast and make starter using Go Firm (Use
Go-Ferm at a rate of 1.25 grams for every 1 gram of yeast being used.
Then mix the Go-Ferm with 17mls of H2O for every gallon of wine must.)
Only warm the honey enough to get it out of the jars.
Mix honey, water, nutrient, energizer well in fermenter
(Diammonium Phosphate, (Nh4)HPO4, is an excellent nutrient supplement for meads
and wine. Use 1 teaspoon per gallon.)
Take Specific Gravity (1090 – 1105) 12 – 14.1%
Pitch yeast & starter
Stir every day
Bottle Age </span>1 - 2 years
One more thing, when ever you make mead please … please do
not heat the honey any more then to make it pourable. Heating drives off the aroma.
I did an experiment with this and was surprised how much of a difference it
made.
VPC