traditional mead honey

I am thinking about making a traditional mead and wondering about honey suggestions that do well on their own. I was reading about carrot blossom honey and was thinking about seeing if I could find some. Has anyone used it before to make a mead? If not what is your favorite honey to use for a traditional mead?

Regional wildflower honey from a late season harvest kicks serious ass. It has tons of flavor, color, and makes for unearthly mead.

Cjtabares said:

I was reading about carrot blossom honey and was thinking about seeing if I could find some. Has anyone used it before to make a mead? If not what is your favorite honey to use for a traditional mead?

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Never tried carrot blossom, a decent orange blossom makes a good mead, if you have any local farmers markets check them out, see what they have. If you like the way a honey tastes you'll like the mead you make with it.

Thanks. I am thinking of using 12 pounds of honey 2 gallons of water. I think that would give me a 1.14 og, I would get a yeast that has an alcohol tolerance of about 15%. This would give me a fg of about 1.025 or 1.02. Looking to go semi-sweet. Would the flavor of the honey come through well with doing this?

I wouldn't count on guessing at the honey sugar percentage if I was you. An easy way to test would be to mix up a solution of 1oz (by weight) of honey with enough water to hit 8oz (in a measuring cup). That gives you 1#/gallon solution. With 12# in a 3 gallon must you could do 4oz (by weight) of honey and then fill to 8 fluid ounces. Once mixed fully, test with your hydrometer. That will tell you what you'll get for an OG at that concentration. You can also use the 1oz in 8oz must and use the got mead calculation tool to figure out the percentage (just do 1# in 1 gallon must volume). Then you can adjust the numbers to hit what you're looking for.

What yeast are you looking to use? I would go with one of the Lalvin strains, since I do with all my meads. I've used D47 and EC-1118 with great results. If you go with EC-1118 expect it to go to 18% unless you force it to stop (not that easy since it's a yeast known to restart stuck fermentations). Also plan to give it the better part of a year (or more) before you bottle it. Plenty of time to allow it to become great. Others have claimed it's a bad yeast, but they also try to bottle it much sooner. IMO/IME, a bad idea with mead in general. At ~15%, I would plan on giving it at LEAST 9 months before you even think about bottling it up.

I would also formulate the must to be closer to 1.00 at the yeast tolerance. You can then add some of the reserved honey to get where you wanted it. Something else to consider too... As the mead ages, it will mellow/soften and seem to get some sweetness back into it. So, IF you backsweeten it, don't go to the level you think you want right away. Give it enough time (in bulk) to mature more before you bottle it up.

Also, 1.02-1.025 isn't semi-sweet... It's firmly in the 'dessert' range

Dry: 0.990 – 1.006
Medium: 1.006 – 1.015
Sweet: 1.012 – 1.020
Dessert: 1.020+

This is what i read

From the Michael L. Hall treatise on**Mead*Judging http://www.hbd.org/atommash/hall/mead_judging.pdfwhich has three sweetness ranges defined:**Dry, Medium & Sweetcomes the following "Roughly, a**dry**mead*will have a final gravity less than 1.010, a medium**mead*will fall in the range from 1.010 to 1.025, and a**sweet mead*will be greater than 1.025."

Maybe backsweeten will be my best choice.

Not sure about the yeast maybe white labs sweet mead yeast.

I will get the og to where i want it not just dump the honey in

I'm sure if you look at a dozen different sites/books, they'll all have slightly different ranges for the same labels... I would still advise caution on what you have it finish to. If you try to get the yeast to stop at a specific FG, you could be in for either disappointment or trouble. Especially if you don't have an exact OG already confirmed (before you start mixing the rest of the honey into the must).

I would also advise NOT using a yeast that claims to be a mead yeast.

Also, don't heat your honey, or the must... IF you need to warm the honey up to get it to flow/mix well, that's fine. Just try to keep it under 100-110F. You'll have a much better product in the end IMO/IME... You DON'T need to pasteurize the honey/must at all.

What is wrong with mead yeasts? I did not heat the honey in my cyser, it was easy enough to dissolve in the apple juice. Will try the same with this mead?

Compared with even the 4 top yeasts on the Lalvin site, 'mead' yeasts are rather limited. You have two choices, sweet or dry... IMO, that's like asking if you want water or water... Where with the Lalvin strains, you get MUCH more information, such as what the strain will actually do for you. You can also pick by the temperature range you'll be able to keep the fermenting mead at. I would plan on at least 1-2 months before it's actually finished fermenting. Even for a ~14% mead it can take a full month (or more) before it's finished fermentation. I had one batch take 4-5 months to finish (formulated to 21%, was VERY active for 3-4 months, then it slowed down).

Click on the packet image on the site I linked too... You'll get more info on the strain then... Such as on D-47 you'll see:
Oenological properties and applications
The ICV D-47 is a low-foaming quick fermenter that settles well, forming a compact lees at the end of fermentation. This strain tolerates fermentation temperatures ranging from 15° to 20°C (59° to 68°F) and enhances mouthfeel due to complex carbohydrates. Malolactic fermentation proceeds well in wine made with ICV D-47.
Recommended for making wines from white varieties such as Chardonnay and rosé wines. An excellent choice for producing mead, however be sure to supplement with yeast nutrients, especially usable nitrogen."

K1V-1116 lists:
Oenological properties and applications
The K1V-1116 strain is a rapid starter with a constant and complete fermentation between 10° and 35°C (50° and 95°F), capable of surviving a number of difficult conditions, such as low nutrient musts and high levels of sulfur dioxide (SO2) or sugar. Wines fermented with the K1V-1116 have very low volatile acidity, hydrogen sulfide (H2S) and foam production.

The K1V-1116 strain tends to express the freshness of white grape varieties such as Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin Blanc and Seyval. The natural fresh fruit aromas are retained longer than with other standard yeast strains. Fruit wines and wines made from concentrates poor in nutrient balance benefit from the capacity of K1V-1116 to adapt to difficult fermentation conditions. Restarts stuck fermentations.

BTW, for my 21% mead, I used Wyeast Eau de Vie yeast... I wouldn't recommend going that route for your initial jump into mead. I would recommend getting at least a few batches under your belt before going for something like that...

Cjtabares said:

What is wrong with mead yeasts? I did not heat the honey in my cyser, it was easy enough to dissolve in the apple juice. Will try the same with this mead?

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There's nothing wrong with the yeasts that are marketed as mead yeasts, but I can agree the term "mead yeast" is a bit misleading, as there is really nothing that specifically makes them good for mead, as far as I can tell. They are basically just wine yeasts, and in the case of the "dry" strains, basically a monster sugar chomper champagne style yeast, whereas the "sweet" strains have a lower alcohol tolerance. I suppose the thing that makes my favorite (the Wyeast Dry) a good mead yeast is that is is very clean, and just lets the ingredients shine on their own.

I use the Wyeast Dry strain for a good many of my meads, along with bit of 71B here and there, and the White Labs English cider yeast for my cyser. As you can see, I am loyal to neither liquid or dry yeast, nor to any particular manufacturer...I use what has worked best for me, in my brewery, for various fermentations. Still, I would consider the Wyeast Dry to be my 'go-to' yeast.

I consider EC-1118 and K1V-1116 as my 'standard' issue mead yeasts. I'll use D47 or 71B-1122 for ~14% batches (so lower kick)...

One thing to note about the difference between the Wyeast and Lalvin is cost. It's standard issue for liquid/dry yeast with the dry being far cheaper. It usually has a much longer time frame for it's "best used by" date. While I'll use Wyeast liquid for my beers, I'll use Lalvin dry for virtually all my mead batches. I only used the Eau de Vie for the one batch because Lalvin doesn't offer a 21% tolerance yeast. I almost went with White Labs 099 'Super High Gravity' yeast, but didn't want to use THAT much honey. Plus the amount of time needed to get a 25% mead good to drink is more than I wanted to spend on the batch. I hope it's ready to drink in 2014, since I don't plan to bottle it until at least sometime in 2013.

Maybe after I move in a couple of months (projecting in July) I'll have room for a fermentation chamber and I'll start playing around with other yeasts for my mead batches... Maybe...

I am making a cyser right now that I used k1v-1116. It seems to be working very well so far. If I go with back sweetening on this mead as well I might use it again. If not it is going to take it a lot dryer then I want the mead to be. I will have to take a look at the link.

Cjtabares said:

What is wrong with mead yeasts?

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Nothing per se is "wrong" with them, they will make a fair mead, from my own experience giving one a try out of curiosity and then reading multiple threads of others that have used them there is a general consensus on the different strains.

Wyeast:

Sweet mead smack pack....It will leave you with a desert level of sweetness even in a lower gravity must and it is very fickle and very high maintainance. It will need constant daily supervision to finish.

Dry mead smack pack....This seems to have a better reputation, there have been more documented supporters of it and it seems to be able to work a little more independantly with just routine maintainance (step feeding, aeration, etc..)

The white lab tubes are talked about less but it still seems the general opinion is that the sweet is very sweet and the dry is very dry.

the purpose of the smack packs and liquid tubes is convenience, yet it is recommended to make starters with them, while dry yeast works very well with simple rehydration methods. The convenience factor is eliminated.

Then there is the cost factor, one activator (smack pack) or one tube costs as much as 5-7 packets of dry yeast depending on where you buy it.

Consistency is also questionable, how have the tubes/activators been stored? they are effected by temperature spikes much more than the dry yeasts. have they been in a warehouse for awhile, were they shipped on ice packs? have they been in storage for awhile? if you order online do they provide an ice pack or is there an extra charge?

there are just so many more things to consider with the liquid "mead yeasts" that make dry proven wine yeasts that give many more options as far as strains go a more appealing option

I think I am going to go with either meadofoam or carrotblossom honey. I can not decide.

Cjtabares said:

I think I am going to go with either meadofoam or carrotblossom honey. I can not decide.

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Think I am going to get 6 lbs of each. Then i can try 2-3 gallons of each.

If I ferment dry and save 1lb for backsweeting I should have more then enough to sweeten right?

So ordered 7 lbs of each. I got them yesterday, I am pretty excited for these meads

A half a pound can often be enough to back sweeten with, but that depends on "how sweet" you want it.

Dessert level meads can be IRO 1.040, yet that's too sweet for my taste, I back sweeten to no more than 1.015 routinely.

Ok so I ordered d21 and Fermaid K to use for these 2 meads. I have this already, http://www.beer-wine.com/products/yeast-nutrient, is it the same thing? It says to add the Fermaid K at the 1/3 break. What would I add for nutriants befor the 1/3 sugar break?