This weekend’s work

[thedevilandgod]

First, a little info. This is my first post in the mead forums. I’m a brewer by trade, but mead has been a fun hobby of mine over the past year or so. Reading over a lot of these posts have helped me solidify more of the lead making process, although I’m still quite a beginner for sure.

This weekend!

Check in on a hopped mead I made with another brewer a few weeks ago. While we both like mead, the hopped mead recipes I’ve found tend to use them as a dry hop, which doesn’t extract any alpha acids (bittering) of the hops, just aroma. We made a five gallon batch, boiling an ounce of hops to hit the middle ground of hop bitter and honey sweetness. The sample I pulled today is still pretty high in gravity (1.025), but it’s definitely starting to balance out a bit more.

Made two 1-gallon batches: a metheglin based of a dry mead recipe, and what I assume is a traditional sack mead recipe with lactose added. Again, a brewer, so my recipes might read funny, but I appreciate any feedback!


Angry Hornet (metheglin)

1.5 lbs. honey
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp cayenne powder
2 bags white tea

Boiled honey with three cups of water for 10 minutes to skim any wax/impurities. Remaining water (104 oz.) boiled, added tea and spices. Let cool to 85F, pitched rehydrated Côte Des Blances, and aerated. Added 1/2 tbsp of yeast nutrient. Fermenting at 75F.


Milk and Honey

3 lbs. honey
.25 lactose

Boiled honey with four cups water for ten minutes as the last recipe. Added lactose at end of boil to dissolve. Added to fermenter, then added pre-boiled water to top of fermenter. Same pitching as before.

These will be my four and fifth meads (although one was technically an acerglyn...). Looking forward to any feedback.

Cheers!

 

[Shine0n]

1.031 if fermenting dry as a bone to .995 will be 4.176%
4.061 if dry to 1.0
Sounds pretty interesting on the spices and I'd like to try but I think I'd go close to 6.5 or 7%
I like the milk and honey and will definitely try this out, I might wait for your conclusion before hand though just in case. lol

All in all looks good, keep us posted on progress.

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi thedevilandgod - and welcome. Two quick thoughts: I don't know that you need to boil honey in 2018 unless your water is not potable. I routinely use raw honey harvested locally and I cannot say that the beekeepers' methods result in my meads having any noticeable amounts of wax or other impurities. Honey ain't grain and boiling the honey boils off flavor and taste.

The other thought is this: beer has a residual sweetness of about 15 points, doesn't it? That's about 6 oz of sugar per gallon. The alpha acids from the hops help balance that sweetness. Honey, though, will ferment brut dry. Without any work on your part you will find that a mead can easily ferment down to .096 or even lower. Sure you can back sweeten, but if you don't those alpha acids might see a little overpowering without any sweetness to even up their effect. When I make hopped meads (and I am neither an example nor a warning ) I generally boil the hops in water (perhaps with a drop of lemon juice to bring the pH down a little) for 10 -15 minutes to bring out the flavor of the hops rather than utilize the acids). Have not made a very large variety of hopped meads but my favorite to date used Canadian wild flower honey (an exception to my use of local honey), Azacca hops and Belle Saison yeast.

I'll end by saying that like Shine0n, I am really interested in your milk and honey mead. I have made kumis a couple of times (kumis is a fermented milk drink) and used honey to up the gravity (and ABV) and while the mead was this side of "drinkable" it wasn't something I would share with friends or family over a meal... Your idea of using lactose might change the game completely... Would love to know how this batch turns out. and is the .25 you refer to 4 oz? Is this for a one gallon batch? If it is ,then I am not sure I understand the gravity reading you have on the label. One pound of honey added to water to make 1 US gallon will raise the gravity of the water to about 1.035 so 3 lbs will give you a reading of 1.105 (I don't know what lactose does to the gravity).

 

[thedevilandgod]

Good points all around! Since those gravities were taken with a hydrometer, it’s likely I misjudged the honey weights...

ShineOn, thanks for making the observation on how dry it’ll be. I definitely forgot that this attenuates much higher than ale yeast. Looks like backsweetening might be called for.

Bernard, I boiled because I wasn’t sure of the quality. The brewery I work for had an extra fifty pounds of it laying around after a brew, but the labeling was gone and all I really knew was that it was honey, not sure of how old it was, etc. The past few meads I’ve made I didn’t boil, so I’m curious to see how much it’ll effect the aroma/taste.

Thanks for the help!

 

[bernardsmith]

Honey has no limited shelf life. It contains too little moisture for it to spoil and in fact it contains so little moisture that it will remove the moisture of living cells which is why for thousands of years it was used to treat wounds and prevent infections. In other words, honey is a bactericide. Of course, if the honey was soaked with water or wort in the brewery then it may spontaneously ferment as bees carrying the honey back to the hive are covered in yeast and raw honey has enough indigenous yeast to ferment without the addition of lab cultured yeasts, though when you dilute the honey and pitch the yeast you pitch enough yeast to completely swamp the local population - which is why some mead makers allow their must to sit undisturbed for a day or two to permit the local yeast to have some influence on the flavors and aromas of the final mead (much like some wine makers).

 

[Ryue]

which is why some mead makers allow their must to sit undisturbed for a day or two to permit the local yeast to have some influence on the flavors and aromas of the final mead (much like some wine makers).

Sorry to derail, but how likely is it to start fermenting on its own? Is it hit and miss? I would like to try that with the local red clover honey I get here in WA.

 

[bernardsmith]

I have used indigenous yeast as the sole yeast a couple of times and have not had any problems - but my luck was that the yeast involved produced what I viewed as a very delightful mead. That is not necessarily the case and you might find that you have absolutely no problem growing the colony. The problem may be that the yeasts involved produce compounds that are not to your liking. So, bottom line - this is a two part gamble. Will the yeasts grow a colony that will effectively ferment the must AND will the fermented must taste good enough to enjoy?
The thing to do to make the only gamble the taste of the mead is to begin with using no more than 1 pound of honey mixed with enough water to make 1 gallon (or an equivalent total volume - You want the starting gravity to be no more than 1.040). In other words, what you are setting out to do is create the equivalent of a starter - (and that may be 2 oz of honey in 1 pint of water) and you want to treat the nutrient load as if nutrients were as cheap as water. I think I used 4 or 5 times the recommended nutrient amount. I don't brew enough beer to have a magnetic stir plate so I aerated the starter a few times a day for a few days and when I saw that the yeast had had their way I added a more typical (but low gravity) batch of must. What I then did was freeze concentrate the mead to increase the ABV and flavor a little. If memory serves aright the last batch I made used raw Brazilian wildflower honey.

Of course, a more scientific approach might be to swab plates with diluted honey and grow the the cells that are most viable..

 

[Ryue]

So attempt to start a pint starter, let it ferment, taste and if it's good then use it as a starter?

Also, assuming all fares well - must ferments and tastes good - how long can a starter like that survive to be used later?

 

[bernardsmith]

You should be able to store the yeast in a fridge for a considerable amount of time. Cannot say how long but yeast tends not to die in any obvious way. Without sugar and in a cold environment the yeast go dormant. And when sugar is re-introduced and the temperature reaches room temperature the yeast should become active again. But the secret is not to stress the yeast so don't make a high gravity mead and be sure to provide the yeast with all the nutrients it needs.

 

[Ryue]

Awesome, I have some honey left over from my last batch, I may try this if I can find a pint jar and will update later!
Thank you! [emoji1] [emoji482]

 

[thedevilandgod]

UPDATE: the mead with lactose cane out fairly well, although as pointed out earlier, the lactose was based on a final gravity of 1.008, it finished at 1.001. Some good creamy body at the finish, but I would try adding more next time.

Spicy mead wasn’t too spicy. It was such a low ABV that the yeast esters pulled through a lot, tasted like a nice dry wine, with a hit of spice at the end.