Excellent short/session meads!

[hahayepyep]

I've crept this forum for some time and it's how I found the BOMM recipe/protocol. I liked it so much that I looked through everything on his website. My interest was really piqued by the Fidnemed Short Metheglin. I love mead and I love herbal teas, so I gave it a whirl using my own concoction in the general spirit of the tea mix spec'd in the recipe with stuff I had on hand: dandelion root, calendula, hibiscus, orange peel, ginger, and tettnanger hops. With clover honey, everything else was to spec. OG was about 1.054. I fermented in a glass 1 gallon jug with cheesecloth rubber banded over the top. No airlock. Agitated the first 3 days.

I was FLOORED at how good this was! 6 days to 1.000 dry (at 65F), crystal clear after a 24(ish) hour cold crash, and 1 week bottle conditioned with corn sugar (with half of it force carbed in PET soda bottles). I think the bottle conditioned stuff came out better, but both were dynamite.

I rinsed the yeast and did a second batch with it using Celestial Seasonings Country Peach Passion tea (16 bags) and 1 TBS of ground ginger. This one was bone dry in 4 days! Cold crashed, added 1 TBS of Fee Bros Peach Bitters and bottle conditioned with a little over 1 oz of peach Monin syrup. This one was even better than the first! I will make this again with hops, soon.

The next batch is going to be from an orange spice tea I have on hand. I hope to get 4 runs out of the yeast.

I'm floored at how simple this is, how good it is, and how FAST it is. There's a local brand of "session meads" that I was buying lately, but I wasn't super thrilled with them because they were a little thin and boring. Bray's short mead procedure is far superior to those!

I'm planning on maybe doing a Red Zinger batch, and a lavender chamomile batch, down the road, too.

Has anyone else tried something similar to this? I'd love to get some recipe ideas!

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi hahayepyep - and welcome. Depending on the temperature and your choice of yeast I( think that you will find that most meads will ferment dry within about 7 days - perhaps 10 days at the outside. The issue for many meads made with lots of honey (and so higher ABVs ) is that the fact that they are dry (no residual sugar) does not mean that they are really ready for drinking. The yeast may have produced all kinds of metabolites and other chemicals (including fusel alcohols) that are unpleasant to taste and smell and the chemical actions that transform these chemicals into more pleasant flavors can take an enormous amount of time (the higher the ABV the longer it can take)..In this regard mead IS similar to beer in that just because there is no more sugar left for the yeast to ferment does not mean that the beverage is ready for drinking.

Bottom line, IMO, session meads do not necessarily need the BOMM protocol for them to be ready to drink in less than 2 months. Yeasts such as D47 (I like Saison Belle) can be used and indeed, meaderies such as Groennfell in Vermont boast that they can sell their meads 6 weeks after pouring the honey into their commercial fermenters. Most of my meads are session meads. Better than beer on a hot summer's day and as good as a good hard cider.

 

[loveofrose]

Thanks! I'm glad you enjoy it. I know I do!

 

[hahayepyep]

Couldn't agree more about how perfectly a low ABV (and carbed) mead pairs with a summer day. Light and refreshing!

What's the turnaround on your session meads?

I've got quite a few D47, 1118, and 71B based meads under my belt. These days I stick with 71B--just works well and ages "quickly" in my experience...but that's 4-6 months minimum, with 12 moths being more realistic. I did not ever like my results with 1118, but I'm sure in other hands it's great.

I tired short meads (as in similar OG / target ABV) with 71B and they were never drinkable in under a week. They dried out in a week, as you say, but I never had one smooth out sufficiently in under a month. 6 weeks is lightning in mead terms, but still 5 weeks longer than these take.

The point here is that these ARE ready for drinking the second they're dry. I'm saving a bottle from each batch to see what they do with 60 days aging, but it's really just unnecessary gold-plating at that point if the product is exactly as desired in 5 to 7 days (with force carbing). I'm going to poke around with some other beer yeasts I've saved to see what I can get out of them, but the 1388 and supplementals in this BOMM variation work too well for me to justify straying too far.

So, sure, you don't *necessarily* need this method, but I have not yet seen another method that delivers so well, so quickly. That's why I thought it noteworthy.

 

[bernardsmith]

My local HBS does not carry smack packs as he says that too many come with problems so I use 71B and D47 and some ale yeasts like Belle Saison. Truth is I have never tried to bottle a mead in 7 days (never tried to bottle any mead or wine or cider or beer in that turnaround time) but a month to bottling and another two weeks conditioning in the bottle seems to work for me when I aim for an ABV of about 5 or 6% - An example at the higher end: started a juniper mead (Orange blossom honey) on 3/1/17, used WLP 515 yeast. 3/8/17 the gravity had fallen to .998 - wanted to add more juniper berries (and liquorice and lemon extract) so allowed the berries to stand in the mead for about 10 days. Bottled 4/5/17 and cracked the primed carbonated mead open on 4/21/17 - Seven weeks from pitching to glass with an ABV of about 9% (2 lbs of OB Honey)

 

[hahayepyep]

Thanks! I'm glad you enjoy it. I know I do!

Thank *you*! I also liked the look of your Belgian Space Craff recipe and will be giving that a whirl soon, too.

 

[hahayepyep]

...Truth is I have never tried to bottle a mead in 7 days ...

That's definitely the key. Who would? Frankly, if the original BOMM wasn't so well discussed online and if I hadn't had first-hand success with it, I'd have laughed off any claim at a week old mead!

 

[loveofrose]

Short meads are all about getting the balance right upfront. Just like beer. There is very little tweeking to be had unlike a massive gravity sack mead. I can understand skepticism, so I never get insulted...and I'm drinking the mead that proves it's good. That helps!