Possible to Make Something Like Chaucer's?

[Clint Yeastwood]

I have never brewed mead, and I never tried it until today. I just got back into beer brewing after 16 years off, and I have been sampling new things to find out what's out there. I decided to grab some mead while shopping for beer, and the one I chose is Chaucer's mead.

I know nothing whatsoever about good mead versus bad, but this stuff seems wonderful to me. The last thing I had that was anything like this was a white wine from France. Pomerol something, I believe. Chaucer's is sweeter, and it has some honey flavor, but if someone had put it in front of me and told me it was wine, I would have believed them.

Is it possible to make something similar to this without a lot of hassle? I think this stuff is tremendous.

 

[Maylar]

They say it's a desert wine, which implies being sweet. That's certainly doable. They also say it's made with a blend of honeys, orange blossom (common), sage and alfalfa (good luck with that). Other than that... it's mead

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

Mead sounds like a dream to make. No mashing, no sparging, no boiling, no carbonation...

 

[DBhomebrew]

Just good ol' time. 20m to mix it together. A few minutes every day for half a week. 20m to rack to a new vessel. Then you put it somewhere out of the way and forget about it.

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

I wonder if I could make something like retsina. A lot of people hate it, but a big cold mug of it goes really well with Greek food.

 

[Maylar]

You'd have to ask that in the wine forum.

 

[mashpaddled]

Mead isn't incredibly difficult to make but it's a different skillset from brewing. You might want to try some other meads before racing off to buy honey, which is a more expensive ingredient than grain or hops. You might find your taste for mead veers away (or into) those sweeter meads.

 

[bwible]

If you are new to mead making, this is still one of the best resources

https://www.brewerspublications.com...ch-to-award-winning-fruit-and-herb-variations

 

[bwible]

Mead sounds like a dream to make. No mashing, no sparging, no boiling, no carbonation...

You have to pay more attention to yeast nutrients and there are articles about this. Look up “staggered yeast nutrient”. Honey by itself doesn’t have everything yeast needs.

Mead is lumped in with beer in competitions but I always thought it was much more similar to wine. Chemistry seems more important to me with wine and mead. At the more advanced levels it gets into acid titration and acid blending much the same way beer mashing gets into ph adjustments and water chemistry adjustments. Not all of this is necessary to know. You build your skillset as you go along.

Start with a simple recipe like “Joe’s Ancient Orange Mead” (JOAM) which you can find all over this site.

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

You'd have to ask that in the wine forum.

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

Looks like retsina is flavored with something called Aleppo resin, which is available all over the web.

 

[bernardsmith]

Gotta say that mead is easy to make. Get 2.5 lbs of any honey - could be clover or wildflower or a basic varietal like orange blossom or an expensive varietal. Get about 7 liters of good spring water , pitch any wine or ale yeast you like add nutrients (does not have to be TOSNA: you can add the total nutrient load once). This will have an SG of around 1.090 and so a potential ABV of about 11-12%. Monitor the fermentation. Rack to secondary when gravity drops to about 1.010- 1.005 . Let finish brut dry. Stabilize with K-meta AND K-sorbate, allow to age 6 months - a year or more, back sweeten to taste with a good varietal honey (more bang for your buck thataway), bottle and enjoy. The more you understand wine making and honey the better your protocols are going to be as you aerate the must, select the yeast, rehydrate the yeast , pitch the yeast and choose your vessel for fermentation. (I prefer a food grade bucket that I cover loosely with a cloth to allow me to stir and aerate the must/mead during the first few days. I also use a blender to force air into the honey-water as I mix them.
Mead is easy to make. But a traditional mead (the recipe I suggest) is naked. There is no place in the mead where you can hide flaws. Making a great traditional is bloody difficulty, but making a very drinkable one is not hard.

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

Thanks. Sounds like fun.

I'll bet there is such a thing as sparkling mead.

 

[DBhomebrew]

I make a very enjoyable ~6% traditional mead bottle conditioned to 2.0 volumes. Dry and refreshing.

 

[bwible]

Thanks. Sounds like fun.

I'll bet there is such a thing as sparkling mead.

Kegging would be the easiest way. They make kegs now in 2 gallon, 2.5 gallons etc. Torpedo kegs. When you get into bottle conditioning, you really can’t do it once you stabilize with sorbate or sulfites. And if you don’t stabilize you can’t back sweeten. The additional sugar would just ferment out. Bottle conditioning will also leave that layer of sediment on the bottom. Unless you do manual champagne style where they condition the bottles upside down, allow sediment to collect in the neck, then freeze the neck and remove the sediment clump then cap.

 

[Maylar]

I have a Cannonball mini keg and I love it:

Mini Keg System with Regulator