Mead - the homebrew thread

[soySmelliot]

Bottled a bunch in the last 2 weeks.

Some experiments:

Bochet A and B

20 minute heat on the left and 30 minute on the right. It's made with the rare and desirable Wal-Mart honey so you know it's good. The 30 minute tastes pretty great I am sure we will eventually use it with some cherries for a chocolate covered cherry mead.

Meadowfoam A and B

Made exactly the same using 2 different yeasts. I wish this honey wasn't so damn expensive.

And experiments led us to making full 5 gallon batches of these:

Muscat Love. My first pyment I have ever made without using my own grapes.

Is anyone here old enough to get the horrible song reference?

And this guy. Holy cow this one turned out nice.

(Link to media)

Wow! I'm surprised at the color difference between the two bochets. I can't wait til I do one for myself.

I racked my Morat (mulberry) to secondary tonight, leaving my 5 gallon fermenter open for something new

 

[elkhunter36]

Wow! I'm surprised at the color difference between the two bochets. I can't wait til I do one for myself.

I racked my Morat (mulberry) to secondary tonight, leaving my 5 gallon fermenter open for something new

We were shocked at how fast the color changed. Taste is really different also.

 

[mjohnson171]

Thinking I want to do a moscow mule inspired carbonated short mead for my next batch. Anybody have any experience using either ginger or lime (zest and/or juice)?

Both.

listen to pdurrrr on the ginger.

I've used both lime zest and fresh squeeze juice. Made a margarita inspired mead out of coconut water and used fresh lime juice at bottling. Ended up giving them bottle a very slight carbonation. I liked the fresh lime flavor and acidity.

 

[axeman91821]

Both.

listen to pdurrrr on the ginger.

I've used both lime zest and fresh squeeze juice. Made a margarita inspired mead out of coconut water and used fresh lime juice at bottling. Ended up giving them bottle a very slight carbonation. I liked the fresh lime flavor and acidity.

Yeah, that's the feadback I got on the mead subreddit as well, fresh over dried. Any advice as to quantity?


Also, pulled a sample of my meadowfoam traditional and brought it to my homebrew club and basically got told I'd be crazy to potentially muck it up with some cacao nibs, so I might just bottle this whole batch straight.

 

[pdurrrr]

Any advice as to quantity?

I used 16 oz for 5 gallon and got a huge ginger flavor that was too much for anyone but me. So I drink that mead only with ginger lovers

I did a pineapple peach ginger with 8oz for 5 gallons and that was much more approachable for an average person

Also, pulled a sample of my meadowfoam traditional and brought it to my homebrew club and basically got told I'd be crazy to potentially muck it up with some cacao nibs, so I might just bottle this whole batch straight.

IMO you gotta be like Big Sean and stick to the plan. You’ve already proven yourself capable of building a great base, so you could do it again. But you envisioned a specific flavor profile for this batch.

Just my $0.02. Do what makes you happy

 

[mjohnson171]

Yeah, that's the feadback I got on the mead subreddit as well, fresh over dried. Any advice as to quantity

I can’t find my notes on that coconut/lime mead, but I think I used something like the juice of 4 or 6 squeezed limes per gal at bottling.

 

[elkhunter36]

The grapes are starting to turn so this year I thought we would try covering them with a bird net.

What a huge pain in the ass that was. Next year I will probably return to my old standby of simply yelling at the birds.

 

[elkhunter36]

Another bochet experiment. This time with montmorency cherries.

 

[axeman91821]

Another bochet experiment. This time with montmorency cherries.

how long do you boil your honey for a bochet?

 

[elkhunter36]

how long do you boil your honey for a bochet?

30 minutes. The first picture was taken at about 15 minutes. At 30 it was dark brown.

 

[axeman91821]

30 minutes. The first picture was taken at about 15 minutes. At 30 it was dark brown.

Cool. Probably going to get around to my first bochet in the winter. I was talking to someone pouring a really nice bochet at NHC club night in Portland and he boils his honey in stages. So he boiled some of it for 15 minutes, then added some more honey and boiled for another 15 minutes, then did the same thing again. So he ended up with a blend of honey that had been boiled for different amounts of time.

 

[Gonzoillini1]

Another bochet experiment. This time with montmorency cherries.

Cool. Probably going to get around to my first bochet in the winter. I was talking to someone pouring a really nice bochet at NHC club night in Portland and he boils his honey in stages. So he boiled some of it for 15 minutes, then added some more honey and boiled for another 15 minutes, then did the same thing again. So he ended up with a blend of honey that had been boiled for different amounts of time.

]

In general I've been pretty mixed on commercial bochet's I've had before, but that is interesting to say the least. Assuming he is doing equal portions for each addition?

 

[axeman91821]

I couldn't say for sure, I was already... a lot of beer in at that point. I do think that was the approach though.

 

[wittyname1]

Took the blueberries from a recent attempt at a blueberry vanilla mead and used mom's blueberry brown sugar cake recipe to dispose of the said blueberries.

may look strange in the pic, but looks exactly like hers.

 

[elkhunter36]

40 pounds fresh Balaton cherries

10 pounds fresh raspberries. Picked this morning.

30 pounds fresh red currants picked earlier this week so they are already frozen.

Buckets of grapes picked this afternoon.

 

[axeman91821]

So if I was going to order a ton of frozen de-stemmed currants from currantc for a big mead, what's the best way of working with them? Do I just go right into a mead with them? thaw? Thaw and re-freeze?

 

[mjohnson171]

So if I was going to order a ton of frozen de-stemmed currants from currantc for a big mead, what's the best way of working with them? Do I just go right into a mead with them? thaw? Thaw and re-freeze?

The benefit from freezing for making a mead is because it helps bread down the cell walls of the outer skin, so you get better fruit utilization. So there's no need to re-freeze them unless you're not going to be making the mead for a while after you receive the shipment.


When I work with frozen fruit I usually pull it out of the freezer an hour or two before I make my mead. Let them thaw a bit, then before you pitch them into your mead smash them in the bag a bit to help break up/pop the fruit a bit. It will just help the yeast get at the sugars inside a little easier and you'll get better fruit utilization as opposed to tossing them in whole.

 

[elkhunter36]

The only thing we do differently than mjohnson17 is we use an immersion blender and macerate the crap out of the fruit.

Then you will have to do punch downs a couple of times a day for the first few days.

 

[Bill2]

More not pictured, but I'm going to attempt to make an incredibly complex tropical fruit and flower blossom traditional with about 80 varieties of honey, mostly from Hawaii, but also some from Vermont, Montana, Maine, Illinois, Rhode Island, Norway, Italy, Tasmania, New Zealand, *THE PITCAIRN ISLANDS*, Switzerland, France, Scotland, Britain, and Belgium. The challenge to me is trying to find a balance between enough Hawaiian honey to produce ripe tropical fruit aroma and flavor, and everything else.

In order to achieve the best balance, the only way I can think of blending them all together in an beneficial manner would be to taste as I'm blending. I'm inclined to put the Hawaiian honey in first, in the largest quantity, mix it well and see where I'm at and how it's tasting. If it's good, I'll take a small amount and start blending in other varietals to taste taking note of proportions as best as possible, and then add in the remainder of the honey in the appropriate volumes, or decide to keep it 100% Hawaiian.

The best way to do this would be ferment each honey by itself and blend those meads together to taste, which I will do down the road based on what I learn from this batch.

 

[Espeer]

Brewed my first anything in almost 7 years last night.

Mead with 14 lbs honey, 11qts various juices, 17lbs frozen berries. Calculated equivalent sugar to 19lbs, but volume in the bucket was a little higher than planned - just over 6 gallons - so maybe this will be a little lower og than anticipated. Maybe will add another pound or two of honey in a day or two.

Trying to follow all the recent best practices regarding pitch rate, oxygenation, nutrition, etc.

Used 71B. What temperature should I target for fermentation? The plan is to add nutrient tonight, tomorrow, and the following day. Will also punch down the fruit each time. Sound right?

One screw-up was that the fruit wasn't completely warmed up when I added it, but the honey/juice was a little over room temperature from sitting in a warm water bath to make the honey easier to pour, so I figure they should roughly balance out. However, the cold fruit stayed on top and it took about 12 hours for the top 3 or 4 inches of the fermenter to feel roughly room temp. Would this mess up anything?

 

[mjohnson171]

71b has a pretty wide range of fermentation temperatures, I think it’s like 60-86 degrees. The warmer you ferment the faster the metabolic rate which tends to lead to more fusal alcohol characteristics, and a possibility for phenolics too. However it really depends on your recipe too. More fruit, type of fruit, etc can counter-balance some of those things.

FWIW I usually ferment between 65-70 and rarely have problems.

 

[elkhunter36]

Bottled 4 batches today.

1. Our 2018 batch of Triple Berry. Red Raspberries, Red Currants and Balaton cherries.
2. Balaton Cherry
3. Red Currant
4. Test Batch: Bochet with Montmorency cherries

Also have a Cranberry mead we are starting tomorrow

 

[axeman91821]

How many grams does everyone pitch for a session mead? I can never seem to get my hydromel traditionals to ferment down as quickly as I'd like them to.

 

[mjohnson171]

How many grams does everyone pitch for a session mead? I can never seem to get my hydromel traditionals to ferment down as quickly as I'd like them to.

Grams of cocaine? Usually an Eight Ball’s worth, so like 3.5 grams.






I’ll assume you’re talking yeast. To which I don’t measure. Depends on the batch size. If I’m doing 5 gal I’ll rehydrate 1 full packed of dried yeast. If I’m doing a 1-3 gal batch I’ll use 1/2 a packet. But not one to ask exact measurement questions. I’m very blasé faire.

 

[Bill2]

How many grams does everyone pitch for a session mead? I can never seem to get my hydromel traditionals to ferment down as quickly as I'd like them to.

PMed.

 

[More Betterness]

Stopped into a local meadery that basically exclusively does short/session meads and was blown away by one with lavender and local flowers. Have any of you ever added botanicals to your meads? If so how did you make the addition/sanitize?

 

[pdurrrr]

Stopped into a local meadery that basically exclusively does short/session meads and was blown away by one with lavender and local flowers. Have any of you ever added botanicals to your meads? If so how did you make the addition/sanitize?

We did a blueberry melomel with lavender that we loved. We kegged after secondary, adding the lavender to the keg. We tasted it everyday after the first week. A little goes a very long way.

We purchased food grade lavender and had already used our sorbate in secondary so sanitation wasn't an issue.

 

[axeman91821]

Meant to take a picture, but finally got my Tupelo/currants melomel going. 20lbs of honey and 20lbs of red and black currants (purchased frozen and then thawed and macerated) with a little bit of water to get me to five gallons. Couldn't even take an OG reading.

That should have my designated mead fermentor tied up for the foreseeable future, but I'm already thinking ahead to my next batch. I'd like to do a session white wine pyment (probably chardonnay) that I can then keg and carbonate, but not sure the best way to go about it. My first thought was to use the concentrate from a 1 gallon wine kit in a 5 gallon batch of mead (so as to keep the gravity low once I add in honey), but I'm worried that there won't be enough wine character. Thoughts/advice from anyone?

 

[mjohnson171]

Meant to take a picture, but finally got my Tupelo/currants melomel going. 20lbs of honey and 20lbs of red and black currants (purchased frozen and then thawed and macerated) with a little bit of water to get me to five gallons. Couldn't even take an OG reading.

That should have my designated mead fermentor tied up for the foreseeable future, but I'm already thinking ahead to my next batch. I'd like to do a session white wine pyment (probably chardonnay) that I can then keg and carbonate, but not sure the best way to go about it. My first thought was to use the concentrate from a 1 gallon wine kit in a 5 gallon batch of mead (so as to keep the gravity low once I add in honey), but I'm worried that there won't be enough wine character. Thoughts/advice from anyone?

Depends on what grape must you use. A moscato grape will give stronger notes than say a zin. Also depends on how much honey, type of honey, and target ABV. The more neutral the honey the better then chance of the grape coming through. Also if you’re shooting for a session mead/hydromel then you won’t need nearly as much grape must as if it’s a sack or something bigger.

 

[2plums4one]

Welp, just picked up a 2 gallon plastic fermenter with lid, one gallon glass jug with stopper and airlock, syphoning tube, some 71b-1122, and I have some starsan at home. I have three beekeepers on my street but I don't think any make clover honey, so I'll have to source some of that elsewhere, and will probably do my first batch with some frozen fruit or high quality juice. Wish me luck as I've never brewed anything before. What I do have is time and the money necessary to get started. Also a youtube addiction. Everything I bought today came out to $18.50. I've had the Ken Schraams book a while but haven't read it in entirety. I've done about 5-10 hours research so far and am going to start with a pretty basic melomel recipe. I read the first 5-10 pages of this thread and will continue to try and make my way through. Thanks for all the good info and links in here.