misc Recipes - Mead

This is the place where it's about one thing, the Honey! Whatever your favorite way to make it is, post up your favorite recipes here. To start off with I'll define what the different styles of Mead are so we're all on the same note.

Note: This is from stormthecastle.com

Melomel: Mead made with fruit added

Braggot (or Bracket) Mead made with malted grain (usually barley)

Hydromel: This is the term for a weak or watered down mead

Pyment: This is mead made with grape or grape juice added. This is also the term for a grape wine that has honey added to it.

Cyser - A mead made with apples or apple juice

Metheglin: A mead made with added spices - often considered to have medicinal traits. Some common spices are cinnamon, nutmeg or cloves

Rhodomel : An ancient Roman term for a mead made with rose petals

Sack Mead: A mead with a very high honey content. It has a high density and is often sweeter than typical meads. This can be thought of as a dessert wine of meads.

Show Mead: This is a term that has come to define a plain mead with no spices or fruits added.

Short Mead : (Also referred to as a quick mead) this is a mead that is made in a fashion so it matures quickly. Short meads are often very similar to ales.

Great Mead: Kind of like the opposite of a Short Mead. This mead is designed to be bottled and aged for several years.

Sparkling Mead: A carbonated mead much like a sparkling wine. This is usually achieved by adding a small amount of honey or sugar just before bottling. This causes a small secondary ferment while in the bottle that will elevate the pressure and sweetness.

Morat: A Melomel made from Mulberries

Hippocras: A pyment to which spices have been added

Omphacomel: mead made with verjuice which is the juice of unripened grapes. This is often considered to be a type of pyment.

Oxymel - Made with wine vinegar

Acerglyn - Mead made with maple syrup

Bochet - refers to a mead that was made with the honey caramelized or burned before it is added to the water. Creates several different flavors including toffee, chocolate or marshamallow.

Capsicumel - Flavored with chili pepper

Black Mead - Made with Black Currants

Mulled Mead - This refers to a mead that is heated before drinking. Typically it has spices for flavoring.

As much as I can I'll update this as an index of all the recipes.

Index

RocketMan's Mead - Melomel with orange and raisins

Paladin - Show mead with Buckwheat and Wild Flower Honey
 
I was just talking to GIP in chat a night or two ago about my interest in learning how make Mead. Your timing is impeccable, just awesome!
 
hogleg said:
I was just talking to GIP in chat a night or two ago about my interest in learning how make Mead. Your timing is impeccable, just awesome!
 
 
Go for it.  I tried it for the first time and was pretty easy.  I know it can get harder and complicated as you introduce different ingredients and methods.  I pretty much followed the recipe in Rocketman's brew thread. 
 
I've never had mead ...

I've resisted making any because the process was so much simpler than beer, that I knew I needed to get into beer 1st, or risk not doing it all (lazy) ...
 
RocketMan's Mead - Melomel
2 Gallons
Note: all honey should be unfiltered, unprocessed and unpasteurized well, unless you just cant get it any other way. 
 
- 3 Pounds Clover or Orange Blossom Honey
- 3 Pounds Wild Flower Honey
- 1 Small to Medium Orange
- 25 Raisins
- 1 Teaspoon Yeast Nutrient
- Yeast (for a dry Mead use Champagne, for a Medium Sweet Mead use Cote's De Blanc)
 
Additionaly you could add a Cinnamon Stick and a whole clove to amp it up a bit.
 
1. Hydrate your yeast in warm water.
 
2. Put all of the honey into a warm water bath to get it to loosen up some before pouring it into a carboy or Ale pale. Once the bottles are warm pour it in and fill the bottle half way with warm water. Shake it to mix up the rest of the honey and add it. Do this for the rest of your bottles.
 
3. Top up your container with warm water to 2.5 Gallons. Using a long handled spoon stir till all honey is mixed up.
 
4. Rinse off your orange and slice it into pieces and add it along with the 25 Raisins.
 
5. Pitch the yeast and close up your fermenter. Install an airlock and let the yeast get busy.
 
Primary - @ 2 months
Secondary - @ 2 to 4 months
Cold crash and bottle
 
Targets:
OG: 1.110
FG: 1.005
ABV: 13.78
 
Can mead be bottled into clear bottles?  I have seen some that were, or is it best to use darker bottles like beer?
 
I've currently got a 6 gallon honey only mead fermenting ATM. I would call it a show mead, but I used yeast nutrients and energizer to get a vicious primary fermentation going, plus I'm going to oak it pretty strong.

I also have 7 gallons of apple pie cyser fermenting in a bucket. The recipe I used is the standard one that is around the interwebs.

I also started 2 gallons of a metheglin/cyser last Friday, which I went heavy on the nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves.

I'm thinking of making a melomel with cashew apples once my cysers are ready to bottle. If I make that, I will post up a recipe.

The only yeast pitched with all of these was Lalvin 71B-1122.

Mead FTW!
 

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WOW! Your the Mead makin GreenChiliMonster there brother! Very nice and some great foam on the 2 in that center shot.
 
I'll be starting a Show Mead soon. Just got in 3 pounds of Buckwheat Honey from Pex to use in it to which I'm going to add some Orange Blossom Honey and will be using Champagne yeast which I'll hydrate and do a bit of a starter probably with some OB Honey and yeast nutrients. I'm looking for a dryer Mead from this one, it's for my mom and my brother wants some to give to a few clients and good friends. Thinking 2 months in Primary then another 2 to 6 months in secondary. 
 
Also thinking about taking a little bit to add a Vanilla Bean to for just a hint of flavoring and scent.
 
How does that Lavin 71B-1122 come out? Does it make for a dryer or sweeter Mead?
 
Cheers brothers!
 
I haven't noticed the Lalvin 71B-1122 fermenting particularly dry or sweet, but it has always worked to get me to my target FG depending on the type of mead I was making. I've never made a sack mead with it though, just semi sweets, cysers, and melomels.

I would recommend doing staggered nutrient additions and lots of aeration through the 1/3 sugar break, if you don't already do it. It cuts fermentation time in half, and doesn't affect the flavor that I've noticed.

The only downside is insanely aggressive foaming for the first 4-5 days.
 
How's your mead coming along Rocketman? I bet the champagne yeast is making quick work of that honey.

I'm about to rack my sack meads again. They stopped fermenting. The Wyeast 4632 pooped out completely at 19% ABV. The good thing is that it flocced out in only a week or so after fementation ended. Tastes great! The alchohol is still a little bit hot, but it's got some good sweetness from the 30lbs I used per batch.
 

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Actually it's been slow going and I've started questioning some things with it.Well, for one thing with the weather it's been cold in the room. So the temp could have been slowing the yeast down. I cranked up a space heater in there though so it's better now. I'll give it couple more days to kick off before I do anything else.
 
The questions I've been mulling over are:
 
1. Did I add enough yeast nutrients to the mix. I put in 3 table spoons for 5 gallons plus more into the starter I made to hydrate the yeast with.
 
2. Should I have used 2 packets of yeast.
 
If I'm not seeing any more action in a couple of days I'm going to make a new starter and repitch yeast, 2 packets this time and add more yeast nutrients to it.
 
3 table spoons seems like a lot of yeast nutrient to add. I usually use one half tea spoon per gallon in a 6 gallon batch, staggered over a couple of days. I doubt that would cause a slower fermentation though. Did you use yeast energizer?

Did you aerate the must vigorously before pitching the yeast?

How cold has has it been in the room? The temperature range for that yeast is 50-95%, so it shouldn't be affected too bad by the cold.

Are you seeing drops in your OG, and activity in the air lock?

1 packet of yeast has always worked for me for 5-6.5 gallon batches. I haven't used Red Star Pasteur Blanc though, but I would assume it would ferment similarly to other champagne yeasts like EC-1118.
 
So This batch really doesn't seem to be doing anything. I'm going to check the specific gravity when I get back to see if it's dropped any. If not I'm pretty sure the problem is I didn't aerate it enough. So, I'll aerate the heck out of it while running 2 packets of Champagne yeast in a starter of honey with a touch of yeast nutrients added. Then we'll see what happens.
 
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