brewinginct
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- Apr 26, 2009
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Right now I'm in the process of brewing my first beverage (a cider), and it's going pretty well. So well that it has inspired me to try brewing a batch of mead. I've tasted mead before and thought it was great, especially the meads that are more medium/dry with slight carbonation.
Since this is second attempt at brewing anything, and I've never tried mead before, I'm going to brew just one gallon. Looking around online, I found this website, Brewing a 1 gallon batch of mead, with this recipe for one gallon:
* 1 gallon of spring water
* 3 pounds of honey
* 1 package of yeast (Lalvin D47 recommended)
* Yeast energizer
* Yeast nutrient
Simple enough. The website also states that if I'm going for a dryer mead, I can go with just 2 pounds of honey.
Here's my question. I want to juice some apples (or peaches or strawberrys, i'm not sure yet), pasteurize them with campden tablets, and substitute that fresh juice/cider for the spring water.
Obviously fresh juice is going to be full of sugars, so for that reason I'd likely use less than the 3 pounds stated in the ingredients. And also because of the sugary nature of fresh pressed cider/juice, I'm probably going to have to do a one gallon mixture of water and juice, to dilute everything so that isn't overwhelmingly sweet.
How would people suggest I go about doing this? Keeping in mind that I prefer a mead that isn't extremely sweet and that is more medium/medium-dry, what mixture of cider to water would you reccomend (if the recipe originally calls for one gallon of water)?
And how much honey would should I add, considering I'll be using juice (which is naturally sweet), and that the recipe says to use 3 pounds for a medium sweet mead, and 2 pounds for a more dry mead.
Thanks in advance!
Since this is second attempt at brewing anything, and I've never tried mead before, I'm going to brew just one gallon. Looking around online, I found this website, Brewing a 1 gallon batch of mead, with this recipe for one gallon:
* 1 gallon of spring water
* 3 pounds of honey
* 1 package of yeast (Lalvin D47 recommended)
* Yeast energizer
* Yeast nutrient
Simple enough. The website also states that if I'm going for a dryer mead, I can go with just 2 pounds of honey.
Here's my question. I want to juice some apples (or peaches or strawberrys, i'm not sure yet), pasteurize them with campden tablets, and substitute that fresh juice/cider for the spring water.
Obviously fresh juice is going to be full of sugars, so for that reason I'd likely use less than the 3 pounds stated in the ingredients. And also because of the sugary nature of fresh pressed cider/juice, I'm probably going to have to do a one gallon mixture of water and juice, to dilute everything so that isn't overwhelmingly sweet.
How would people suggest I go about doing this? Keeping in mind that I prefer a mead that isn't extremely sweet and that is more medium/medium-dry, what mixture of cider to water would you reccomend (if the recipe originally calls for one gallon of water)?
And how much honey would should I add, considering I'll be using juice (which is naturally sweet), and that the recipe says to use 3 pounds for a medium sweet mead, and 2 pounds for a more dry mead.
Thanks in advance!