HItransplant

Recipes 

Id really like to try making some mead. Im thinking of picking up some apple juice, maybe 2 x 1 gal glass jugs, dumping the 2 gals of apple juice in a 5 gal carboy to make some apfelwein and then using one of the empty 1 gal jugs for some mead.

thought 1 gal was a good place to start, that way if I eff it up, i wont be out too much $$.

I like the look of this one from moremead.com:
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MAPLE MEAD
Source: Dave Polaschek <davep@best.com>
Mead Lover's Digest #590 2 September 1997

Ingredients:

5# lt. clover honey
2# dk. wildflower honey
6# maple syrup
water to make 5 gallons
2 tbsp yeast nutrient
1 vial yeastLab sweet mead yeast
Procedure:

I heated the water to make things dissolve easier. It might've gotten as warm as 170F before I started pouring in honey, but no attempt was made to heat & hold to kill bugs.


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couple of questions:

1. is this a good first-timer mead recipe?

2. Sounds like the process is much simpler than beer.. heat water (just to dissolve honey), add honey and maple, cool, pitch, and then besides that whole staggered nutrient thing (more research needs to be done there) you wait. Am I right? Or am I missing a step?

3. what temp do you pitch at?

4. YeastLab seems to be no-more, what other yeasts are recommended, suggestions? Anything from white labs?

5. Whats the best way to scale this down to 1 gallon?


I think thats all, for now.

thanks in advance for any help.

HIt

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fatbloke

Recipes 

No. Reading it as it is, it doesn't even seem to be a well crafted recipe. Sure I understand about using some maple syrup to make an Acerglyn (I think that's what they call meads made with maple syrup anyway).

It just seem to have been decided what the sugar sources are in a "hit and miss" way. With no real logical thinking.
It does seem like a reasonably straight forward process doesn't it. Then again, so does making beer (commercially even). Except, the "B all and End all" isn't just the fermentation. There are many, many things that affect the taste of the end product, not just the fermentation....
Well I tend to pitch my yeasts at room temperature. Of course, you might want to get anal enough about it to set the must temps to the level that you're intending fermenting at first, then pitch at that temp. Or you might want to check the relevant data of the yeast you're intending to use, then pitch it at a slightly higher temp, allowing it to drop to the lower end of the yeasts ability. Some people like to ferment cooler (which usually and logically takes longer) as it's thought by some that it produces a "cleaner" ferment. What they mean by that is anyones guess.
Not really. The liquid mead yeasts (well at least the ones from Wyeast) do seem to have a habit of being a bit finicky to use. Particularly the "sweet mead" yeast. I have no idea what the strain is and why they might market it as a "mead yeast". If you dig around to see if you can get any detail on what a commercial meadery uses, then that might be some guidance. Or if you research for what someone of "known quantity" or even fame/notoriety used, that also might help (I'll give you a bit of info in a p.s. ). Otherwise, you're just relying on others recipes and can only hope that not only have they given a full account of their process in a brew log of some sort, but an honest review of the finished product (this level of detail is surprisingly rare).

Otherwise you're just relying on your own or others experience of how something might come out.

If you have somewhere that supplies commercial meads locally, it might be worth while trying some of those and then trying to emulate them.....
It's quite normal to just divide ingredients by 5, though normally a standard sized (about 5g) yeast pack is enough for batches up to 5 gallons. Little is gained from trying to use 1/5th of a pack and then save the rest.......

I generally use about 3 to 3 and 1/2 lb of honey to the gallon (imperial gallon a.k.a. 4.55 litres). You will find that one of the things that you want to think about is how strong you want to make your mead, so you know what the starting gravity is likely to be (don't forget to read up on making a must of too higher gravity and the yeast not being able to ferment it). There's various bits of guidance, but I like to keep my must to about 1.100 starting gravity. It's worked out from the difference in starting/finishing gravity, so if the start is 1.100 and you take dry as 1.000, then that's a drop of 100 points which gives you an alcohol tolerance of just over 13.5% ABV.

Other points to consider, the higher the % ABV, the more likely the finished mead is gonna taste "alcohol hot" and require considerable ageing time (most meads need some ageing).

As you can probably see, one question always begets another, or at least something else to think about/consider.

I would suggest that for a first mead, because of the method, technique and ingredients, you make a batch or two of JAO/JAOM/Joes Ancient Orange Spiced Mead (google is your friend). Follow the recipe exactly as it's written because it's straight forward. That gives you a "benchmark" batch. While it's doing it's thing, do the research etc as you may well find that you like the idea of something else, but have to wait as some of the ingredients are seasonal etc.....

Dunno if any of that lot helps any.....

regards

fatbloke

p.s. The notoriety thing I was alluding to earlier. A good example is the late Brother Adam, of Buckfast Abbey fame. He was better known for his bee breeding, but also made mead from capping/comb washings. His historical method (barrels etc) used a "Maury" yeast. Some extensive digging has shown this (as far as can be found out) to be the same yeast that is available as Lalvin D21 - normally only available in commercial quantities, but you can get it in smaller, home brew quantities from "Morewine".

Toward the end of his life when it seems that that yeast became unavailable here in small(er) quantities, and he changed to using the local version of Lalvins K1V-1116 Montpellier yeast (I think it's sold as Gervin Varietal E here, as well as under the lalvin name/number). As it happens, if you looked it up, you'd find that the "Maury" AOC region isn't actually that far from the Montpellier AOC region, so it's unsurprising that there are at least some similarities (oh and I've read of K1V-1116 being described as the Swiss Army knife of yeasts, a number of times).

There are bound to be others who have strong reasons why they might recommend a specific yeast (or other ingredient). It'd be up to you to try and work out whether their argument or guidance is worth following. Whether they have some sort of apparent specialist knowledge, or fame/notoriety etc etc, that you might want to follow.

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"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away". Tom Waits.

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HItransplant

Recipes 

I looked at the JAOM recipe you suggested, but Id like to start out with something that has less ingredients, the "SMASH" equivalent if you will, for my base. Im just worried that adding too much (orange and spice) will detract from the honey profile. Is there another recipe youd recommend?

I guess I was trying to make sure I wasnt missing a mash, rest, or boil somewhere in there.. sounds like the only reason you need heat at all is to dissolve the honey in water. So, the process is simpler,... not to say that I think its any easier? does that make sense? I was talking about the science vs. the art... I totally respect the art side.


it helps tremendously, thank you very much for the obvious time and thought put into this reply.

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fatbloke

Recipes 

That's the whole point of JAO, you can get all the ingredients in the local supermarket/mall etc. If you follow the instructions, you can't go wrong. I, like many others, have made variations on a theme (like using a wine yeast instead of bread yeast - it tastes hideous as a dry mead etc). They don't work, just follow the instructions. The idea seems to be to get something that will be successful whatever, because if you get a good batch first time, you're not likely to be put off and will want to expand your ability, knowledge and production....... Using "store bought" honey, means that it doesn't have a distinct honey flavour profile per se, the use of a small amount of spicing helps, the orange gives both acid and taste to balance the residual sugar as well as a little bitterness from the orange pith to assist in balancing the sweetness.
You don't even really need any heat to dissolve the honey either. Possibly to speed things a long a bit if it's crystalised some.

Me? Well I just sanitise the liquidiser and put a pound or 2 in that and then fill it to 3/4's full with water and blitz it on slow to medium. What that does is to mix both water and some air (for the oxygen content) into the honey making it really runny so that when it's mixed into the rest of the water it just mixes in with a spoon (plastic brewing type spoon).

The comment above about not needing any heat is because honey is hygroscopic i.e. it attracts water easily, just that if it's crystalised it needs a bit more stirring if you really want it all dissolved to be able to take mega accurate gravity readings.

As I say, JAO is a good first recipe. You just follow the instructions.

When you've got one on the go, you start finding out about the ranges of stuff you want to use, whether you need to mail order it or whether whatever the local HBS keeps will do the job - for instance, the local HBS might not keep the Lalvin stuff (nutrient-wise) but if they have Fermax or an equivalent then that should do the job to get you going.

If you still want to go for something else, then there's other basic recipes around the net, but you might have to mail order some stuff to follow them. Plus, they don't guarantee a result in the same way JAO does (hard to go wrong if you follow the instructions).

My first mead was from First Steps, it did come out OK but I still had to age it for 12 months or so for it to come good, and it probably did taste different from what might have been expected as I was using products that I certainly wouldn't use now. I was still researching stuff when it finished and it took me a while to learn why it tasted hideous (initially). I wish I'd done a JAO first as when I finally did, it came out brilliantly (actually looking for some blood oranges to try with a batch at the moment).

S'up to you friend.

regards

fatbloke

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"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away". Tom Waits.

Oh, and here's some blog stuff!