First time mead brewer

[levinem]

Hey so I've never made mead before but I'm lookin for a few pointers and a recipe or two. My brew books have like nothing on making mead so any info helps thanks.

 

[Bhunter87]

3lb honey per gallon
Sweet mead yeast
Nutrient and energizer if you want
Squeeze and orange in there too if you feel frisky

 

[levinem]

How long do I ferment and do I boil it?

 

[levinem]

I'm also looking to make 5 gallons of mead

 

[Bhunter87]

You don't boil. Maybe warm the honey to make it mix with water better.

Ferment for a LONG TIME. 2-3 months in primary, rack to secondary, maybe rack again, then bulk age for a while (longer the better) I'm gonna bulk age mine for about a year I guess. Then bottle and label for different dates. I hope to keep a bottle for at least 10 years and open on my 35th bday lol

3 lb per gal * 5 gal = 15lb honey.

 

[tweake]

3lb honey per gallon
Sweet mead yeast
Nutrient and energizer if you want
Squeeze and orange in there too if you feel frisky

setting people up to fail is bloody annoying

while you can measure honey by weight its not very accurate. better to use a hydrometer. get one that goes past 1.120

yeast, theres a ton of them that you can use. sweet mead is probably one of the hardest ones to use. most of the champagne style ones are generally easy to use. they handle wide temp ranges, use little Nutrient and are robust. but they have high alcohol tolerance so will make a dry mead and you will need to stabilize and backsweeten.
K1V-1116 is a common one that produces good results.

Nutrient and energizer is highly important. have a read up on SNA, staggered nutrient additions.

temps under 25c.

aging. meads really do need a long aging time. however the better you ferment the shorter your aging time can be.
so with a good yeast, proper nutrients and good practices, you can get a drinkable mead straight out of the vat and a good aged mead within 3-6 months. poorly made meads will require 1-2 years of aging to be any good.

 

[Bhunter87]

How did I set him up to fail?

How the eff is he going to know even close to what amounts to use if he doesn't have a ball park?

 

[levinem]

Lol thanks guys I'm more of a beer brewer so this is going to be a bit of an experiment. I'm hoping to have some mead for like a week long vacation this summer not sure when exactly I'm meeting one of my buddies when he comes back from Boston.

 

[levinem]

Also would it age faster if I broke it up into smaller batches?

 

[tweake]

How did I set him up to fail?

Sweet mead yeast
Nutrient and energizer if you want

by recommending one of the most common yeast that fail and having no nutrition which is going to make a slow (assuming it even ferments at all) and bad tasting mead with a long aging time before it tastes any good.

more than likely he will fail and if by dumb luck that it doesn't, its going to be a year before he gets any results. that is not a nice way to treat newbies.

 

[tweake]

Also would it age faster if I broke it up into smaller batches?

no. time wise its the same.

you can bottle age it, which even i do to free up carboys. but you run the risk of one bottle being a little different to the next.

the best way is to do the best quality ferment that you can. that can decrease aging time by a large amount.

 

[levinem]

Alright thanks. I've got two 5 gallon glass carboys should I ferment in one then rack to the second for like 2, 3 weeks?

 

[tweake]

i don't use carboys for primary ferment, i use open top bucket.
but carboy is ok, just a pain to use.

if your using a carboy to ferment in then you can simply let it sit on the lees for quite some time as it under an airlock. when the yeast has fully dropped then you can rack into the other carboy.
time it takes depends on how it ferments and if you degass etc.
it may take 2 weeks for the main ferment, a few more weeks to do the last little bit and degass. may take a few more weeks for the yeast to fully drop.

one problem with using carboys to ferment in is you always loose a bit when you rack, so you can have problems with topping up the carboy. with buckets i ferment more than 5 gals and keep the extra in another bottle. that way i can top up the carboy after racking.
downside to using buckets is you have to rack before it finishes the ferment, so you have co2 in the carboy.

 

[Psychonought]

@tweake
What sort of OG readings correspond to mead types? (i.e. what OG would a dry mead have? a sweet mead? etc...)

 

[tweake]

OG depends a fair bit on what yeast your going to use.
~1.110 ferment down to 0.998 gives you ~14%. then you can stabilize and backsweeten (add extra honey) till around 1.010 or to whatever your taste buds like.

if you do not want to backsweeten then you need to use OG 1.120 with 14% yeast should end around 1.010. obviously you will need to change OG to suit a sweeter mead or different alcohol yeast.

FG roughly put
Dry: 0.990 – 1.006
Medium: 1.006 – 1.015
Sweet: 1.012 – 1.020
Dessert: 1.020+"

 

[Bhunter87]

Wyeast does... And that's what I pitch. Works like a top. Thanks

 

[Psychonought]

What I am getting here is that 14% yeast reduces OG 0.11 to FG (with some scaling involved). Are there any other properties of the yeast beside alcohol tolerance that will affect this?
I am using WYeast Sweet Mead, so I'm guessing there are.

Also I am adding flavors to different batches of the mead (fruit juices, cocoa, spices) mid-fermentation. Is the ratio of honey/alcohol//water the only thing that affects FG or do I need to account for the flavorings?

 

[Psychonought]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that starting with an OG 1.120 to a FG of 1.010 would be the same amount of honey and alcohol than starting with OG 1.110 and backsweetening the FG to 1.010

What's the difference?