I am sharing my first experiment with Mead, which was a simple and successful recipe of my own design. (Although it is so simple "design" seems to be too generous of a word).
Experienced mazers will be able to tell that this was the experiment of someone transitioning from beer brewing. In hindsight, the heating and subsequent chilling was unnecessary.
Method:
Heat 1 gal of water to 160f and add 24 oz of honey that was purchased from a farmer's market.
Mixed for about 20 minutes and then chilled. Put into primary with yeast. Racked to secondary after 2 weeks. Could read through the carboy after another week or two. Altogether it was in the secondary for 8 weeks.
I intentionally used less honey than most recipes called for and a yeast that would not require any additional nutrients or energizer.
Experimentation is always good, even when the results are not what were predicted, but experiments need to be grounded in the scientific method. And this experiment seems more like a hope and a prayer rather than something based on observation, data collection, hypothesis generation and testing of that hypothesis.
Three quick thoughts: honey is a desert when it comes to the nutritional needs of yeast. Brewers brewing with grains don't have that problem: grains offer a feast of essential nutrients. If you want to make mead efficiently and without off flavors and problems with fermentation, you need to add nutrients. Not least, but nitrogen is essential as are many other compounds.
My second thought is that the amount of honey is always a second order issue when you consider TOTAL volume. If you dissolve 1 lb of honey in water to make 1 US gallon, the starting gravity is (typically) 1.035. If you ADD 1 lb of honey TO 1 US gallon, Your TOTAL volume is 1 gallon AND 2/3 of a pint. So the rule of thumb regarding the SG is way off. But if the total volume was say, a half-gallon, your starting gravity would have been 1.070 , or potentially, a mead with an ABV of more than 9%.
The third thought is that while heat IS more about brewing than wine making, to make honey more viscous - make it flow more easily, you may indeed, want to warm the honey. But this , as you note, ain't a mash and 160 F is actually getting close to damaging the aromatic and flavor molecules in the honey, but 140F should leave the honey relatively undamaged. And while you do want to wait until the must is at the temperature aligned with the optimal temperature of the yeast you selected (and you don't provide us with that information), honey is not susceptible to souring in the way that grains are. In fact, many seasoned wine and mead makers simply cover their fermenters (food grain buckets) with a cloth during active fermentation and only use a carboy and bung after the initial racking. This because we often ferment with fruit and we need to be able to ensure that the fruit is continually (2 or 3 times a day) stirred into the mead or wine to prevent the top surface becoming a heaven for mold and spoilage. And it's much easier to stir if all you have to do is whip off the cloth cover. So even if we are fermenting a traditional mead (only honey) or making a wine with only juice, the habit of cloth covers still rules.
