What's you thoughts?

[je52rm]

So long story short is that I travel all over the world for work and have collected lots of honey from different countries (UK, Germany, Netherlands, Poland, France, Belgium, Australia, Mexico, and lots of others). I am an experienced beer brewer but have never made mead before. I was wondering if anyone has any thoughts or recommendations to help me in making my first mead. I want to call this Worldwide Mead. Thank you for any input!

 

[porterpounder]

Well you have the option of mixing them all together to make a single "Noah's Ark" of mead, or fermenting each individually, tasting the results and blending to get the best flavor. The first is easy, the second time consuming, but perhaps more worthy of the the struggles of collecting all that different honey. There are plenty of resources out there to get you on your way as far as honey to water ratio for sweet, semi-dry or dry meads. Use a staggered nutrient addition schedule and degas daily for the first week or so (be careful not to have a foam blow-out). Have fun.

 

[Sourz4life]

Gotmead.com has a ton of info but it depends how basic you want to start out. I'd suggest looking into nutrient schedules though. SNA and TONSA are the two most used. Reason being unlike malted brews honey doesn't have the nutrients yeast need to flourish. I prefer TONSA as it uses all organic nitrates. Also it depends what kind of mead you like, dry-sweet. Another thing to consider is do you like the normal ABV meads around 11-16% or do you prefer the lower ones. I myself like a 7% mead blended with juices/teas etc. And for the yeast it also depends on what kind of esters your prefer in your mead and whether you are aiming to do a sweet mead by just capping that yeasts alcohol limit by giving it enough honey. If you are planning to use all the honeys then I'm sure it will be good but it would obviously be hard to pick out any flavors with so many going on. You could do small batches and blend, but just a thought.

 

[Maylar]

A typical mead will need about 3 lbs of honey per gallon, so depending on the sizes of those samples you have it looks like you'll need to mix a couple together even for a small batch. A "traditional" mead with nothing but honey and water is the best way to showcase the unique flavors of a particular variety of honey, but certainly any of them could become part of a mead. I would start with a JAOM mead or one of the BOMM's from Bray's web site:

https://www.denardbrewing.com/blog/post/brays-one-month-mead/

 

[bernardsmith]

A typical mead will need about 3 lbs of honey per gallon, so depending on the sizes of those samples you have it looks like you'll need to mix a couple together even for a small batch. A "traditional" mead with nothing but honey and water is the best way to showcase the unique flavors of a particular variety of honey, but certainly any of them could become part of a mead. I would start with a JAOM mead or one of the BOMM's from Bray's web site:

https://www.denardbrewing.com/blog/post/brays-one-month-mead/

Three lbs to make one gallon or 6 oz to make a pint... so with care you could still make one mead from each container... if that was what you wanted to do..

 

[fossilcat]

I would make a traditional mead out of every one, not changing anything: same yeast, same conditions, no additions. Make a 1/2 gallon batch or low alcohol batch if you only have a small amount of a particular varietal (low alcohol as a last resort). Maybe split a gallon and oak it, but make sure there's enough straight traditional of each variety. Bottle in 375 ml containers and have a taste test.

:rockin: