GeorgiaBeer
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I have never made mead and would like to get a sweet mead 5 gallon recipe. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
CityOChampBrew said:and people have told me that the whole point of "JOAM" is that its supposed to be a cheap, easy, simple mead... this just sounds like a waste of time to me....
My advice: source 15-18 lbs of a decent orange blossom honey, use yeast nutrient, and ferment with wine yeast... Use staggered additions of the yeast nutrient for the 1st 2-4 days, degassing the mead before you stir it in to help support a healty fermentation. Just remember Quality in Quality OUT
I do want the honey to be the star! Living in the North GA mountains, I have several sources for good fresh honey. Do you recommend orange blossom honey or will my local honey work?
Clover is just the most common and un-destinct honey flavor out there. It is not bad but many would call a traditional with clover honey "bland".
Now knowing you are leaning to the traditional side then however you decide to do it here is your preference. I suggest using the second recipe I posted and doing the stabilizing/back sweetening process because it will keep your ABV lower in the 14% range and you can sweeten the mead to your hearts content.
If you do not like the chemicals then you can step feed honey to the mead as it ferments. The issue with that is that if you use a yeast like K1-V1116 it will go to 18% - 19% ABV which for mead requires much more aging time befor it is really drinkable. If step feeding honey I would suggest Lalvin 71B or similar yeast with a 14% ABV alcohol tolerance. This way you can add 15 lb honey up front and then when you notice fermentation slowing you add 1 lb of honey, watch the fermentation pick up and when slowed down add another 1 lb of honey and continue the process till the fermentation does not pick up and stops. From there you should have a hydrometer and notice the gravity no longer moving and then you can add additional honey till you are at about 1.015 for the sweet mead level.
Wow 18% ABV with 71B. That is 4% above it's rated ABV. Nice that you were able to properly treat the yeast to get it that high. At 0.980 gravity I would be surprised to see it as sweet especially at that high an ABV but I have never tried a raspberry mead so that is something I may need to try in the future. If doing a traditional I just like to take every step that I can to provide less stress on the yeast for best performance. Plus it is hard to infect a mead as long as you use normal sanitary practices.
however I like to stabilize and back sweeten personally. I think 10% - 14% ABV is plenty for me.
OP take everything I or anyone says with a grain of salt and reasearch more and find the truth yourself. I am sure following either of our instructions you will make great mead.
That's a decent price. I bought 5 gal (about 70lbs) for $275 from a local bee keeper, which works out to about $4/lb. Keep in mind, that was major bulk order.
When I bought commercial, I could get 3lbs for $14 which is $4.7/lb. Just take note of where the honey comes from and 'organic' may be more of a gimmick than actual. If it comes from china or india, they've been having problems of folks adding cheap filler, such as corn syrup.
Plus I always recommend buying locally. Trading a beer or two might help with the price too!
No futuristic facility that I know of. However a 5gal pail isn't exactly 5gal. It can be more like 5.4-5.75 gal. And at 12lbs/gal, that's closer to 70#. Plus I know it's a lower moisture because it has a haze due to crystals.
But no, I probably didn't get an extra 10# from moisture alone. So I guesstimated the $4/lb value.
Back to the thread, DutchGold describes some of their honeys as being imported or blends. But the buckwheat they sell sounds tempting.
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