local wild honey. What mead to make?

I have been a homebrewer for a while now and have always wanted to make mead. I never have because I was afraid of the quality of the store bought stuff and b/c the local stuff was dreadfully expensive.

Anyway, I had the good fortune yesterday to be given 3lbs of awesome local honey. I don't want to do anything crazy with recipe as far as fruits and spices go, I just want to make a soild semi-sweet mead. However, all of the recipes for plain mead that I have seen call for light, preferably, clover honey. The honey I was given tastes exceptionally good and is not terribly heavy on the palette, but it is very dark, almost like a brown ale. It looks solid brown but when you hold it up to the light a dark amber color can be seen.

He said a good percentage of it was tulip poplar (supposedly the best flower for honey in East TN) and the rest was from wild mountain trees and bushes.

What should I do? Can I just follow a regular clover honey recipe and substitute this much darker honey and have it turn out fine, or do i need to make some modifications.

FYI the recipe i have calls for 3lbs of honey per gallon of water, yeast and yeast nutrient. Thats it.

Make a one gallon traditional mead with it using EC-1118 yeast. I used 4# per gallon of must for my inital batches with strong flavored (local) wildflower honey and it came out wonderful.

Best thing I can tell you is to use strong flavored honey if you want some of those flavors to remain at the finish. Give it the time it needs to become great (a solid year is a good start) and you'll be very happy with the result.

I would also get some more honey from that source. If it's as good as you say, you'll want to make a second batch ASAP. That way you'll have some to drink while you're making next year's batch. :rockin:

I started making mead because I have to go gluten free. Love it so far. I you use 1118, it will ferment 3# honey dry to the bone. Figure out your og and get a yeast that will leave you a little sweet.

A classic show mead would be nice with high quality show honey. Should bring out all the nuances in it

You could always start with a JAOM. Just a thought

Eh why add bread yeast and orange pith to a good mead?

I would stick to the traditional mead, but use a less heavy handed yeast, 1116 if you're fermenting at room temperature or d47 if you have temp control

Insomniac said:

I would stick to the traditional mead, but use a less heavy handed yeast, 1116 if you're fermenting at room temperature or d47 if you have temp control

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K1-V1116 also goes to 18% (same as EC-1118) but doesn't ferment as fast as EC-1118. D47 could be a good choice if [as mentioned] you can keep the must in it's "happy" temperature range.

Good information can be found on the Lalvin Strains site... I would just recommend staying clear of RC212 since it's very nutrient needy.

Bhunter87 said:

Eh why add bread yeast and orange pith to a good mead?

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I completely agree there. With high grade honey, let it shine. If you're using store brand (or cheap) honey, then add flavors on top of it all you like. I'm actually doing that for a highly flavored batch right now. The base mead is using honey from BJ's (was free to me) and I'll be adding flavor elements to it over the coming months. By the end, I expect none of the original honey flavor to come through.

I would get an additional pound of something like clover honey (something with a light, non-intrusive profile), then keep a half pound of the nice varietal honey back.

With the 2.5lb of varietal and the other pound, and mix those with water to a gallon. That then gets fermented with K1V (not EC-1118, as it will blow a lot of the aromatics straight out the airlock).

Ferment it dry, rack it off the sediment and stabilise it. Then use the reserved half pound to back sweeten the mead to about 1.015 and then clear it as normal.

You will end up with a semi-sweet traditional that should display the flavour profile of the original varietal honey.

fatbloke, why do you hate EC-1118 so much?? I used it for my initial batches and they came out great.

I have packets of both yeast strains on hand. I'm going to have to mix up two batches, with the same formulation, just to see if you're simply a hater of EC-1118 for no factual reason or not. I have 60# of the exact same honey on hand (single, 5 gallon bucket) so there's no chance of different batches of honey impacting the flavors here.

Love it. 2 show meads, 2 yeasts. Please post all activity!!!

Bhunter87 said:

Love it. 2 show meads, 2 yeasts. Please post all activity!!!

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Don't think there would be ANY losers in this one... :rockin:

I'm recovering from using the right angle grinder for two days to get my keggle (to be) polished up. Within the next few evenings, I'll mix up the batches and get them cranking away... I've been meaning to get these two started for a bit anyway, so now there's an even bigger reason to do it.

Just need to do the testing to see how much sugar the honey has in it, so that I can use the correct amount to hit my goal.

Please excuse the hijack.....

In response to Golddiggies point, I don't hate EC-1118. It's a very good yeast, for making stuff that has many qualities of a champagne/sparkling wine.

But that is all it does. People who rave about it as if its some sort of magic bullet. It's not.

One of the first experiments I did when I started with meads was a side by side of 1118, 1116 & 71B. When the batches were first cleared, my taste test gave me 71B top, with the other two joint second. Actually the 1118 was just flat, indistinct, uninspiring and the K1V was a little rough.

6 months later, the 1118 batch hadn't really changed much, the 71B was still pretty good, but the K1V batch was bloody marvellous. A mellowed taste, wonderful aromatics, etc etc. Yes I still didn't know what I do these days, just the differences of taste and smell, but later learning has taught me better.

If you want to make a batch with many qualities of a champagne, then make a dry, more subtle one with champagne yeast, if you're making something different, then leave the EC-1118 where it belongs, in a drawer for sparkling batches and restarting stuckies.

My preference with traditionals, is for D21, then K1V. Though the K1V can also be used for many of the issues that 1118 is used for. So to me, its preferable.

Don't get stuck on the hype. Recent blind tests have shown our sparkling whites to be superior, the result of conscious effort to improve. And not just the results of luck, tradition, public relations and a gullible public. The French didn't like competition. Which is why they like AOC and PDO designation. When someone beats them at their own game, they hate it:..........