I don't want to do joam for my first batch.

[basilchef]

I have alot of experience brewing and am a smart cookie. Please help me out with a 1 gallon recipe for a delicious mead that's sparkling and not too sweet or too dry. Thank you so much.

 

[Indie]

Here are my first three. They all turned out semi sweet, though the berry melomel was the driest.

I didn't intend to make mine sparkling, but since I didn't stabilize before bottling all three wound up with some level of carbonation. The metheglin the least, the banana mel the most.

If you want to have complete control of how carbed they get you can let it ferment out totally dry, stabilize, back sweeten and then force carb (I think... I haven't tried to make a mead sparkle on purpose).

Hope that helps a little.

 

[fatbloke]

Most sparkling meads are made from fermenting dry, clearing, then bottle priming. You'd use a higher alcohol yeast for it, but the carbonation stage can still ferment out any sugars added for priming.

The hardest type to make, is generally thought to be sparkling sweet, but if you sweetened with something non-fermentable, you should be able to.

It's up to you what non-fermentable you'd use then.

Or of course, you could just make a batch that has the alcohol and sweetness you like, but then you keg it and force carbonate.

Either way, you'd want to be thinking along the lines of champagne/sparkling wine bottles, stoppers and wire cages, or for lower carbonation, beer bottles and crown caps.

Anything less is asking for trouble, by way of "bottle bombs".....

 

[basilchef]

Most sparkling meads are made from fermenting dry, clearing, then bottle priming. You'd use a higher alcohol yeast for it, but the carbonation stage can still ferment out any sugars added for priming.

The hardest type to make, is generally thought to be sparkling sweet, but if you sweetened with something non-fermentable, you should be able to.

It's up to you what non-fermentable you'd use then.

Or of course, you could just make a batch that has the alcohol and sweetness you like, but then you keg it and force carbonate.

Either way, you'd want to be thinking along the lines of champagne/sparkling wine bottles, stoppers and wire cages, or for lower carbonation, beer bottles and crown caps.

Anything less is asking for trouble, by way of "bottle bombs".....

Thanks. This was helpful. Do you prefer raw or pasteurized honey?

 

[biochemedic]

Do you prefer raw or pasteurized honey?

Asking that question around here is akin to asking if you like craft beer or Bud Light...generally speaking there is no reason to ever pasteurize honey...It's just not necessary given honey's intrinsic properties/antibacterial nature. I'm sure you can make mead out of pasteurized honey, but I have been fortunate to have awesome, readily available local raw honey sources...the only time I've ever used commercial honey is for making bochet (burnt/caramelized mead).

I have back sweetened cider with lactose, and this does seem to work well to enable at least a semi-sweet state plus bottle conditioning. Lactose is generally percieved less sweet than sucrose or dextrose, so I think it might be pretty hard to create a truly sweet product with just lactose. Then of course, there's the whole issue of lactose intolerance if that's an issue for you or anyone else who will regularly drink your mead...

If you do bottle condition mead (not sure if you've ever brewed any higher gravity stuff like barleywine, tripel/quad, etc)...be prepared for fairly long bottle conditioning times. Also, you may want to consider "re-yeasting" with fresh yeast at bottling the way the Belgians do. Finally, if you have a warmer area to store the bottles in for a month or two, this will help the process along.