Different meads for a mead tasting party.

Hello all!

A couple weeks ago I started a small 4 - 6 month project for making several 1 gallon young meads and will be running a tasting party to try and get many people's impressions on the meads. I wanted to post the progress and results here for everyone to read.

Here is where it is starting:

Step one: I am starting this project like I do my skeeter pee / skeeter mead. I started a 3 gallon batch of wine with my favorite young mead yeast and will use the lees I rack off of to start each of the 1 gallon batches.

My starter wine is a simple Welche's white grape peach wine. Recipe is as follows:

3 gallon

12 11.5 fl oz Welche's white grape peach frozen concentrate.
3 TBS Earl grey black tea (loose leaf in the primary)
3 tsp pectic enzyme
3 tsp yeast nutrient blend
Water to 3 gallons
Yeast (lalvin 71b-1112)

OG is at 1.080
FG after two weeks is at .998
ABV is 11%

It is about 95% clear right now so in another couple weeks it should be ready to bottle. I am going to sweeten this batch to about 1.020 and let it bottle carbonate and then pasteurize the bottles when they hit the disired fizzyness.

The lees left begind will be collected and weighed. The lees will be split into 6 equal portions and that used to start the following batches:

Recipe 1: Strait traditional mead

Orange blossom honey (to a gravity of 1.060 so just over 1.5lb)
3/4 tsp potassium bicarbonate
2 tsp yeast nutrient
Water to 1 gallon
Yeast (71b slurry from white grape peach wine)

This one is simple. Mix water and honey well with a no heat method. Add 1 tsp yeast nutrient and potassium bicarbonate, aerate well and pitch yeast. Split the remaining yeast nutrient into two more parts and add every 24 hours. During which I will degas and aerate twice daily till the day after adding the last round of yeast nutrient. Rack every 30 days till no sediment drops. Back sweeten to 1.020 and bottle. I will heat pasteurize 3 different bottles at different times to get different levels of carbonation from still, lightly carbonated to heavy carbonation. This should be a nice 8% ABV light mead.

Recipe 2: Bochet

This one is exactly the same as the above but the honey gets a 2 hour slow caramelization on a low heat.

Recipe 3: Buttery mead

Orange blossom honey (to a gravity of 1.060)
1 11.5oz can of Welche's white grape frozen concentrate
1.5 tsp yeast nutrient
Water to one gallon
Yeast (71b slurry)
1 crushed Camden tablet
1tsp malic acid
1/4 tsp wine tannin
Malo-lactic culture (Wyeast 4007 Malo-Lactic culture)

(I posted this as a theoretical recipe a while back and really want to try it so here we are)

Mix the honey, white grape concentrate and nutrients. Top up with water to one gallon. Monitor closely every day. As soon as I notice the gravity hits 1.000 rack to a new bottle and cold crash the mead and keep it below 55*F. Also add in Camden. After 1 week and kept cool I should be able to rack off another bed of lees. Now add in tannin, malic acid and prepare and pitch Malo-lactic culture per package directions. Keep at room temp for one week. Then cool back down to 55*F and allow to clear. Once crystal clear rack off of any sediment. Should be able to back sweeten to 1.020 and bottle. I will do the multi carbonation level like the last two.

Recipe 4: Lemon mead

Orange blossom honey (to a gravity of 1.060)
20 fl oz real lemon lemon juice
3/4 tsp earl grey black tea (loose leaf in the primary)
3 tsp yeast nutrient
Water to one gallon
Yeast (71b slurry)

Half the lemon and nutrients go in up front with the honey and tea and the rest go in 3 days later. I will back sweeten to 1.020 and bottle/carbonate/pasteurize like the other recipes.

Recipe 5: cherry lemon mead

The same as the lemon mead but I blend in about 32 fl oz tart cherry juice to bring the ABV from 8% to about 6% before bottling.

Recipe 6: Cyser

The same as recipe 1 except I will add one 11.5 fl oz can of frozen apple concentrate pre fermentation and one after with additional honey & water to a gravity of 1.020 & ABV of 6%. Also I will add in 1/2 tsp of malic acid to the cyser primary to bottling to help bring out a little more apple flavor. Again with multi pasteurization as the rest of the recipes.

These are my plans. I am happy for any input on the work I am doing.

We will do blind taste tests at the party and do something like rating each mead from 1-10 based off of color, aroma, taste & the likely hood someone would buy this over similar commercial products they have tried.

Here is the start of my six meads that I posted above. From left to right I have a Bochet, traditional mead, cyser, & buttery pyment. The Bochet is not as dark as prior ones I have made. I cranked up the heat higher than normal and only cooked it for 1.25 hours. It has some nice caramel notes and so should still be very nice. When I was at the store Sunday I forgot to get the lemon juice for the last two meads I planned. So I will get that tomorrow and start them then.

The white grape peach wine I used to start all this is tasting great. I back sweetened it and am letting it chill outside. I will bottle it tomorrow or the next day.

Looking forward to your results!

Day one passed. I started the lemon meads today. They need a full 24 hours to be aerated and allowed to have the harsh benzoate and other sulfites gas off from the lemon juice. Tomorrow I will pitch their yeast. All the others are showing physical signs of fermentation. The two with fruit juice are expectedly more active with the traditional the least active. Fun fun.

Tested the gravities of all tonight they are as follows:

Traditional mead: 0.994
Buttery pyment: 0.990
Cyser, bochet & both lemon meads: 0.998

The pyment went into the fridge today to help clear. Once clear I will add the malic acid and Malo-lactic culture.

With the rest I will wait for their 3 week mark and then put them in the fridge to help clear. All will be racked to secondary at their 4 week mark.

Sounds like an interesting, fun, and tasty project

Does sound that you are preparing for a fun party but I have a question. The quantity of honey in each gallon is quite small. I understand that you are not aiming for a high ABV and are making the meads so that they will be more like beers than wines but if the flavor of the honey is in the honey and IF (and this is my question) IF the quantity of honey you need that results in good honey flavor notes takes about twice the amount of honey you seem to be using how do you balance the need for flavor with the fact that the fermentable sugar is coming from the honey. To put this another way, are your recipes not perhaps over-diluting the FLAVOR of the honeys in order to produce a level of alcohol that you want.
Those wines may taste delicious but might the honey flavor notes may be thinner than you anticipate. Have you made mead to these recipes before using those quantities of honey to a gallon of water? If you have , then ignore my concern.

bernardsmith said:

Does sound that you are preparing for a fun party but I have a question. The quantity of honey in each gallon is quite small. I understand that you are not aiming for a high ABV and are making the meads so that they will be more like beers than wines but if the flavor of the honey is in the honey and IF (and this is my question) IF the quantity of honey you need that results in good honey flavor notes takes about twice the amount of honey you seem to be using how do you balance the need for flavor with the fact that the fermentable sugar is coming from the honey. To put this another way, are your recipes not perhaps over-diluting the FLAVOR of the honeys in order to produce a level of alcohol that you want.
Those wines may taste delicious but might the honey flavor notes may be thinner than you anticipate. Have you made mead to these recipes before using those quantities of honey to a gallon of water? If you have , then ignore my concern.

Click to expand...

I am doing this how I notice some meaderies do their meads. Basically use honey for the fermentables but aim for a lower ABV. (10% - 8%) which is still well within wine standards since bears run in the 4% range. Then you back sweeten with honey to bring out more of the honey character. By the end of this I will have about 2.75lb of honey in the bochet, traditional and lemon meads and just a bit less like 2lb in the cyser and pyment. So there should be plenty honey character.

*edit* I did not answer the last question. I have made the lemon, bochet and traditional before lack the fact that I am using potassium bicarbonate in some of these this time. With back sweetening they seem to do very well. The bochet is also a little lighter on the caramelization then I have in the past so I am curious as to how that translates but still should be good. The cyser and pyment are new to me and at request by others. I know the honey character shows through the lemon so it will be interesting to try and catch it through the apple and grape.

I just dropped my Malo-lactic culture in the pyment. It is clearing up good and smells awesome.