Quick mead for a casual drink.

I am racking and stabilizing a couple of my long term meads today and found that I am short on small quick drinking mead/wines/cider. So I thought I would use some leftovers and make a small 1.5L batch that is a low ABV something that I can get to in the next 30 days.

First after racking my skeeter mead I took some of the lalvin 71b lees and halved it with water, added a touch of DAP and B6, along with a couple tsp of honey and made a small starter to wake up the yeast.

Then after racking a ginger mead I took the leftover ginger, boiled it some and am now using that water.

I am going to make a partial bochet out of this.

I have 8.5oz honey in a pot with the ginger water and I am caramelizing it as we type. After a couple hours I will add that to the small glass carboy I have. I'll adjust the gravity with more honey to 1.06.

Tomorrow ill pitch the yeast and let her rip. wish me luck on this batch.

I'm keen to see how this goes. I've been wanting to start a low ABV mead myself. And ginger sounds like a great way to do it.

Why did you add water before caramelizing the honey? My understanding is that you should cook the honey on its own to caramelize it. One thing for sure, caramelized honey is amazing stuff.

I do that for all my bochet types. The result is that I get less honey that changes to carbon. So my bochet types don't get that smokey burnt marshmallow type taste. It just has the toffee/Carmel like flavors.

I also added 1 tea bag of orange blossom hibiscus tea to the primary. The yeast is rolling and it is bubbling a way. Lets see where this goes.

Just started 1 gal ginger mead yesterday. 2lbs honey and 3 oz ginger boiled for ten minutes and then honey added at flame out. Used lalvin 1118.

Sounds good. Lets compare tasting notes once these are both clear. I have a 5 gallon ginger mead alluded to in the first post. It was 12lb honey, 50 raisins, some powdered and candy ginger plus nutrients with k1v-1116 yeast in primary then 2 1/2lb freshest sliced/crushed ginger in secondary.

I have a 4 gallon ginger/blood orange mead in primary right now. I used 16lbs of orange blossom honey, 4 large ginger roots peeled and cut into thin disks, and have 8 small blood oranges waiting for it to go into primary. Right now it is chugging away and is already HOT and delicious!

Arpolis said:

I do that for all my bochet types. The result is that I get less honey that changes to carbon. So my bochet types don't get that smokey burnt marshmallow type taste. It just has the toffee/Carmel like flavors.

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Interesting. I may have to try that with my next bochet. The first one I just stopped cooking when the honey got to the caramel point. Well, I did let one batch get smokey. I plan to go for seriously smokey when I try for a "stout" mead.

Alright Arpolis....how much approximate water to that 8.5oz honey & what temp?

saramc said:

Alright Arpolis....how much approximate water to that 8.5oz honey & what temp?

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Ah i did not add that sorry. I added 1.5 liters worth. Basically filled up the small carboy I am using, dumped that into the ginger, boiled for a bit and then added to the honey. After just over an hour I reduce the volume by 2/3. It had a nice dark toffee color to it and smelled really nice.

In larger batches of bochet I have done about 3 parts water to one part honey, and end up adding a few cups of water as it reduces to keep the water to honey ratio up if I am not at my target color.

The temp on this was on a high flame with the gas stove. Never took an actual temp of it. I may need to do that in the future. This only took an hour to get to the color I wanted. Usually for larger batches I run it at a lower temp at about a medium low flame to keep the level of the boil down. My pots are not that big and I constantly have to fight it from boiling over. When I do that it may take close to 2 hours to reach the same level of color.

Much appreciated. Having flashbacks to my teens when I worked in a popcorn shop in the mall & made caramel (but with butter, etc) and toffee in a copper kettle which was gigantic. Burned my arms so many times lifting that thing. This will be much simpler (though now I want caramel popcorn!)

Upon looking at this post I thought cyser once I read the way to caramelize honey. I'm thinking a 1.065 gravity cyser. Two pounds honey in about 4.5 gallons of apple juice. This would make 5 gallons with the water or juice used to carmelize.

Wondering if it'd need pectic enzyme if I caramelized the honey with apple juice.

Any thoughts on this idea?

A) Specifically on the caramelized taste with the cyser.

B) Pectic enzyme is not an issue with yeast addition. May not be needed since the ratio of boiled Apple juice verses regular pasteurized juice is minimal. I'd only cook about a 48 oz of juice to about 16 fluid oz of honey.

FWIW I'm guessing two pounds of honey is about 16 fluid oz.

Will the carmel taste be prominent or more in the back ground?

Thanks

Schlenkerla said:

Wondering if it'd need pectic enzyme if I caramelized the honey with apple juice.

Any thoughts on the ideas:

B) Pectic enzyme is not an issue with yeast addition. May not be needed since the ratio of boiled Apple juice verses regular pasteurized juice is minimal. I'd only cook about a 48 oz of juice to about 16 fluid oz of honey.

FWIW I'm guessing two pounds of honey is about 16 fluid oz.

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Considering apples are one of the most naturally dense fruits when its comes to pectin, I would not skip the addition of pectic enzyme, it is quite inexpensive; plus if you plan on caramelizing the honey with AJ you risk setting that pectin anyway. Even pasteurized apple juice has pectin in it.

On the honey front, I just weigh it. I believe honey that weighs in at 12#/gallon breaks down to a tad over 20 fl oz when seeking 2#.

How big will the Carmel taste be with this ratio of juice to honey?

Schlenkerla said:

How big will the Carmel taste be with this ratio of juice to honey?

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My guess is that it would be subtle. I just bottled an orange melomel that had a pound of caramelized honey. It has no discernible caramel flavor at all. Maybe more of the flavor would come through with apple juice.

I think I would need to carmelize longer or or just use Crystal 40L

To the OP.... do you mind if I continue this line of questions or would you prefer I start a new thread on carmelizing honey?

I don't want to hijack your thread.

Schlenkerla said:

To the OP.... do you mind if I continue this line of questions or would you prefer I start a new thread on carmelizing honey?

I don't want to hijack your thread.

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GOD GET OFF MY THREAD!!!



Lol naw man just kidding. So yes if you mix in other flavors especially if you use all juice I would bet the caramel flavors would be pretty low. The juice alone would have a gravity of 1.05 - 1.055 so honey added to make it 1.065 would be like 7 - 8 oz per gallon. I did a partial bochet bragott a while back and the caramel flavors are not prominent at all. And to weigh in on pectic enzyme or no? I would say you would need the pectic enzyme for sure. I would just boil the honey with water and just reduce it to it's original volume so there is little water there and then add the juice cool with plenty of pectic enzyme.

Schlenkerla said:

I think I would need to carmelize longer or or just use Crystal 40L

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Caramelizing it longer won't make the caramel flavor stronger. It will just take the honey past caramel and into toasted marshmallow and then into smokey. The only way to get more caramel flavor is to caramelize more honey. Or use the caramelized honey to backsweeten the final product so the flavor isn't lost in the fermentation.

Arpolis, how long do you think it will take to ferment? Seems a low ABV mead should ferment quickly like a beer. That's definitely what appeals to me about the idea.

Well as of today the mead is in full ferment going strong. I was cooking a lot yesterday so to keep the temp from hitting over 80*F I decided to throw it in the fridge overnight. That may slow this guy down a little but I bet it will finish fermenting in about 7 days. Give or take a day or two. It should not be too dry because of the caramelized honey. I suspect an end gravity as low as 1.000 - 1.002.

Fermenting 1.060 - 1.065 using wine yeast can run solid for almost two weeks. Assuming one fermented at about 75F. Then slow down for another two. Complete floculation and attenuation at 30 days. No air lock activity and fermentation stopping near zero.

Most of my high gravity experience is with ciders in this range. I can pretty much say that I will not keg or bottle without being able to raise a flashlight to a carboy and find a clear solid beam passing through the cider.

I have heard of people making quick cider with wyeast 3068. Weihenstephan Weizen. They claim it to be superior in a fruity taste over wine yeast.

It doesn't clear well so the mead would be kind of murky. Therefore, stylistically, a clay or pewter drinking vessel would be called for with this beverage.

Ok so about 30 days have passed so I bottled the clear liquid off the lees. The stuff is crystal clear and a nice golden amber color. Gravity ended at .996. That puts ABV at about 8.5%. Initial tastes is that this is a little citrusy and mainly like a light beer. It has decent body and is not watery at all. You can taste the alcohol but it is not hot by any stretch of the imagination. So far I like it a lot. I think I found my new favorite casual mead drink. I may try this in a larger batch since I have a 5 gallon carboy freeing up soon.

I had a 750ml wine bottle and a 11.5oz bottle filled with this and I thought I would give the little bottle a try. Wow the flavor has changed a lot. I had to double check to make sure I did not grab the wrong bottle. The citrusy notes are all gone it seems. Now it is more floral in taste like a traditional clover honey mead and slightly.... Earthy? But in a good way. Kind of hard to explain the taste. It is real smooth and very drinkable. This is not what I expected in the flavors but it is not bad.

I may have missed it, but what yeast did you use? I too am running some crazy experiments involving immobilized yeast and dialysis membranes to try and come up with the quickest mead possible. But the yeast is still the most important and influential variable.

So far for a low gravity quick mead, ale yeasts have been coming up pretty good. The front runner so far is High Trappist 3787.

I used the lees from a lemon mead and it was started with lalvin 71b-1122. It is known to make good young wines so thought it would do well.

71B is my go to yeast for my traditional meads! I have a 5gal batch of 3 month old mead made from 71B that is perfectly drinkable right now, and another 5gal that just finished up fermentation.

Through some experimentation (aka drinking it too fast), I found the best method for me with 71B. Keep it well fed and aerated through the first 1/3 sugar break. Keep it at about 64F until it just about hits dry. Then warm it up to about 70 and let sit for a few weeks to let the yeast finish the sugar and clean up a bit. In this time it should drop clear pretty nicely. Just make sure to rack off the lees within a month after fermentation as this yeast tends to autolysis by then.

Well I cracked the 750ml bottle today. Hey! This is carbonated a little! I guess the fermentation was not completely done when I bottled. There was a fine layer of yeast at the bottom and being lalvin 71b yeast I think that may have been a little problem. The mead is now more dry and I think any smoothness it had before is gone now. It is not bad but there is that classic young mead bite that most have. Since I used cheap honey there is very little honey character if any at all at this point and I see this compared to a light beer now with a little alcohol bite. I can drink it but I think I failed on the 30 day drinkable mead unless you want to only define this as "drinkable". Because I have had much worse but I think this can be much better. I will need to revisit this after I clear some carboys and finish other projects. Next time may just use some real good raw honey and see the difference.

For future quick meads, check out my post "Bray's One Month Mead". There you will find how to make an awesome mead in one month. No off flavor and clear clocking in at 11-12%.

Sound cool. I think I will try that out my next go around. I see you are fond of an ale yeast over wine yeasts with this mead. One ale yeast I have used multiple times with other mead recipes was London ESB 1968. Do you think that may lend well to your mead recipe?

Doubtful. I screened over 10 different ale yeast to get the right yeast. All of this is documented at gotmead.com under "Ale Yeast Experiment" and "Belgian Ale Yeast Experiment". I did some serious testing to find a clean yeast that works at high temperatures. Those experiments do not include other yeast I tested before that. It was not easy to find the correct yeast!

You can try your yeast, but you void my warranty. Think of it like a JAOM.

Ok cool makes sense. Once I get through my skeeter mead or at least start to get low on it ill give your recipe a try.