'Brewing' mead

Mead is a wonderful thing. It is one of the oldest alcoholic drinks known to man. It′s even older then the art of beer brewing, another noble art. Mead is often called ′honeywine′ but this name suggests that there are grapes in there while there aren′t! This is what is in there:

Honey: I use about 0.5 kg per litre of water. Others use less. The amount of honey you use will vary according to the strength of mead you are making. Water: To make up the total amount of the recipe.
Yeast: One packet of wine yeast per 10 litres of mead. Some people use ale yeast which works fine to.

Remember, honey is the primary ingredient in mead and should never be used as an afterthought or ′just′ as flavouring! (No Ambrosia or Gouden Waag for me, thank you...) Variations can be made but only on the solid foundation of good mead-making. Use fruits or herbs only to enhance and complement the honey. The honey is holy! Honey, particularly when diluted, lacks sufficient nutrients to maintain healthy yeast activity. This problem is made worse by boiling the must. So give the yeast beasties some food in the form of yeast nutrient.
Alternative sources: raisins, bee pollen or crushed bee larvae. (No really!) You also might want to add acid productid like the juice of any citrus fruit. Whether you choose to use natural ingridients only or add a little chemical ingridient here and there, it is up to you but whichever method you chose, make it mighty mead.

Recipies at the bottom of this page.

Basic Recipy for mead

Ingredients:
7 kgs honey
4 teaspoons acid blend
6 teaspoons yeast nutrient
1 packet wine or ale yeast
1.5 teaspoons grape tannin
water to make 20 litres
If the thought of chemicals makes you cringe, feel free to boil the must, substitute bee pollen for nutrients (1 tablespoon/litre), strong brewed black tea for tannin (1/5 tablespoon/litre), citrus peels (from 2-3 lemons or other fruit) for the acid blend.

Elderberry mead

Mix your water and honey in a good food-grade plastic bucket or metal pan, sufficient to make the amount of litres needed for your recipe. The honey is easier desolved in the water if you heat the mixture but be careful. To high a temperature changes the taste of the mead in a bad way. Let the mixture cool down till about 35- 40 degrees Celsius. Higher temperatures will kill the yeast. When cool enough, add the yeast and nutrients and putt the mixture in a yeasting botle with a good water lock. (see pictures) The first 24 to 48 hours the yeasting process can be quit explosive. I usually place the bottle in the sink during the first few nights. Sometimes I come downstairs to find a new bottle has lost its water lock do to the pressure of the gas building up inside the bottle. This can be very messy indeed...

Stir daily by moving the liquid around in the bottle. After a few days fermentation will slow down. Don't freak out if strange things start floating in the mead, it isn't necessary a bad thing. Leave it for a few days and see what happens. I once almost destroyed a batch of mead because there was a pancake of ...lets call it a white substance, floating mid-bottle. After two days, it was gone and as it turn out, it became one of the best meads I've everproduced. So allow secondary fermentation to finish and the sediment to settle. This will take a few months.

Watch your waterlocks. If the presure on the water is pushing it the wrong way: Rack and stack! After about 3 to 4 months you can rack the mead into bottles and fit stoppers. But: waiting a little longer won′t hurt you or the mead. After the mead has been racked, it will continue to ripen (use corks so the gas can escape or bottles WILL pop open). The longer you let the mead rest, the better the mead gets!

There are several good books on the market but you only need one good recipe to start. I own a copy of "Bezig zijn met zelf wijn en bier maken" a translation of "All you need to know about winemaking". (Dutch translation by Anne Woorts, published by Uitgevery Helmond B.V). But I also used some information from "Mad About Mead" by Pamela Stence. If you own a copy of a book you think is really good, please let me know. You can contact us through email or leave a message in the guestbook. And if you make mead or have tried this basic recipe, I would love to know how it turned out! Good luck and may the mead flow richly and your cup never run empty

Bas from H.O.M.E

P.S. more recipies will be added on a later date.

For recipies of different kinds of fruity meads I have brewed in during the last few years can be found on the meadrecipypage.