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Tarrant

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Feb 29, 2008
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Ohio
I'm looking to starting brewing my first mead later today and wanted a quick look over of the recipe.

15lbs Honey
4 Gallons Spring Water
1 Quart Maple syrup
1 gallon of Celestial Seasonings Cider made from their herbal mix.
then either a Montrachet or Lalvin# EC-1118 for the yeast.


I notice acid added to a lot of meads with the recipe would i need to add that?

From what I can tell the using the Montrachet should give me a really high ABV so it will have to age for a bit to mellow out some of the tones.

Would it be better to use 5 gallons of water, and then when i move it to secondary rack it over the herbal mixture?
 
that sounds right on tract. I just started doing a mead. cider tends to be acidic as it is so I wouldnt worry about that. I think the 4 gallons should be ok but that maple syrup will def boost the sweetness..you using pure maple syrup?
 
Yes I'm using pure maple syrup. I didn't end up getting to put it together yet, hoping for this weekend. I did put together though a small batch which is going very nicely as of this morning.

The small batch recipe
2 quarts Apple Juice, not from concentrate no additives
1 quart organic Tart Cherry Juice
2lbs of Orange Blossom honey.

I pitched it with some extra Montrachet Yeast i had after Fridays apfelweine extravaganza. Although in hindsight i'm thinking i should have added some yeast nutrient to be sure and crossing my fingers that i don't get a stalled fermentation. The plan is to rack it over some vanilla beans in secondary.
 
That new recipe sounds delicious. Thankfully apple and cherry juice have a whole lot more nutrients in them than honey, but nutrients probably could help it out still. Keep us updated on both batches, I am especially interested to hear how the cherry/apple/vanilla flavors blend in that melomel of yours.
 
Trust me .... EC1118 will take that recipe bone dry. Have you already made it? Personally, I would skip the maple syrup, add about 22 pounds of honey, and use D47 yeast instead. Also, skip the acids, gypsum , etc., as you don't need them. Use Go-Ferm when rehydrating your yeast, and Fermaid-K as your nutrient. Also, you need patience with mead - I've learned to bulk-age mine before either deciding to bottle, or continue bulk-aging !

Check out all the info on this awesome site:

http://www.gotmead.com/ :rockin:

Good Luck ! - GL63
 
Update, both have now been bottled, The cherry vanilla came out with a great balance of flavor, really impressed with it so far, the other not so much, I was hoping to get at least a hint of maple, but all it did was to serve as extra sugar and make the color come out slightly darker. It looks fantastic but at this point only tastes mediocre.
 
. It looks fantastic but at this point only tastes mediocre.
Keep in mind that this will get a lot better over the next 2 or 5 years!

I don't know how people do it....but I read someone today say he had a mead that was ok in '97...sucked between '98 and '01...and is really good now. (or someting similar)

Anyway....keep your hopes up. It'll be fine....eventually.
 
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