levinem

Recipes 

Hey so I've never made mead before but I'm lookin for a few pointers and a recipe or two. My brew books have like nothing on making mead so any info helps thanks.

Bhunter87

Recipes 

3lb honey per gallon
Sweet mead yeast
Nutrient and energizer if you want
Squeeze and orange in there too if you feel frisky

levinem

Recipes 

How long do I ferment and do I boil it?

levinem

Recipes 

I'm also looking to make 5 gallons of mead

Bhunter87

Recipes 

You don't boil. Maybe warm the honey to make it mix with water better.

Ferment for a LONG TIME. 2-3 months in primary, rack to secondary, maybe rack again, then bulk age for a while (longer the better) I'm gonna bulk age mine for about a year I guess. Then bottle and label for different dates. I hope to keep a bottle for at least 10 years and open on my 35th bday lol

3 lb per gal * 5 gal = 15lb honey.

tweake

Recipes 

setting people up to fail is bloody annoying

while you can measure honey by weight its not very accurate. better to use a hydrometer. get one that goes past 1.120

yeast, theres a ton of them that you can use. sweet mead is probably one of the hardest ones to use. most of the champagne style ones are generally easy to use. they handle wide temp ranges, use little Nutrient and are robust. but they have high alcohol tolerance so will make a dry mead and you will need to stabilize and backsweeten.
K1V-1116 is a common one that produces good results.

Nutrient and energizer is highly important. have a read up on SNA, staggered nutrient additions.

temps under 25c.

aging. meads really do need a long aging time. however the better you ferment the shorter your aging time can be.
so with a good yeast, proper nutrients and good practices, you can get a drinkable mead straight out of the vat and a good aged mead within 3-6 months. poorly made meads will require 1-2 years of aging to be any good.

Bhunter87

Recipes 

How did I set him up to fail?

How the eff is he going to know even close to what amounts to use if he doesn't have a ball park?

levinem

Recipes 

Lol thanks guys I'm more of a beer brewer so this is going to be a bit of an experiment. I'm hoping to have some mead for like a week long vacation this summer not sure when exactly I'm meeting one of my buddies when he comes back from Boston.

levinem

Recipes 

Also would it age faster if I broke it up into smaller batches?

tweake

Recipes 

by recommending one of the most common yeast that fail and having no nutrition which is going to make a slow (assuming it even ferments at all) and bad tasting mead with a long aging time before it tastes any good.

more than likely he will fail and if by dumb luck that it doesn't, its going to be a year before he gets any results. that is not a nice way to treat newbies.