redrider736 said:
Only have a few All-Grain Home brews under my belt, but wanted to give this a try but have a few questions.
I thought the best way for me would be too do Three 1 gallon batchs. I have never made or tasted a Mead before so don't want to make a large batch, and I thought of doing three different recipes would be a great way to try three different flavors.
The 3 recipes that I want to try are;
1.Basic Mead, Water & Honey 2. JAOM 3. Joe's Quick Grape.
Just looking for any tips on these recipes. How Long in Primary, How long in Secondary, What Yeast would work best, and I am not sure when in the process or IF I should use Mead Stabilizer, Clarifier, Fermaid K & Go-Ferm ???
ThX
I have been making mead for about 2 years now and have made only show meads, so that's what I'll give tips on.
Generally speaking, you don't want to boil the honey as you lose the nuances of the taste when it gets heated. Because honey is already bacterostatic(sp?) you don't have to worry about other things being able to easily take over your yeasties. I would suggest using some rehydration powder (Go-ferm I believe) 1.2g of rehydro powder per gram of yeast in about 100 Mls of water. Just add the go-ferm to the water, heat it to about 100 degrees, let it cool for a few moments and then add the yeast, stir the yeast just enough to saturate the dry pellets, don't mix it.
I use about 10 g of yeast for a 5 gal, so one packet is more than enough for one gal.
If you are using a liquid yeast culture, like white labs, you don't need to rehydrate. Just take it out about an hour before and give it a good shake before you toss it in.
I use 2TBsp of fermaid-k to the initial must before I add the yeast and stir everything together to completely dissolve the honey. I have found that unless you boil the water, some of the nutrient wont dissolve no matter how much you stir, so don't worry about the bit that remains, you'll just siphon the good stuff off it once you're done fermenting.
I oxygenate the must by stirring the crap out of it initially and then degas each day until the 1/3 sugar break. I let it sit in primary for about a month before transferring. And then I just rack about every 4-6 weeks.
Once it's done fermenting you can add clarifier if you'd like, but I would just wait, as it will clear on its own given time( plus it'll taste better!)
Depending on how sweet/dry you want the mead is just a combination of starting brix and yeast. I'll give a few of examples of the ones I generally use:
For a sweeter mead, I use cote de blancs and it tends to have a fruity character to it. It will stay below 14% ABV and I average at 12% regardless of how much honey I put in it.
For a mild dry, I use Pasteur champagne yeast, this brings it to about 16% and averages out at 14%.
For a really dry or really strong mead( I just made a mead that has 20% ABV with it) I useKC-1118, this is the yeast distillers generally prefer as it works very quickly( took 8 months to clear without clarifier) but its strong enough to knock a moose out.
I would highly suggest reading the compleat mead maker and looking at gotmead.com for more information, hope it helps!