Can I brew mead like a beer?

AsianMead · 11-24-2011, 12:29 AM

I'm thinking about brewing some mead like brewing beer but don't use grain or malt just use honey,hop, water, and beer yeast, OG is about 1.040
One thing I don't know is how to make that mead bubbling like beer(carbornation)?
After the fermentation finished what should I do to make it bubbling or it will happen itselft from the beer yeast?

Does anyone have this experience?

**Revvy** · 11-24-2011, 12:38 AM

Having a little trouble understanding you. When you say "bubbling like beer" do you mean carbonated?

If fermentation is complete you would add some more sugar about 28.34 grams boiled in .47 liters of water per 3.78 liters and a little more yeast ( about 1/3 a packet of dry yeast) at bottling time.

**Golddiggie** · 11-24-2011, 12:41 AM

The process for making mead is rather different than brewing beer. For one thing, no heat is needed.

Depending on the type of mead, ABV target, yeast, and more, your process will be different. A traditional mead is made different than a melomel.

I'd suggest going over to the Got Mead? site, read the newbee guide, then start going through the forums there. I will say that there's absolutely ZERO need to pasteurize (or heat above 100F) the honey. IF the honey is a solid mass then use a hot water bath (again, limit yourself to 100F) to get it fluid again.

Something else, just like with beer (one of the few parallels) quality ingredients make for a better end product. Go with cheap honey and you'll be able to taste the difference compared with quality honey (not talking cost, but grade of honey). Personally, I only use local/regional honey in my meads. I'm sourcing what I'll use for this years batches now (I know, a bit of a late start).

Something else to remember... Mead takes MONTHS. I have some 18% ABV mead that was started a year ago. It's getting really, really good now. I can only imagine how it will be in a few more years.

Personally, IF I ever want a sparkling mead, I'll let it finish first, then carbonate in keg before bottling it up. Right now, I have no desire to have my mead carbonated. There's plenty of other beverages I can have carbonated. Plus, I want to taste ALL of the honey greatness in my mead. Not sure how it will be effected by carbonation. I do know that too much carbonation (which depends on what's being carbonated) will really change how something tastes.

**biochemedic** · 11-24-2011, 05:10 AM

It sounds like you want to make a hopped hydromel (weak mead). With an OG of 1.040, it should NOT take very long to ferment and age out. I'd simply add whatever amount of honey you need to get your target OG, and in this case you WILL need to boil it, even though it's not necessary for mead in general (and quite frankly frowned upon by some). In order to make a hopped mead (a metheglyn, strictly speaking, which is a mead with spices), you need the heat of the boil to extract bitterness from the hops. It will NOT 'ruin' the mead -- I have made several hop metheglins using a boil technique, and they are very good meads with plenty of honey aroma and flavor.
As was pointed out by the previous posts, you can either carbonate by using priming sugar at bottling as Revvy posted, or by force carbing in a keg as per Golddiggie.