My first Mead

Started fermenting my first mead tonight.

3(+) Gallon batch.

Initial Components:
3 Gallons of Spring Water
9# of Foot Hill Manor Wildflower Honey*
Juice of 3 Oranges
1 cup of Black Tea
3 tsp Yeast Nutrient

* - From my hives

Yeast: Lalvin D47

Rehydrated yeast and prepared a starter 2d ago, using a 1q mason jar with 4:1 water to Honey (same as above) and a 'pinch' of yeast nutrient. Used tap (well) water.

Started with 1gal of spring water in a steel stockpot and added the 9# of honey, the yeast nutrient, OJ, and Tea(brewed with spring water). Heated on stove to dissolve while vigorously stirring. No skimming...my honey is freakin' awesome...I want nothing taken out

Put 1 gallon of spring water into brew pail. Dumped in yeast starter and rinsed jar with spring water. Dumped must on top and added another gallon of spring water. Stirred vigorously for 5 minutes.

Checked gravity. Added honey and stirred until OG=1.1000.

Covered and put in warm spot.

CONCERNS:
1) This is my first ferment ever. Winged it with WAAAYYY too much reference material floating around in my head.
2) Did not pasteurize or use sulfite despite having the additive. Wanted to be as 'natural' as possible.
3) I want a semi-sweet mead. OG may not have been high enough considering yeast...worried it may go completely dry. Will monitor gravity, may add more honey.
4) Water may have been a bit on the cool side. Fermentation is observable but not vigorous.

Nothing special here, just one more traditional mead from a new guy.

THOUGHTS ON THE MATTER:
1) May pull water from local spring in the future.
2) Want to eventually make it completely local using materials from the property or local farms.
2) Eliminate black tea and use Oak leaves for tannin?
3) Figure out a local source of acid. I've read new growth Spruce tips contain ascorbic acid. Will investigate.
4) Is yeast nutrient even necessary?
5) Eventually try to harness a wild yeast

I will post updates as I progress. If nothing else it can serve as my log. I would like to have a 'standard' mead process of my own to build off of for Metheglins and Melomels from; hopefully using goodies from the farm stand (if they don't rape me on cost)

Welcome to the craft! As far a nutrients go... definately yes (reference sticky at top of forum). My dad uses spruce needles as a bittering agent in his beer but I'm not aware if they would work to acidify mead. D47 under the right conditions will ferment your mead to 1.000 or lower so you may want to backsweeten. In most cases patuerization is not needed. If you are worried about added ingredients you can always drop in a camden tab per gallon.

Best of luck with your new hobby.
I'm jealous of the beehives.

1 week and two days in.

SG is now 1.066-ish (don't like this hydrometer difficult to read)

uite a bit of foam had been produced in the course of the week, but it has receded considerably. Defintiely smells like mead....hope it eventually tastes like it

pasteurizing is done to help break down proteins and float wax so you can skim it off. This makes the finished mead clear. When I pasteurize I never get the temp above 130. I would make up a bentenite slurry now and add it. This will help break down the proteins. Then again if you don't care if the mead is cloudy(a lot of folks dont) dont worry about it

Racked to carboy.

SG = 1.020

It is a bit hazy. Smells like mead....tastes like mead.

Taste is ok, but a little watery and weak flavored.

Stay tuned.

Don't worry...you can definitely make mead without boiling, and without even heating to pasteurization temps.

+1 on the nutrient additions...definitely necessary for a *healthy* fermentation. Can you ferment without it? Probably, but you will have WAY better mead with nutrient additions (and be sure to check out staggered nutrient additions...basically adding nutrient in separate doses over the first few days of the primary.)

At 1.100 OG, it probably will go dry with D-47. If you want sweet, you may be better off waiting to backsweeten...if you incrementally add honey, you can sometimes push the yeast even past it's rated ABV tolerance, and could end up with a monster mead...which may be OK to you, but just saying... You seem to be wanting to go "all natural" with this, so adding sorbate and metabisulfite (to attenuate before backsweetining) may not be for you...

In terms of your goal of "making it local," I think you'll have a hard time finding anything from New Jersey that will have a high enough acid content that won't impart its own flavor on the mead (such as using a small amount of citrus juice). That being said, a spruce tip mead would probably be awesome...as 2ndGen said, spruce is a traditional bittering agent is some ancient beer styles. Also, consider that you may not really even need an acid addition for some meads...as opposed to nutrient additions, I generally only use acid blend for melomels, and even then I only add it to taste at bottling.

Sounds very cool. I love the ambition of keeping it local. I started a hive a few years ago and got the first harvest of honey (50 lb) last May/Jul. Used own blueberries and honey to make a 5 gal batch of melomel 9 months ago. Just tasted it last night and it's transformed tremendously over the last 3 months. I'm ready to start two more hives this year!

I could comment that if you used 9lb of honey and 3 gallons of water, you made it a little on the weak side.

3lb of honey per gallon means total volume, not 3lb of honey PLUS 1 gallon of water. You may need to back sweeten a bit, but I'll defer to those with more experience. I'm a noob at this stuff, too! (although I have gone through 6 bottles of commercially available mead so far!)

Racked for the third time tonight, it was clear.

Current SG read 0.997ish, so I guess that make the approximate abv. 13.7%

I tasted it, and it was a definitely dry and a bit 'hot', but a bit flavor-less other than tasting like...well mead..which was the intent.

A few more months sitting in the carboy, then I guess I will bottle it. Not sure if I want to back-sweeten. I will decide then, and use raw honey.

So, my initial desire to be semi-sweet is shot unless I add honey at the end.

I want to start another using the mugwort I harvested last year or maybe a "bochet".

i would backsweeten it. that will give some sweetness and taste back into it. however you will need to stabilize it first, typically with sulfite and sorbate. then backsweeten and maybe even ad a bit if acid (or lemon juice) to offset the sweetness.

WAAAYYY too much reference material floating around in my head

Click to expand...

yeah thats a big problem with mead, to much info not enough details. wouldn't worry about doing it all natural for the first few anyway. when you do, use a yeast that tops out around 13-14%.

Just and update. It's been bottled since whenever I bottled it ....

Anyway, it actually came out quite good. So good in fact I only have 7 750s left and have had to resort to hiding them in the basement. I had to lie to everyone and tell them it was all gone.

Over a dozen people have tried it and all were in favor except one and that was "Holy $*** Erick, that was awful"

What do they know?

So, it should be very good next year.

Erick said:

Just and update. It's been bottled since whenever I bottled it ....

Anyway, it actually came out quite good. So good in fact I only have 7 750s left and have had to resort to hiding them in the basement. I had to lie to everyone and tell them it was all gone.

Over a dozen people have tried it and all were in favor except one and that was "Holy $*** Erick, that was awful"

What do they know?

So, it should be very good next year.

Click to expand...

Just a quick tip Erick, D47 is a good yeast but it needs to be fermented at less than 70F otherwise it has a nasty habit of making a lot of fusels which can take a hell of a long time to mellow out. Also, it's better, usually, if it's aged in bulk so there's less chance of being any differences with the quality of the aged mead from temperature variations.

Well done

regards

fatbloke