Leap Year Mead

This recipe was intended to be scaled up and down as needed to fit your needs and capability. This is the 1 gallon Recipe. Make what you will. The origional was brewed on 2-29-2008 and once bottled, will be saved for celebration of coming Leap Year's.

3# of the Best Local Honey you can get.
1 tsp Yeast Nutrient.
HOT Water to make 1 gallon
Pasteur Champagne Yeast.
You will need to have 2 vanilla beans ready when you rack to secondary.

Put this mead together using no more heat than you get from the Hot Water Tap. You will need to make sure to oxygenate your must by shaking or by oxygen bubbler.

When Fermentation is complete, you rack onto 2 vanilla beans. When mead drops clear, and beans are lighter brown, you can rack again until very clear and bulk age or bottle.

The only bad thing about this recipe is the waiting...

Am I crazy or were there not dozens of posts on this thread?

just wondering, but about how long did it take for fermentation to "complete"?

LinuxPoser said:

just wondering, but about how long did it take for fermentation to "complete"?

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Welcome to HBT!

It varied a lot between all of us doing it. Mine took about 2.5 to 3 months but I didn't bottle it until it was 14 months old. When I bottled, it was very smooth and vanilla-y. By far the best mead I've made so far but we have until 2012 leap day before we "officially" drink it.

oh man, that long?! Well thanks for the quick reply, I made it at home while i'm on break from college so i guess i can leave it alone for a while.

I still have about 12 bottles left...sorry, been sampling...

I think I used too much vanilla, but who knows what it'll taste like in 3 more years? :rockin:

homebrewer_99 said:

I still have about 12 bottles left...sorry, been sampling...

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You and everyone else!

Yeah, but I WILL have bottles left when the time comes...:rockin:

Haha I only have about 5 bottles left, I think. I only did a 1 gallon batch. I plan on saving them until 2012, sampling at each 1 year mark. I bottled 2 in brown bottles for BJCP competitions in the future, hopefully they will make it to competition some day!

i'm making a 2.5 gallon batch of this, and it seems that 2 vanilla beans per gallon seemed a little too much. i'm thinking of putting just one bean in for this one. any comments?

How did this turn out?

Happy Leap year everyone! Who is breaking out a bottle for 2016?
Who is making a new batch?

Making my very first batch this week.

I just came across this old thread and decided to do an inventory of the Leap Year Vanilla Mead from 2008. I still have 4 (wine) bottles left.

In the carton right next to it I have about a dozen bottles of Papazian's Barkshack Ginger Mead from 2007.

I know I even have older stuff. I may even have 1 bottle of mead from 1994. ; ' )