Long-Term Mead Storage and Aging

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dibby33

dibby33

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MOD EDIT: This thread was moved from a discussion of Vermicious' mead recipe, located here: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=24813



Vermicous said:
This is a traditional sweet mead that I intend to open when my daughter turns 21.

25 lbs. honey
2 tablespoons yeast nutrient
1 teaspoon acid blend

Prepare 2 gallons of starter beforehand, or pitch slurry from a previous batch. Make sure the starter is well oxygenated. Mix the honey with 1 gallon of water, apply enough heat to ensure a good mix. Add acid and nutrient and well oxygenate. Pitch yeast and move to a corner and forget about it for 3 months. Transfer to secondary and pretend it's a decoration for the next 2+years. Bottle when gravity has at least dropped below 1.010. Try not to drink for the next 19 years.
Click to expand...

LMAO. stunning. I thought 1 year for my Beasts was a long time. I would need to encase them in a concrete shell. Or put a tamperproof lock on the door and give the key to somebody that lived a far far way away.
Would you make another batch just in case, so you don't have to wait another 20 years? Maybe in 5 years?
Stunning plan though. Respect. :rockin:
 
What effects does aging have on the taste and texture of mead?
 
For a monster of this stature it may be wise to step it up by adding a few lbs of honey everytime you rack to another container. Might give the yeast a better chance of survival.

What is the cost for this beast, BTW?
 
Most meads start out dry unless the fermentation is arrested at some point. As alcohol ages, it tends to blend and change until it registers as sweet to the tongue. The texture will probably remain unchanged.

Periodically adding sugar seems to work for some mead makers. I haven't tried it yet, if I have a lot of trouble with this batch I may try it next year.

I have a friend in the specialty foods industry (wine and cheese seller). He sells me honey at cost from the distributer, roughly $1.50/pound. I think he and I split a 60 lb. batch of honey for around $80, so the total was probably around $40 for all the materials. However, that price might change radically this summer.
 
this might sound crazy...

but what happens if you really do keep it fermenting in for 21 years? Say me and my future wife have a kid, and i'd like to make this, but i keep it in the second carboy for 21 years, what would happen?

(yes i am serious/curious, 1, 2 years is long is longer better?) (all jokes aside)
 
jjasghar said:
this might sound crazy...

but what happens if you really do keep it fermenting in for 21 years? Say me and my future wife have a kid, and i'd like to make this, but i keep it in the second carboy for 21 years, what would happen?

(yes i am serious/curious, 1, 2 years is long is longer better?) (all jokes aside)
Click to expand...

I figure he means in the bottle.
 
GloryBee has good honey and good prices:

http://www.glorybeefoods.com/gbf/Shop_List.cfm?PC=1&PSC=5&ProductCat_Name=Honey
EDIT:

For something this special, I'd consider blending together several types of honey

I had planned to do this when my son was born, but never actually did it. I have a blueberry melomel that'll be ready to bottle soon, but I don't know that I'm going to sit on it for 21 years. Maybe.
 
Cheesefood said:
I had planned to do this when my son was born, but never actually did it. I have a blueberry melomel that'll be ready to bottle soon, but I don't know that I'm going to sit on it for 21 years. Maybe.
Click to expand...

ohh cool so it is feesable(sp?)

is that correct though, to keep it in the bottle for 21ish years? or in the carboy?
 
I would think aafter fermentation is done, just bottle it up and store for the 21 years in a cool dark area. You wouldn't want to keep it on the yeast, plus transfering to a new carboy every year or so would be aa PIA.
 
jjasghar said:
ohh cool so it is feesable(sp?)

is that correct though, to keep it in the bottle for 21ish years? or in the carboy?
Click to expand...

I'd put it in brown wine bottles, cork it, seal the cork in wax, then store it in a temperature controlled, dark area. You can rent room in professional cellars where they'll keep it safe and dark for as long as you pay. It sure would be a waste if the mead soured.

My dad bought bottles of wine when my sister and I were born and saved them for 25 years. He opened up one only to find it had turned as a result of improper storage.

EDIT: I'd get that FG down to a 1.000 or less before bottling. Use stronger finishing yeast if needed. 1.01 might be a bit sweet. I'd think you'd want this as dry as possible.
 
I talked to my friend in the wine industry about cellaring. He said that with corks, plan on 1 in 8 failure. That's with proper humidity and temp, 80% humidity and 50-60 degrees stable temperature. Because of this, some wine-makers who are making wine that is meant to be drunk young are switching to bottlecaps. Young wine doesn't need the air exchange other wines need, so they skip all the necessary conditions that corks need to prevent failure.

That being the case, I plan on on fermenting for about 3 months and then transferring to cornies for about 2 years. At this point I will bottle in 33 oz Pelligrino bottles, I've used them before and they will take a normal bottlecap. Since humidity won't be necessary, I am going to build a temp controled box, similiar to Son of a Fermentation Chiller. Unless I eventually build a root cellar, that is another dream of mine.
 
Vermicous said:
I talked to my friend in the wine industry about cellaring. He said that with corks, plan on 1 in 8 failure. That's with proper humidity and temp, 80% humidity and 50-60 degrees stable temperature. Because of this, some wine-makers who are making wine that is meant to be drunk young are switching to bottlecaps. Young wine doesn't need the air exchange other wines need, so they skip all the necessary conditions that corks need to prevent failure.

That being the case, I plan on on fermenting for about 3 months and then transferring to cornies for about 2 years. At this point I will bottle in 33 oz Pelligrino bottles, I've used them before and they will take a normal bottlecap. Since humidity won't be necessary, I am going to build a temp controled box, similiar to Son of a Fermentation Chiller. Unless I eventually build a root cellar, that is another dream of mine.
Click to expand...

Just get some liquid latex like a Maker's Mark bottle and your seal will stay pretty darn air-tight.

Alternatively, you could consider getting an oak barrel and aging it in the barrel.
 
If you don't do bottlecaps, are you "safer" using synthetic corks (with or without a wax or latex sealer)?

EDIT: Oops, this is in the recipe database, isn't it? Vermicious, you want me to move all of this conversation to a separate thread?
 
Synthetic corks are better, but my friend was positive that bottlecaps were best for long-term bottling of beer and wine. We didn't discuss wax-sealing. Wax would make sense, I think that most of the intact bottles that have been recovered from shipwrecks and lost collections were sealed in wax.

For a high-gravity mead, an oak barrel would do some interesting things. Now I wonder if I could get some scotch-like overtones. Dammit, won't do it for this project, but now I have to find a barrel.
 
Well aging improves the flavor as we all know. I had some just capped in the basement that is 7 years old and it is great. some slug on the bottom. Remember that honey itself can keep for 25 years, so I would not get too crazy about corks and other stuff. Just keep it cool and out of light. I buried a bottle in the extreme wilderness of NC Pennsylvania and plan to dig it up in about twenty years. New meaning to geo caching.
 
I think the intent of the OP was that they made the mead when their child was born and wanted to share it with them when they turned 21.

FWIW, I have a bottle or two of mead I made 14 years ago...they'll probably get popped next summer when I retire. ;)

Right now I have about 6 batches of mead that I hope someone will enjoy for years after I'm gone...;)
 

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