Maple Vanilla Tea Mead

I've got some awesome black tea flavored with Maple & Vanilla. 8 bags in 8 cups produces 1/2 gallon of normal strength tea. I was thinking of using 12-14 bags to brew a strong 1/2 gallon and use this to make a Vanilla Maple Mead with clover honey & Narbonne yeast by Lalvin. This will be my 4th mead, all 1-gallon batches.

I'm really interested in what it will take to get my mead drinkable faster. Thus far all my meads/melomels have been honey with 1-2 qts of high quality juice (pomegranate/cherry etc). I've used rehydrated D-47 yeast & 1-1.5 teaspoons DAP/nutrient at the beginning of fermentation.

After watching a recent episode of brewingtv featuring a master mead maker who talked about feeding the must nutrients of the course of days or weeks I'm going to change my approach a little bit & gradually add the nutrients over a period of time. I have pH strips, shouldn't the ph be between 4.5-5. Aside from minding the pH & feeding the nutrients over time, what else should I be doing?

Thus far I'm mostly happy with my meads as they are ready to drink at 9-18 months & are like drinking a decent white or blush wine.

What say ye about the recipe?
Any tips to improve my process?

Schlante,
Phillip

It is easier to get heavy fruit batches, with a lot of residual sugar ready to drink quickly. The timing of the nutrients has relatively much less to do with it. A tea mead like you are planning is probably going to take a while unless you leave it really sweet to balance the tannins. Using 71B can be helpful for having things ready to drink sooner - I like DV10 also for producing things that are drinkable right out of the primary. Keeping the temp below 70F is important if you want it drinkable quickly.

The pH can be all over the place at the beginning, but higher pH is a non-issue. Once the yeast starting fermenting and secreting organic acids they will drop the pH down quite a bit. The potential problem is that they may drop it too much - to a level below 3.1 where the yeast can have trouble functioning. Monitoring the pH to make sure it doesn't drop too low is really all you need to worry about.

If your meads are taking 9-18 months to mature - don't fret! That's what it takes for many meads, especially dry ones, to show their beauty.

Thanks MedsenFey. If I'm understanding you correct you're saying that heavy fruit meads are drinkable quicker because the must has more sugars than the yeast can process thus leaving behind residual sugars? I do think I'm going to purchase a can of Black Currant juice/puree and a few quarts of honey to make a 3-4 gallon batch after I make a blackberry or blueberry wine.

Anyone care to share their experience with using tea in a mead. I'm wondering if my dosing is correct?

Schlante,
Phillip

Used tea in 2 meads. Both of them had a bit of puckering, which I assumed was from warm steeping the tea and tannins leached. Needed acid blend to calm it all down.

Consider cold steeping or have the acid blend handy for later once you see if the tannins produced an undrinkable mead for you.

MVKTR2 said:

If I'm understanding you correct you're saying that heavy fruit meads are drinkable quicker because the must has more sugars than the yeast can process thus leaving behind residual sugars?

Click to expand...

To be more clear, what I mean is that lots of residual sugar is the number one thing for a quick drinking mead. Sugar will cover all sorts of issues including residual bitterness from the yeast, and youthful fermentation "humors" like fusel alcohols. If you pair lots of residual sugar with lots of acidity and flavor from fruits, you can get a mead that tastes good very quickly. The BrewingTV segment talked about this approach, and he did point out that they didn't age any of it long enough to find out if would have been better after a year (which it probably would have).

If you leave something dry, and don't have a lot of fruit in the mix, every flaw will show and it make take much more time for things to smooth out and become nicely integrated.

When making a tea mead, acid can actually increase the perception of tannins, but if you get the right balance, it will be good. Cold steeping of the tea (like sun tea) may allow you to use higher amounts of tea without making it too bitter. If you taste the tea before adding honey to it, you can tell how bitter it will taste, and if you brew it so that it tastes tolerable unsweetened, you should be able to make a good mead out of it.

Medsen

Thanks to the both of you, good points & thanks for clarifying the residual sugar issue. I will be cold steeping the tea now! I'm under the weather at the moment and don't know when I'll get around to this, but soon.

Frankly I'm switching over to mostly making wine/mead due to legal concerns here in MS. Honestly though I am also quite anxious to take a stab at concentrating on wines. If caught HBing I'd be out of a house and work so it's just not worth the risk at the moment, no matter how super small the chance of being caught.

I own The Joy of Home Wine Making by Terry Garey. It's a fairly easy/good approach sort of like Papazian's volume only for wine. What's the best resource online for information about wine making/mead? Any other good forums? It's just a new thing and I'm not too sure of some things and am a true type A personality and must understand not only what to do, but the why!

Schlante & thanks a bunch for the help,
Phillip

Greetings MVKTR2, welcome to mead making.

I used a lot of information from the GotMead.com site's Newbee Guide and the Storm the Castle Site

Other than that the forums here are great as are the ones on Gotmead.

Ken Schramm has a GREAT book all on Mead..it's very detailed and worth it's weight in gold colored honey..lol

Happy Meading and Cheers!
Mike