Mead Beginner - basic instructions/recipe for Raw honey

[Brian66]

Hi All,

I'm an experienced homebrewer. I have cousin that harvests honey in western Pennsylvania. I've never made a mead before but would like to try since I have quite a bit of honey.

Looking for any tips, suggestions for recipe, process etc. Will probably just start out with a basic 1 gallon mead.

I'm figuring about 3lbs of honey? Is that enough? Should I be doing something with yeast nutrient and yeast Energizer over the first few days for a small batch like this?

Thanks!

 

[Rish]

Welcome to mead making! I'd say check out this forum for some basic and some more advanced information. Good luck!
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forums/mead-recipes.80/

 

[DBhomebrew]

Time. Plenty of conditioning time.

Yes, my standard traditional is 3#/gal. That's 1 gal of must, not 1 gal of water. Ends up at 12-13%.

TOSNA, TOSNA 3.0, TANG, BOMM. Take your pick, but do use a solid well-reputed nutrition protocol. Raisins ain't it.

JAOM might turn out ok, but somewhere there's a podcast interview with Joe himself describing his recipe as all the wrong things fixed by time. Lots and lots of time.

Mead is really delicious in an unassuming way. Think white wine more than rampaging Vikings.

Time. Really. It may be a perfectly fine beverage when you bottle it. Give it a year or two and it will be much better. Honey flavor and aroma will come back from nowhere.

 

[Maylar]

Time. Really. It may be a perfectly fine beverage when you bottle it. Give it a year or two and it will be much better. Honey flavor and aroma will come back from nowhere.

I made a mesquite traditional back in 2019. At bottling time it was just a 'meh' white wine. At one year it was excellent. And I gave away the last bottle, at 4 years old, to some mead freaks who said it was the best they've ever had. So... yeah - time.

 

[Miraculix]

I'm just tidying up my basement. I've found sooooooo many bottles of old mead and strong beers that I've totally forgotten about. Some aged 6 years plus.

I will never be able to drink all of that myself but I'm curious about how it all developed.

There should be even some old Chinese pasteurised rice wine. Even a sour version of it. This weekend will be interesting I guess.

 

[keystonehb]

Hi All,

I'm an experienced homebrewer. I have cousin that harvests honey in western Pennsylvania. I've never made a mead before but would like to try since I have quite a bit of honey.

Looking for any tips, suggestions for recipe, process etc. Will probably just start out with a basic 1 gallon mead.

I'm figuring about 3lbs of honey? Is that enough? Should I be doing something with yeast nutrient and yeast Energizer over the first few days for a small batch like this?

Thanks!

I usually recommend 2-3 lbs per gallon so you're good on that. I usually do a half dose of fermaid o 24 hours after yeast pitch and the other half 48 hours later. I also recommend for honey amounts using enough honey to get the abv you want then if you like it sweeter used some sulphites and sorbates to backsweeten with honey. Last word of advice is if you're making a 1 gallon batch, start with 1.25-1.5 gallons because you will lose volume with every racking, especially after primary. You want your carboys filled up as much as possible.

Good Luck!

 

[bernardsmith]

Depends on what you are looking for. I often make mead using 3 lbs of honey, 2.5 bs or even 1.5 if I want to make a lower ABV mead to which I can either dry hop or treat as a beer and boil (or near boil) water for 60m minutes with hops at 60, 30, flameout and dry hop. The secret is to use good varietal honey if you are making a traditional mead, or clover or wild flower if you are making a metheglin (spiced mead) or melomel (fruit mead). If you are planning on making a cyser (apple mead) or pyment (grape wine mead, or any other fruit mead, take into account the sugar content of the fruit juice (the JUICE itself will have a gravity of about 1.045 -1.1055, so you won't want to use as much as 3 lbs (SG 1.105). In my opinion, a reasonable MAXIMUM SG is about 1.100 (13% ABV) for a balanced mead, but there is no law that says you may ot make a mead that you can quaff by the pint rather than by the glass - so a mead with an ABV of 5-7% ABV is perfectly OK just as long as you can give this adequate mouthfeel and flavor richness (dry hopping, carbonating etc all help).

 

[Brian66]

Depends on what you are looking for. I often make mead using 3 lbs of honey, 2.5 bs or even 1.5 if I want to make a lower ABV mead to which I can either dry hop or treat as a beer and boil (or near boil) water for 60m minutes with hops at 60, 30, flameout and dry hop. The secret is to use good varietal honey if you are making a traditional mead, or clover or wild flower if you are making a metheglin (spiced mead) or melomel (fruit mead). If you are planning on making a cyser (apple mead) or pyment (grape wine mead, or any other fruit mead, take into account the sugar content of the fruit juice (the JUICE itself will have a gravity of about 1.045 -1.1055, so you won't want to use as much as 3 lbs (SG 1.105). In my opinion, a reasonable MAXIMUM SG is about 1.100 (13% ABV) for a balanced mead, but there is no law that says you may ot make a mead that you can quaff by the pint rather than by the glass - so a mead with an ABV of 5-7% ABV is perfectly OK just as long as you can give this adequate mouthfeel and flavor richness (dry hopping, carbonating etc all help).

Partly not sure what I'm looking for, other than something that tastes good. I have a cousin who is a bee keeper and gives me a lot of honey. It's his hobby and does it to benefit his garden and surrounding plants/trees etc. I decided I should make a mead since I have a bunch of honey. So I don't know anything about the honey in terms of the varietal, all I know is that my cousin does this in western PA (Pittsburgh area).

I figured I'd just make a gallon of basic mead to see how it goes - not even sure how much I'll like it. Will a basic mead with this honey be good or does it need to be some varietal like clover, orange blossom etc.?

Should I maybe be considering adding fruit?

 

[bernardsmith]

Partly not sure what I'm looking for, other than something that tastes good. I have a cousin who is a bee keeper and gives me a lot of honey. It's his hobby and does it to benefit his garden and surrounding plants/trees etc. I decided I should make a mead since I have a bunch of honey. So I don't know anything about the honey in terms of the varietal, all I know is that my cousin does this in western PA (Pittsburgh area).

I figured I'd just make a gallon of basic mead to see how it goes - not even sure how much I'll like it. Will a basic mead with this honey be good or does it need to be some varietal like clover, orange blossom etc.?

Should I maybe be considering adding fruit?

I would certainly do some reading on making mead. Two books I would recommend are Ken Schramm's The Compleat Meadmaker, and Steve Piatz The Complete Guide to Mead Making. That aside, you can certainly use your cousin's honey. It's likely to be wildflower (that is a wide range of random flowering blooms) BUT making what is called a traditional mead - honey, water, yeast and nutrient, has absolutely nothing to mask any flaws and a traditional mead is in the opinion of seasoned mead makers, not an easy mead to make well. You MIGHT want to consider making what is called a cyser, using apple juice (without any preservatives ) in place of water. That would require that you mix say 2 lbs of honey with enough apple juice to make 1 gallon. (2 lbs of honey is about 1.5 pints - and a gallon is 8 pints, so you will be adding about 6.5 pints of apple juice to the 2 lbs of honey). Honey is a desert when it comes to nitrogen and critical minerals and vitamins that yeast need , so you will need to add nutrients (Fermaid O, if you can get that, or you can boil and cool, say a tablespoon of bakers yeast in a little water). The cyser will likely need tannin (you CAN use strong black tea but best is packaged tannin made from chestnuts), and you will need to check the taste for acidity AFTER fermentation has ended. If you intend to backsweeten, you will need to (best) chemically , satbiize the mead with the addition of K-meta and K-sorbate. These chemicals prevent any residual yeast cells from reproducing and refeermenting any added sugars. You can add more honey AFTER you will have added those two chemicals to sweeten, but you should check to see how much of whatever sweetener you think THAT cyser wants (you might bench test but start with around 4 oz of honey per gallon of mead (about 9 points of added gravity), above the final gravity which should be about 1.000.