Trying to plan meads for a good learning experience

Hello All,

I'm fairly new to the mead community and my girlfriend and I have started two five gallon batches; a traditional mead made with cranberry honey and a raspberry melomel with alfafa honey. We are attempting to start a five gallon batch every two months. Yes we have the room to do this now! For learning purposes i was hoping go get a list of meads to attack. We obviously want to try some melomels and even a brochet (sp). Some sweet and some dry. The basic question is do we dive right in or should we work on something simple and get a baseline. I'd like to hear the community opinion. Thanks

Caramel Apple mead in the recipe sections is something I highly recommend and it is not difficult to do.

You can satisfy your mead making needs by going here:

http://brewery.org/library/beeslees.html

It'll take you quite a while to run down that list! I must say brother, I'm very jealous of all the room you must have. To be honest, you may just consider doing 1 gallon batches from now on. It'll save you quite a bit of money and the storage is much easier. Plus, if you don't like a particular batch, you won't have 5 gallons that you need to drink.

Try making some meads and age quickly by using smaller amounts of honey and then make some big meads with a lot of honey. You'll get to drink the meads with smaller amounts of honey within 6-8 months which will help you wait for some of the other batches to age properly.

i would start with a traditional mead like you are. then move on to a Methaglen. next a melomel, pyment, or cyser. and if your still good try a Bragott.

Once you gain some experience in some easier meads, you have got to try a saffron mead....SOoooooooooo Good.

Dan

My very favorite mead to date is the Leap Year Mead that a bunch of us made last leap year day. It is a traditional dry mead with vanilla beans. It aged in the carboy for over a year and because I'm a procrastinator, it sat on the vanilla beans for about 9 months. The vanilla nose is incredible and was already smooth when I bottled it a few months back.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f80/leap-year-mead-68572/

They're all good. What do you like? Seriously, if you can make a good traditional mead with nothing but honey and water and a few nutrients then you can make anything.

Well i have a list of about eight meads we'd like to try now. rsmith179 thank you for that resource. I am also intrigued by the apple carmel if there is an available recipe that would be wonderful. Recently we have been buying mead kits from a local brew store that has all the yeast starters and nutrients pre mixed; I beleive our next step in our mead journey will be making that ourselves. Time to read some Ken Schram. Thanks again to all that replied .

I second the carmel apple. I just started one off myself. I upped the honey a bit, but used the basic recipe. I did use all clover honey, which kind of smelld bad when I first mixed it into the cider. A day later it smelled better. I also had to mix in another gallon of water to cut my sugar. The end of the year cider was super sweet and it threw my gavity prediction off. It was 1.1162 to begin with!! (It is in the mead recipe section)

Now that I have made 3 big meads I am looking to do some show meads with varietal honeys with a medium ABV 12-14%. I started my first 2 meads off with expensive honeys and was satisfied. I was tempted by the cheap clover honey and was not so satisfied with how it smelled. The taste was good but the smell was kind of dank.