First Mead help

[Hastein]

I am new to homebrewing and want to start out with 1 gallon batches of mead. All of the different recipes out there are a little overwhelming, so I want to make sure I get everything right when I do this.

I'm aiming for a sweet tasting mead with a good abv (10% or so, just for a ballpark. This isn't too important, but I don't want it to be weak). I am thinking 4-4.5 lbs of local raw honey with something like oranges or strawberries added. Put all of this in the primary for a month and then transfer to a secondary for a month or so until it clears up. Then bottle it up and it's ready to drink.

Will this produce a nice sweet, but not too sweet mead?
Does it really need 2 months in the fermenters?
Do I really need to add anything else to it, such as yeast nutrients? If so, do I do this when I put it into the primary, or when I put it into the secondary?

My success here may determine how far I am allowed to pursue this hobby. I'd rather take an extra step or two and have a great mead than skip something and risk ending up with crap.

Thanks

 

[Arpolis]

Welcome to the world of mead making. I hope you enjoy the process and make some great drink. I will give just a few pointer on mead making but hope it does not discourage you in any way because mead making is not for the faint of heart or fleet of feet.

10% ABV is a good starting ABV to shoot for when dealing with a first mead but most yeast types will ferment past that by 2% - 8% so to compensate you need to use a lower amount of honey up front and then you can Stabalize and back sweeten with more honey to gain the sweetness level you want.

Your must will likely have about 2lb of honey to start which should yield an original gravity of about 1.070 - 1.074. Gravity is a good thing to become versed in. It is not difficult and all you need is a cheap hydrometer.

Also making sure you have proper nutrients in your mead is an essential to good mead. Read the Staggard nutrient additions sticky on the main Mead thread page.

For a traditional mead in the simplest look at a timeline you add your water/honey/nutrient/yeast all together and then let that ferment to completion. About a month is good but I have let some batches go 2 - 3 months before I rack it the first time. Then rack every 30 days untill the mead drops no more sediment. At this point you should add a crushed camden tablet at 1 per gallon and potassium sorbate at 1/2 tsp per gallon. That will keep any residual yeast from multiplying. Now you can add honey to the preffered sweetness. This can be done by taste or with a hydrometer and checking the gravity as you add honey. .994 - 1.002 I would consider "Dry", 1.004 - 1.010 I would consider "Semi sweet/dry", 1.012 - 1.02 I would consider "sweet" and anything higher would be a "desert mead". I normally do not bottle before the 6 month mark unless I want to free up a fermenter. Then I may taste it but I don't expect to seriously drink the mead till it hit its 12 month mark of aging.

Mead has a terrible reputation of being hot as rocket fuel young and a 10% mead may taste like 40%. But mead more than other types of brew changes drastically with age. You may be surprised at how much even one month of aging changes the taste.

Adding Oranges or strawberries are easy to any mead recipe. Using fresh fruit you usually run at about 3lb per gallon of fresh fruit. Do not blend or boil the fruit just freeze/thaw the fruit at least twice and that is plenty. Also to get a fruitier taste it is usually accepted to put half the fruit in the primary and rack the mead after fermentation onto the remaining fruit. There are many other ways to add fruit flavor like replacing a portion of your water with juice or using a jelly or Jam like I am playing with right now in my strawberry jelly mead. Just look around or ask if you are interested in another way of adding fruit flavor.

If you really want a 3 month and ready mead there is the famous JAOM recipe (Joes Ancient Orange Mead). You can find the JAOM recipe and some great reading that tells you most everything about mead here:

GotMead.com NewBee guide

When I made my JAOM for the first time it was drinkable at 3 months but month 7 was the month I really started to like it and I had my last bottle after it's 12 month mark and it was great!

I highly suggest getting a couple of meads started but a simple Welche's Concentrate wine might be a good start as well because in my experience I can turn out a Welche's concentrate wine in about 30 - 40 days and it is good to drink then. You can have that to sip on while your mead ages so you dont get too ansy and pop them open too soon and end up regreating it. Because with paitience I think any well aged mead beats out any wine, it just takes time.

Let us know what you think and I or anyone else here will be happy to fill in any gaps for you or help you figure out what kind a recipe would work for you. Just let us know specifics like whether you want fresh fruits or like spiced drinks or what ever.

 

[Hastein]

Thanks for all of the information. I actually decided to jump into mead first because it seemed like an easy way to get started before I jumped into beer. After reading your advice I think I may put together 1 gallon of traditional mead and 1 gal of the JAOM. However, I may also dive into beer while they are doing their magic.

I am partial to strong belgians like maredsous tripel and would like to carry this over to the mead. So, should I use slightly more than the 2lb of honey initially to get it to that higher abv, and then sweeten it back up at the end as you have described? Will this method of 'back sweetening' you mentioned tone down the dryness/alcohol a bit or does mead not work this way?

Thanks

 

[Arpolis]

It works just like that actually. All "Dryness" is, is when you have a lower gravity "Less sugar" in the mead/wine/beer. So increasig the gravity by back sweetening makes the mead less dry. But there is a difference between alcohol hot and dryness. Also with Mead compaired to Wine side by side at the same gravity or sugar content. People will swear the mead tastes sweeter in comparison. So you can still have a dryish mead taste a bit sweet. I have a spiced pumpkin cyser (Apple mead) that I swore was at a gravity of about 1.010 just by taste but was really like at .998 or so. But alcohol hot is different and that fades away with aging. The higher the ABV the longer you age the mead. In general it is about 1 month of aging after first racking per ABV%. So a 10% ABV mead should go 12 months before getting really good and loosing that alcohol hot. A 14% ABV is more like 16 months, so on and so forth.

I like the lower ABV stuff (10% - 12%) but many will shout out that 3lb per gallon or a gravity of about 1.100 - 1.110 is about perfect which will yield you about a 14% ABV Mead. Do as you please but my suggestion will always be to find a target ABV that you want. Then choose a yeast that can handle that ABV & just add honey to your water to the desired gravity that will give you your goal ABV if fermented dry. A great tool to use is the Mead calculator on the GotMead website I mentioned above. That will give you an idea as to how much honey makes a specific gravity. Then stabalize and back sweeten to what you like. You will always get consistent results with that method.