Plasticmetal
Member
Howdy all! Long time lurker, first time poster. Putting this up to share process notes for how I do hydromels.
Basic recipe and process:
I’ve dubbed this recipe “Suzy’s Birthday Juice”. Depending on the level of interest, I may explain why later. It’s a line-duty brew that’s ready in about 4-5 weeks, goes great in the summer, and is the basis for a lot of other hydromels I make with fruit additions. It’s also shelf-stable, which is nice if you don’t like racing through a batch to beat spoilage.
With that said, though, there is an assumption with this recipe that you already know a thing or two about brewing. This process is doable for beginners (I started brewing using the same method for ciders), but additional read-in is required for the pasteurization bit, as well as any substitutions that may result from incomplete ingredient or equipment lists. Do not pursue this recipe without having all needed equipment on-hand and ready, and / or without a clear plan for pasteurization.
Ingredients:
Process:
Notes on fruit:
This base recipe adapts extremely well to any fresh fruit that you might have lying around. I use a pressure cooker to steam-juice the fruit and then squeeze out whatever’s left via cheesecloth. You can figure out a DIY pressure cooker / steam juicer system with tin foil and some cullenders, but if there’s interest I can post my setup for that as well. I used to boil the juice down to concentrate it but I’ve gotten away from that because the amount of juice I dose doesn’t meaningfully dilute the brew and it’s one more step to mess with.
For a 5 gallon batch of hydromel I’ll generally dose 1-2 cups of juice into the must prior to inoculation and then another 1.5-3 cups of juice at bottling. Because this is already a light mead you really don’t need a lot before the flavor shows up. You could do more, sure, but this can easily get into the territory of “juice with mead in it” instead of “mead with fruit flavor”.
Lastly, I save the skins/pulp from whatever I juiced in the freezer. Using them is a bit awkward because you end up a ton of particulate that’s a hassle to sift out, but I’ve taken to once a year dumping whatever I have on-hand into a white wine kit to make a sort of pseudo / fermented sangria.
Basic recipe and process:
I’ve dubbed this recipe “Suzy’s Birthday Juice”. Depending on the level of interest, I may explain why later. It’s a line-duty brew that’s ready in about 4-5 weeks, goes great in the summer, and is the basis for a lot of other hydromels I make with fruit additions. It’s also shelf-stable, which is nice if you don’t like racing through a batch to beat spoilage.
With that said, though, there is an assumption with this recipe that you already know a thing or two about brewing. This process is doable for beginners (I started brewing using the same method for ciders), but additional read-in is required for the pasteurization bit, as well as any substitutions that may result from incomplete ingredient or equipment lists. Do not pursue this recipe without having all needed equipment on-hand and ready, and / or without a clear plan for pasteurization.
Ingredients:
- 7-9 lbs Orange Blossom Honey (I use Monarch’s Choice bulk-purchased through Webstaurant)
- Water to 5-6 Gallons
- 1 Tsp DAP
- SafCider AC-4
Process:
- Acquire 2x 20oz bottles of soda. Drink or dump out one of them and store for reuse. (This is needed at bottling)
- Target OG 1.050, but a little more is fine – if the end ABV is more than 7% I just add tap water to thin it into the mid 6’s at bottling.
- Let it ferment dry (10-14 days)
- No secondary – Rack straight into the bottling tank
- Do NOT stabilize
- Add lime juice at 1-1.5 oz/gallon, 2.5 FLUID oz honey per gallon, and hot water enough to dissolve the honey in before adding. Side Note: Start low and taste repeatedly until acid and sweetness are in balance. It will also behoove you to have someone else (friend / partner / slam-piece) there as well for a second opinion.
- When bottling, fill the empty soda bottle, seal, and set next to the full soda bottle. We’re bottling a live fermentation and this is your indicator for how much pressure you’re dealing with.
- Check the indicator bottle at minimum twice daily. Squeeze it and compare firmness to the unopened soda bottle. Do not exceed the fitness of the soda bottle. I’ve found that it usually take 2-3 days for conditioning to hit action levels, but I also bottled a braggot last month that was as hot as I was comfortable with after barely 24 hours.
- Seriously: do not skimp on an indicator bottle and do not blow off monitoring conditioning progress. I have a PSI gauge that I put on a swing-top as a backup, but the soda bottle is the brass-tax reality of what’s happening with the brew.
- Once the indicator is firm, pasteurize all bottles at 140-150 F for 15 minutes. Pasteurization is a broad topic to cover and I will reserve my process notes thereon for a separate post. Just know, though, that you can easily hurt yourself by doing this and you need to be careful should you decide to try it. It’s not for everyone.
- Put the finished bottles in a closed (with lid) storage container for 2 weeks. This is to let them get a little age and also contain any bottle-bombs caused by error in your pasteurization process.
Notes on fruit:
This base recipe adapts extremely well to any fresh fruit that you might have lying around. I use a pressure cooker to steam-juice the fruit and then squeeze out whatever’s left via cheesecloth. You can figure out a DIY pressure cooker / steam juicer system with tin foil and some cullenders, but if there’s interest I can post my setup for that as well. I used to boil the juice down to concentrate it but I’ve gotten away from that because the amount of juice I dose doesn’t meaningfully dilute the brew and it’s one more step to mess with.
For a 5 gallon batch of hydromel I’ll generally dose 1-2 cups of juice into the must prior to inoculation and then another 1.5-3 cups of juice at bottling. Because this is already a light mead you really don’t need a lot before the flavor shows up. You could do more, sure, but this can easily get into the territory of “juice with mead in it” instead of “mead with fruit flavor”.
Lastly, I save the skins/pulp from whatever I juiced in the freezer. Using them is a bit awkward because you end up a ton of particulate that’s a hassle to sift out, but I’ve taken to once a year dumping whatever I have on-hand into a white wine kit to make a sort of pseudo / fermented sangria.
