4-6 months, really?

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Toy4Rick

Toy4Rick

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Hey gang,

I'm so new to this that I hate to even say, oh well, I am working on my second batch of beer and want to make something for my wife since she says all beer tastes like Budweiser :drunk:

My goal is to make her a semi sweet, not desert level mead with raspberries or cherries... maybe in the 1.015 range

Does anyone have a recipe that doesn't take 4-6 months or longer? I was hoping for something in the 2-3 month range.

Thanks in advance
Toy4Rick
 
You can; but she will like it much better when it's aged a year or longer....

At 4-6 months, many fruit meads taste like robitussin...
 
Mead takes time, not much you can do to get around that. Why not try a wine kit? It'll be ready to drink quicker, and she might like it better. Maybe one of those "Island Mist" kits. I don't mean to sound like a chauvanistic pig here, but a LOT of women seem to like those "Island Mist" kit wines. Regards, GF.
 
The simple fact is that mead takes longer. Beer does not need to age and is ready much quicker. I currenly have a raspberry mead that I am about ready to bottle that I started in September of last year. Although it is drinkable now, It does need to age for 6 months to a year. Best if aged a year. But the wait is worth it. This is also why I do not recomend making just a 1 galon batch. Make a 5 gallon to start. I have been able to get 8-six packs of 12 oz bottles out of a 5 gallon batch. This way the time invested is worth it, you have enough stock in just 1-3 batches to last for the time it takes to make more. Have patients.

I feel that this process is also more worth it because you don't need a mash stage and it smells better when you are both putting it together and when it it fermenting. Your wife will like the scent of honey in her house and the smell of baking honey bread better than the beer smell anyway.

Also, when making mead, you only need to heat up the water enough to disolve all of the honey into it. So in essence it is much quicker to put together but longer just sitting. Mead is also more tollerant to your time schedual of racking.

Hope this helps.
 
You could try the following recipe:

Quick Mead - K.K.
Created by webmaster, Tuesday, 30 November 1999
Ingredients
At a glance
Mead
Melomel
Makes
3.1 gallons3 gal water
5 lbs honey
0.33 cup jasmine tea
0.5 tspn ground ginger
2 tspn cinnamon
0.5 tspn ground allspice
0.5 tspn ground cloves
0.5 tspn ground nutmeg
ale yeastMethods/steps
Boil water, adding tea and spice.
Remove from heat and stir in honey. (Some mead makers boil the honey, skimming the scum as it forms).

Cover boiled water, and set aside to cool (this usually takes a long time, so start on the next step).

Make a yeast starter solution by boiling a cup of water and a tablespoon or two of honey.

Add starter to cooled liquid.

Cover and ferment using blow tube or fermentation lock.

Rack two or three times to get rid of sediment.

The less honey, the lighter the drink, and the quicker it can be made. 1 pound per gallon is the minimum, 5 pounds per gallon is about the maximum for a sweet dessert mead.

The yeast is pitched one day after starting the batch, the crud skimmed about 10 days later, then wait 3 days and rack to secondary.

Wait 2 more weeks and bottle---about 4 weeks from start to finish.
-----------------
Excellent clarity, fairly sweet flavor, slight sediment, light gold color. An excellent batch.
Click to expand...

Source: http://www.gotmead.com/index.php?option=com_rapidrecipe&page=viewrecipe&recipe_id=161&Itemid=459
 
Toy4Rick said:
Hey gang,

I'm so new to this that I hate to even say, oh well, I am working on my second batch of beer and want to make something for my wife since she says all beer tastes like Budweiser :drunk:

My goal is to make her a semi sweet, not desert level mead with raspberries or cherries... maybe in the 1.015 range

Does anyone have a recipe that doesn't take 4-6 months or longer? I was hoping for something in the 2-3 month range.

Thanks in advance
Toy4Rick
Click to expand...

Maybe a apeflwien?
 
Toy4Rick said:
Hey gang,

I'm so new to this that I hate to even say, oh well, I am working on my second batch of beer and want to make something for my wife since she says all beer tastes like Budweiser :drunk:

My goal is to make her a semi sweet, not desert level mead with raspberries or cherries... maybe in the 1.015 range

Does anyone have a recipe that doesn't take 4-6 months or longer? I was hoping for something in the 2-3 month range.

Thanks in advance
Toy4Rick
Click to expand...

People have a habit of saying what you can't do when what they really mean is what they can't do. If you throw some honey in some water and dump some yeast in, it won't be ready for a long time.

If you do staggered nutrients and stirring, IME they are done fermenting and not rocket fuel like at all in a few weeks.

There are plenty of anecdotes of Curt Stock's meads being great in under a couple of months. So it can be done.

http://www.brewingtv.com/episodes/2010/10/8/brewing-tv-episode-21-making-mead-with-curt-stock.html
 
Try a hydromel. From what I've looked at, it's a low sugar/low alcohol mead. About the same as a beer. (about 1.035-1.060 OG) This would be done in the same amount of time a beer would.

There will still be fairly significant differences between a hydromel and a mead that's been aged for a year or two though.

I'd personally go for a wine cooler kit (island mist and such) though. Done in 4 weeks.
 
Primevci said:
Maybe a apeflwien?
Click to expand...

Apfelwein is stupid easy to make, but it takes a long time to get to the point of "very good". Ironically, right now I am drinking a batch of year-old apfelwein, and for me it took the entire time of aging to get good. As Revvy has said, anything with a higher alc percentage will take a while to age-out to become awesome.

Maybe you should make a batch of something (whether it be mead, apfelwein, or whatever she will like) and let it age for a year. A year actually seems to go by faster than you may think, especially when you are brewing a ton of batches of beer during that year.

Edit: I re-read your post (as a requirement, I have been drinking), and the only recipes I have, you can also find with a super easy search, however, most require a lot of aging time.
 
Perhaps a hard cider instead of an apfelwein. I like just a basic cider; pitch a packet of dry ale yeast into a gallon of clear apple juice and forget about it for about two months. Rack, back sweeten with splenda if desired (I like it dry), and bottle/drink.

I've been off this site for a year or so and the whole place seems to have gone crazy for skeeter pee. It sounds tasty; you might want to check into it.
 
make Joe's Quick Grape Mead

my wife loves it, all her friends love it, it's delicious 1 month after pitching, and only gets better with age. juice, honey, yeast: homemade hooch don't get easier than that...I've used a few different variations of juice with good results, as long as you use welch's grape juice as the base.

I made a 5 gallon batch of this last year and gave about 3 gallons away as christmas gifts, everyone loved it.
 
turtle said:
make Joe's Quick Grape Mead

my wife loves it, all her friends love it, it's delicious 1 month after pitching, and only gets better with age. juice, honey, yeast: homemade hooch don't get easier than that...I've used a few different variations of juice with good results, as long as you use welch's grape juice as the base.

I made a 5 gallon batch of this last year and gave about 3 gallons away as christmas gifts, everyone loved it.
Click to expand...
I made something similar to that as my very first mead and boy did it get us drunk. Be careful, you'll start drinking it and then you'll go "wait a minute, I had a gallon of this **** like four hours ago..."
 
I'll second remilard. It can be done, but it must be done right.

Make a standard strength mead must around OG 1.090 or less. That will amount to 2-2.25 pounds of honey per gallon. Do staggered nutrient additions, use plenty of O2 (minimum two additions of 90 seconds each, one at pitch and one at the end of the lag). Pitch at least two packs of Lalvin 71B-1122 rehydrated with GoFerm. Ferment NO WARMER than 64*F, cover your fermenter with a towel or foil if a carboy, do not use an airlock. Stir twice a day slowly to drive off CO2. Monitor the pH, if it drops below 3.4, add a teaspoon of potassium bicarbonate. When it's done fermenting, use Isinglass to fine it, rack it again, and let it clear before stabilizing and backsweetening it.

A mead in the range of 1.010 to 1.015 FG will be very good in 4-6 weeks if you do all of the above. It will only continue to improve with age.

FWIW I'll be bringing a 4 week old standard semi-sweet traditional mead to NHC to prove my point that it can be done. :) Mine will be filtered though, if you don't filter it takes longer for the yeast to drop out...
 
turtle said:
make Joe's Quick Grape Mead

my wife loves it, all her friends love it, it's delicious 1 month after pitching, and only gets better with age. juice, honey, yeast: homemade hooch don't get easier than that...I've used a few different variations of juice with good results, as long as you use welch's grape juice as the base.

I made a 5 gallon batch of this last year and gave about 3 gallons away as christmas gifts, everyone loved it.
Click to expand...

I've been making mead for several years now, and this is the only recipe I have tried that is not harsh right after coming out of the secondary. Try this recipe and you won't be disappointed. Joe's quick grape rocks.
 
"4-6 months.. Really..." Yeah... Really... Most folks here aren't telling you this to be snobby... It's the voice of experience... after trying to gulp down some really foul tasting young wines ourselves.... Pitching them off in the corner in disgust, then finding them again in a couple years and tasting it - right before dumping it out in the yard... and realizing it turned into the Nectar of the Gods.....

Try out making a batch of Joe's Ancient Orange... If you are really curious - taste it after a few weeks... pretty foul.... Most mead tastes like paint thinner + yeast + bitter at that age....

For me - I need stuff that's done in the short term (Beer and hard cider), Medium term (Fruity wines) and long term too (Meads, dark wines, anything oaked...)

So... Start a couple batches of Mead to enjoy a year from now... Then.... Start a batch of semi-sweet Cider for her to enjoy in 2-months with your beer.....

Remember the old adage - "Drink no wine before it's time"...

Thanks
 
remilard said:
If you do staggered nutrients and stirring, IME they are done fermenting and not rocket fuel like at all in a few weeks.
Click to expand...

Saccharomyces said:
I'll second remilard. It can be done, but it must be done right.
Click to expand...

Have you experienced this with melomels or just with show meads? The reason I ask is that even with SNA and a managed fermentation, I am getting pretty quick ferments (~3 weeks), but I still find them to taste like robitussin. Maybe it's the fruit that needs the time to mellow?

Saccharomyces said:
FWIW I'll be bringing a 4 week old standard semi-sweet traditional mead to NHC to prove my point that it can be done. :) Mine will be filtered though, if you don't filter it takes longer for the yeast to drop out...
Click to expand...

I'll have some oaked cherry melomel and some sparkling raspberry melomel...
 
I have several gallons of different meads going right now that I started over Memorial weekend of 2010. All are in secondary, 2 taste pretty good and 2 taste like robitussin for sure. Mead making is a process to be enjoyed, not rushed. I have done several JAOM and they were drinkable fairly quickly and everybody liked it, but it is my bottles of mead that are 3-10 years old, that everybody raves about. I guess the question is, do you want something just is just okay or something that is great?
 
Saccharomyces said:
FWIW I'll be bringing a 4 week old standard semi-sweet traditional mead to NHC to prove my point that it can be done. :) Mine will be filtered though, if you don't filter it takes longer for the yeast to drop out...
Click to expand...

I guess I'll have to be the one to provide feedback from what I can recall. The meads Sacc brought to NHC were very tasty and I didn't get much hotness or robitussin flavor to them. I think AZ_IPA could probably give a better feedback though as I was Sopered most of the time.
 

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