We just bottled two batches of mead that we started last July. Oh man. The Lotus Blossom honey is smooooooooooooth and extremely drinkable. It is perfect for right now by Noah’s estimation. The Mesquite honey we mixed with cinnamon and vanilla and cloves is absolutely divinely perfectly sweet in my opinion. Noah thinks it will be absolutely perfect once it ages a bit and mellows more. My first exclamation was, “That’s candy!” And I mean that in all the best ways. 😀
I think we have plenty of good alcohol for the next year or two. 😀
Very nice. I’ve been missing homemade ginger beer lately. But now you’ve got me thinking mead. Any chance you have a recipe for your treasures you’re willing to share? 🙂
Sure! Noah is quite fond of the book Mad About Mead by Pamela Spence and both recipes are from there. We mixed on Jul 25, 2009, put it into secondary fermenters on Aug 1, 2009, racked on October 3, 2009, and bottled on Jul 11, 2010.
Basic Mead Recipe (we used Lotus honey)
16 lbs honey (usually wildflower)
4 teaspoons acid blend
6 teaspoons yeast nutrient
1 packet Epernay 2 yeast
1.5 teaspoon grape tannin (we can’t remember if we had this or not)
good water –decide how many lbs of honey you want per gallon of water. And the measurement includes the gallon with the honey in it.
Stage 1: Primary Fermentation
1. In a food-grade plastic bucket, mix honey with spring water sufficient to make 5 gallons of liquid.
2. Add 1/4 teaspoon sodium metabisulphite and let stand for 24 hours (cover loosely with cloth or plastic sheet).
3. Stir in acid blend, tannin, and nutrients.
4. Add the yeast.
5. Swirl vigrously to aerate.
At this stage of fermentation the activity of the yeast is aerobic–it requires oxygen to work. Be a shameless agitator and mix it up. Within a few hours, the brew will begin to work and froth vigorously.
6. Skim daily with a sterilized tea strainer.
After a few days fermentation will slow and the foam will recede.
Stage 2: Secondary Fermentation
7. Using a siphon hose, rack the must into a five-gallon carboy (leave any sediment behind) and fit with an air lock.
We only kind of followed the directions after that. We racked one more time about 6 weeks later and then didn’t touch it until we bottled it.
Celtic Crusher Metheglin
3 lbs dark, morose, and moody honey (we used 5 lbs of Mesquite)
.5 oz acid blend
rind of one small lemon
4 oz. mixed herbs (we used cinnamon, cloves, and vanilla bean)
handful of raisns
5 tablespoons bee pollen
enough water to make up how many gallons of liquid you want
Procedure: (this is straight out of the book, I think we modified in a few places)
1. In a primary fermenter, stir the honey into 6 pints of the water.
2. Add in acid blend, lemon peel, bee pollen, raisins, and herbs (a cheesecloth bag is a big help for the herbs).
3. Sterilize with 2 Campden tablets or 1/3 teaspoon potassium metabisulphite.
4. Let stand 24 hours.
5. Add in yeast starter and stand back.
6. After 4 days, take a tea strainer and fish out the herbs and other solid material. Skim scum daily.
7. After the foam recedes, rack into the secondary fermenter.
8. When fermentation is complete, rack into bottles and allow to age for at least a year.
Awesome – thank you!
I had no idea how much experience you have with mead making so I copied a lot more than ‘just’ the recipe. I hope that’s not obnoxious. I would need to take this much information and spend extensive time on the internet figuring out what it all meant if I didn’t have Noah. 🙂
Not the least bit obnoxious. I appreciate the info.
*drools*
@$&^*@$*
*cleans keyboard*
Hmm, I could get a ticket for California instead of PDX… no, no, I’ll be good. Besides, my brother’s wedding is going to have stuffed grape leaves and mini-cheesecakes.
It’s only 10 hours to mead from PDX…and if some happened to find it’s way back… 😉
She also has a two year old. 10 hour side trips are just not so convenient any more…
I gathered from the icon. However, I have found that being in charge of a small person can provide extra motivation to obtain excellent alcohol to, ahem, medicate said condition of being in charge of a small person. 😉
give the booze to the kid!
less expensive that way…
We totally have better food than that around here. We have *Everything*. 😀
It’s too bad I can’t schedule one of my intermittent trips north at the same time. We totally have to meet up some day. 🙂 I’m trying to convince myself that I can handle waiting until tiny baby is one or so to go on a big trip.
ETA: now if you told me you were hitting up Voodoo Donuts I would say you win. PDX is better. 😀
Try out Pix Patisserie next time you’re up too. It’s not doughnuts, but they have some damn fine pastries in other categories.
I dunno….I find Pix sort of underwhelming when I’ve been there. Maybe I haven’t had the right things, or been in the right mood.
Especially after that recent article you shared about hypoxia and car seats, I think my long distance travel will be particularly restricted to air travel for a bit. But flying with an infant was really easy, so having the extra motivation to just fly instead of dicking around with driving is probably a good thing.
We just bottled our mead last weekend. 🙂 Just need to label it… It’s rose hips and cloves. So it’s got a nice citrus edge and a nice spicy edge. It’s lovely stuff. 🙂
nice! We should trade bottles. 😉