StimmelJr

Recipes 

I am new to brewing. I brewed my first blonds ale last month and I wanted to try a mead. I need a good starter recipe for mead.

gratus fermentatio

Recipes 

2 to 3 lbs honey per gallon, water, yeast nutrient, DAP, yeast & time in a dark, temprature stable evironment (like a cool closet). This should give you a medium show mead. A good varietal honey like orange blossom or teupelo (sp?) would really make a show mead stand out. I find clover and alfalfa honey to be pretty generic & I tend to save those for melomels. I've had bad luck with "wildflower" honey & I won't use it anymore; other people have had great results with "wildflower" honey, so I'm thinking it's something local, like knapweed; great on toast, but not so good fermented.
Also, have a look at the recipe database:
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f80/
And/or Gotmead.com:
http://www.gotmead.com/
You might read Ken Schramm's The Compleat Meadmaker, It really will help to answer a lot of questions you haven't even thought to ask yet, hope that helps.
Regards, GF.

StimmelJr

Recipes 

Thanks alot. I looked online for a good recipe but found too many to close from. I just wanted a basic one to start out and alter as I got more experience.

tom_gamer

Recipes 

What is DAP?

gratus fermentatio

Recipes 

Diammonium Phosphate:
One of the major ingredients in almost all yeast nutrients and energizers, serving as their basic source of nitrogen. Also known as DAP.
I use it in every non-beer fermentation.
Regards, GF.

tom_gamer

Recipes 

Ok. On my latest brew I used fermax, or something like that

Two Beer or not Two Beer

StimmelJr

Recipes 

So, I am taking a risk and trying a cyser of some sort. Ingredients as followed for 3 gallon batch.

2 gallon apple juice. 100% and not from concentrate. No sugar added.
60 oz of pure honey
1 gallon of purified water
1/2 pound of raisins. Chopped and boiled. Then removed.(Yeast nutrient substitute)
1/4 cup lemon juice or as needed. (Energizer substitute)
One packet of highly active yeast.
2 cinnamon sticks boiled in raisins and removed.

What do you think?

fatbloke

Recipes 

Well as a first attempt, you might consider searching for the JAO/JAOM/Joe's ancient orange mead recipe.

Why ?

All the ingredients are readily available at a grocery store. It's an easy, straight forward recipe/method to follow and it's hard to mess up.

Your current aims aren't bad, though lemon juice is no substitute for energiser. In fact, it's potentially detrimental, as it's currently thought that there's little point in adding any kind of acid during the ferment, unless the recipe specifically stipulates it, because if you check the pH of a honey must without acid/lemon juice etc, you'll see that the pH is already at quite an acid level - it's also something that can swing wildly during the ferment so there's little reason to add something that can bring on a stuck ferment.

Plus, as you say about already starting with beers, then it's fair to point out that with meads, some of the techniques are the opposite/different, though that might be further down your "brewing/mazing learning curve", I don't know.....

Good luck with whatever you settle on though.

regards

fatbloke

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frydogbrews

Recipes 

for the most reliable acid adjustments, you really wanna try to add it before ferment, like a day before pitching your yeast.
i add acid to almost all my meads because i like the acid level to be around 3.2 or 3.3pH, simliar to a great dry white wine.

StimmelJr

Recipes 

SG-1.090, FG-.998. Racked three times before bottling and added 24 oz more honey for flavor. Turned out pretty good. Lessons learned? Yes. Yeast. Use a better yeast. Normal highly active yeast will eat all the sugars.