Wanted: chai mead (metheglin) recipe

More importantly, I'm curious if anyone's had success and been satisfied with the result. Thanks!

Did a search on google and found this:

Mike's Hard Chai Mead
1 Gallon Batch

4 cloves
2 sticks cinnamon
4 thin slices ginger
2 – 6 inch vanilla beans
2 lbs. Wildflower honey (from Valley Vintner and Brew)
10 teabags Darjeeling black tea
2 heaping teaspoons cardamom
1 teaspoon nutmeg
4 whole black peppercorns
Powdered Lactose for bottling
White Labs Sweet Mead Yeast

In a 1-gallon pot, simmered tea, cloves (lightly cracked), cinnamon (broken), cardamom and ginger. Put spices in hop sack with meat from vanilla beans. Simmered.Added water to bring volume to 3 quarts. Returned to simmer. Added honey, stirring constantly. Do not boil! Skimmed off any white scum. If scum was yellow, reduced heat. When no more scum formed, removed from heat, covered pot and placed in ice bath to achieve pitching temperature. Rack mead to 1-gallon jug and pitch yeast. Top off jug with water, bringing to base of neck.

OG: 1.040
FG: 0.995

Or this:

Homemade chai recipe
Enough to flavor one gallon of mead.

1.5 tblsp powdered ginger
4 sticks cinnamon
0.5 tsp powdered cinnamon
16 whole cloves
2 tblsp cardamom seeds, crushed
2 tsp nutmeg
2 tblsp star anise, lightly crushed
4 dashes coarse ground black pepper
1 dash bay leaves

Another:

Black pepper, whole 1 tsp
Ginger, fresh 2 tsp
Cloves, whole 1 tsp
Orange zest 2 tsp
Galangal 2 tsp
Cinnamon, chips 3 tsp
Cardamon seed 4 Tbl
Almonds, slivered 2 tsp
Black tea 6 tbl
Yeast nutrient 1 oz
Irish moss 1 oz

Boil in 2 gallons water for 30-45 minutes. Strain, then pour over 12 lbs heated honey into primary and stir to dissolve honey. Add cold water to 5 gallon level, and 2 tbls vanilla extract. Pitch sweet mead yeast when wort cools to below 90 degrees F.

Ferment until dry. Rack into 4 pounds honey and more yeast nutrient. Repeat ad nauseum Eventually, add sorbate then rack onto honey for sweetness, and mix with heavy cream to bottle.

I made a cyser (apple) mead a couple of years ago and used chai spices. It turned out very nice. I'm at work and don't have the recipe in front of me but I did use fresh ginger, whole cardomom, cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon sticks.

Made something, been sitting in the secondary for a few weeks and it still tastes like firewater...

soontobepcv said:

More importantly, I'm curious if anyone's had success and been satisfied with the result. Thanks!

Click to expand...

I just added a Chai Spiced Cyser recipe to the mead recipe database if you're interested.

soontobepcv said:

Made something, been sitting in the secondary for a few weeks and it still tastes like firewater...

Click to expand...

what's the ABV? what's the honey lbs. to gallons ratio?

some meads take more than 12 months to properly age to smoothness.

summersolstice said:

I just added a Chai Spiced Cyser recipe to the mead recipe database if you're interested.

Click to expand...

Will definitely take a look - thanks.

Pretty much you can just make a mead and then add chai spices to it.

Or maybe make up some chai tea and add that, although I'd probably want to taste that in a glass before adding it to the whole batch.

Be gentle with spices, though, they can easily get too strong!

I've been looking around to find out who made Mike's Hard Chai Mead, and what the results were. So, I'm just going to give it a try today. If it's a success I'll post it (with some tweaks) with the recipes.