My first mead tips

HI all

Planning my first batch of Mead. Met someone in a pub who told that mead should be left in the cellar for at least a year before drinking. Anyone agree/disagree?

Also - any tips for recipes? I'm thinking of something along the lines of:
15lb honey
6oz fresh ginger root
1 lemon
6oz raisins
And I saw a recipe using tea leaves for tannic qualities which sounded interesting, so I might try that.
5gal water
wine yeast + nutrient

Also, planning to bottle in plastic water bottles for cheapness. Is there anything wrong with this (apart from looking cheap and tacky)?

Many tahnks!
GK

 

A couple of points:

The rule of thumb is one year of aging. The technical aspect is that the higher the alcohol content, the longer it will take for the harsh flavors to mellow out. 15lbs of honey will be on the high side of ABV for 5 gal of mead and will probably take 1.5 years to come around.

My experience with ginger is that the cooked (boiled) flavor is less floral than the raw flavor. Another hearsay about ginger is to leave the skin on for the greatest intensity of flavor.

Also, flavors added during fermentation are wildly different than ones added after. I would personally add lemon juice and raisins during primary and add ginger during secondary.

Volume - 15 lbs of honey will be more than a gallon. Adding 5 gallons of water will bring the final volume to somewhere over 6. Just make sure you intend to have 6 gallons of primary wort. (Whether you boil the water, the water + honey, or just stir them together is a detail worth looking into)

Tea as a tannin addition works well. Again for flavor, addition during primary is different than addition during secondary. And make sure to account for additional volume if you're adding 2 cups of strong tea or directly "dry hoping" with the tea bags.

Plastic bottles may (I would contend that it will) impart a flavor durring a 1.5 year aging process. There's nothing wrong with it, but I would personally go with glass and preferably wine bottles with corks, not steel crown caps.

Good luck! Have fun! And if you think it tastes bad, don't throw it away. Just keep aging it.

 

Ginger meads are great but the general rule will be that thus will be ready to drink in a minimum of one year. I have one fermenting right now and can't wait till October of next year to try it. In the mean time I am planning a low ABV (5.5%) melomel to hold me over till then. It should be good in more like 3 months.

 

6 oz of ginger seems like a lot to me. I did a ginger ale inspired mead back in November of 2010 and used 2 oz and it is just now melding nicely. Prior the ginger taste was overpowering and medicinal in flavor.

Ginger was added to the primary and I think it sat there for about a month.

If I did it again I'd go with 1 oz and add it in secondary.

Here's my old recipe....

10 lbs Clover
2 lbs table sugar
12 lemons (cut in eights or smaller rind and all)
½ box of golden raisins (approximately 7.5 oz)
2 oz fresh ginger
Lalvin 71B X2

Secondary
3 Vanilla beans
.5 oz house toast French oak soaked in 2 oz of Vodka for 11 days

OG: 1.080
FG: 1.010

 

Plastic bottles are supposed to be oxygen permeable. Beer-brewers generally refuse to use them for more than a couple of months, so I imagine a mead would get terribly oxygenated after a year of ageing.

With regard to the recipe: Sounds nice! I'm +1 for adding ginger post-fermentation. I've tried to make ginger-beer several times with ginger in primary, and it never ends up tasting of ginger after fermentation (despite smelling lovely before). I reckon you want to "dry hop" the ginger in secondary, with the skin to impart the fiery flavour.

 

Yea just used beer or wine bottles that are sanitized! Don't use plastic!!

 

Awesome thanks for the tips!

Re: ginger, I made a cider that had 8oz fresh ginger in the primary and that came through with a really good gingery kick (possibly a bit too ginery...). but primary for that only took about a week - how long is a mead likely to take do you think?

 

My mead primaries are like 3 months. Secondary for at least another 3 - 6 months befor I think about bottling. Others will contend that secondary should be over a year.

 

To me this sounds a little on the long side for most people? I've heard people generally rack after a month (not that its absolutely necessary).
I guess it depends but I've had a mead fully clear within a month or two.

 

Which while possible, is rare unless you hit them with finings of some sort.

I generally let my meads clear with age (unless they're made with 71B), but have a couple that are still dropping sediment after a year or so.....