steampirate

Recipes 

1. I am making small batches and the recipe calls for a certain amount of yeast. Do I reduce it with everything else or keep it the same no matter the batch size?
2. Is there any difference between bread yeast and brewers yeast that will effect my mead?
3. What is the best way to make mead nonalcoholic?

Confucius

Recipes 

As far as #1, yeast can scale fairly well so reduce it with everything else.
2, It depends. Bread yeast can have a hard time settling out, but JAOM uses bread yeast and by all accounts is quite wonderful (mine is in primary right now).
3: Mix honey with water, that is really the only way to do that, but there are flavors that only come out with fermentation. Just think of the flavor differences between grape juice and wine.

SpaceInvadingMonkeys

Recipes 

1. If you are just taking a packet of dry yeast and rehydrating or using a liquid yeast, I am fairly sure you can just throw it in there. Since you are *not* using a starter, the yeast will replicate itself anyway so adding a little more won't hurt; in fact, it will probably help. Just my thoughts/opinion...

2. Brewers yeast has been bred (can use that word for bacteria?) to sustain varying amounts of alcohol. Also they have been designed to achieve different flavours.

3. I don't think you can mead non-alcoholic (unless you mix water + honey... which may ferment anyway). You can lower the ABV by using different strains of yeast.

Vic_Sinclair

Recipes 

Yeast is a Fungus and a Eukaryote, not a bacteria.

SpaceInvadingMonkeys

Recipes 

Sorry about that, my mistake. However, that does not change my response.
Fyi, all fungii are eukaryotes. That much I do know :-D So saying yeast is a fungus and a eukaryote is a bite redundant.

steampirate

Recipes 

would boiling work for taking the alcohol out?

Yooper

Recipes 

Maybe. It'll also take away any flavor that is left from the honey. It will probably oxidize it as well, and darken it.

I don't think it's possible to really make a nice alcohol free mead.

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malkore

Recipes 

Yep. boiling it down to half its volume should remove the alcohol, but it will likely have no honey flavors or aromas left.

mead is an alcoholic beverage...far more potent than beer, so you can't really make a non-alcohol version of it.

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Malkore
Primary: English Mild
On tap: Pale Ale, Lancelot's Wheat, English Brown Ale, Steam Beer, HoovNuts IPA
Bottled: MOAM, Braggot, Raspberry Melomel, Merlot, Apfelwein, Pyment, Sweet mead, Cabernet
Gal in 2009: 27, Gal in 2010: 34, Gal in 2011: 13, Gal in 2012: 10