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First mead- hope it works!
Just put the airlock on my first mead. I keep my own bees but just got comfortable enough to try this on my own. Here is a little recipe:
15 lbs homegrown honey straight from the comb (sitting in a sealed bucket since july)
6 gallons of water
1 teaspoon gypsum
1 1/2 teaspoon acid blend
1/2 oz yeast nutrient (with hulls)
1 teaspoon irish moss
Brought mixture up to 200 deg. and skimmed the surface. Cooled like beer to 80 then pitched white labs sweet mead yeast (been in a 750 ml honey starter since wed. night with alot of action) into a carboy. OG was 1.090
I want this to be pretty sweet since it is my first, I love the flavor of the honey, and I want alot of people to enjoy it. What do you guys think? sound ok?
This looks like a pretty solid recipe. I'm sure it will give you a sweet, full flavored mead.
If you have a way to pasturize your honey first it would be advisable. But heck, they didn't back in the ancient times and they kept making, drinking and loving it.
Brew is still bubbling like crazy. After 10 hrs of pitching, there was so much fermentation I had it sitting in a tub with a jug and blow off hose for airlock, I was afraid it was going to go over!! The foam has dropped back down but the airlock is still rattling like crazy. It is a very milky yellow color and I found out from my dad today this batch is goldenrod honey. Anyone had any experiences with this mead? I am keeping it at a constant 72 degrees and it seems to be doing well. How would you pasturize the honey? Ill keep you guys updated!
The milky yellow is fine, it will clear when the fine particles settle out. As far as heating the honey, all of the mead I have made is with the no heat method and I have not had any problems. Our club did a large batch of mead with Goldenrod honey, it is still aging but the flavor is very nice.
It has been 7 days now and the airlock is still going to town although it has slowed down in the last few days. I have read about repitching yeasts later on in the fermentation and also adding yeast nutrients as well, anyone had any experience with these? Again I want this to be a fairly sweet mead so I don't need to worry about fermenting out all of the sugars
when I rack to secondary - usually 3 or 4 weeks into my fermentation - I add about 1 gallon of honey/water mix in the same ratio (usually 3 pounds of honey to 1 gallon water) to the secondary along with some nutrient and champagne yeast. I then let that sit for at least 4 more weeks and if it isn't starting to clear i then go to a third fermenter for a week or two.
If you are using a sweet mead yeast and want it to be sweet , I would not add anymore yeast to it. I let the primary go for 30 days and take a gravity reading. It will drop 100 points in that time. Then rack to secondary and let it sit for several months, the mead will go through some taste changes during that time, just wait.
It has been 8 days now and just took a spg reading. It was 1.011 so by my calculations (1.090-1.011=.079 x 130) I have 10.27% abv and the airlock is still bubbling every other second or two. I tasted it, has a little alcohol flavor, kind of a yeasty musty flavor but all is looking uphill! Thanks for the helps and comments
Best advice with mead is to forget it's there. Only touch it every 4 weeks to shoot a gravity or rack.
also just did my first mead. its been it the primary for two weeks now. starting OG was 1.14, pitched a started that was honey and water, about one quart.
1.5 gal cranberry pomagrante juice
7 #s honey
1 gal water
yeast starter (as mentioned earlier)
after one week i added another starter yeast that was the same as the formentioned. looking for a strong mead, not a sweet one. i will rack it to a secondary in two more weeks. good luck on yours also.
Good luck on your mead too culinary! Sounds good with the juice in there. I will take and post some pictures of my primary today and maybe keep this thread going kind of a blog to help other people in the future who wish to make a simple sweet mead.
cant wait to see the pictures.
how do you plan on bottling your mead, basementbrewer. i have been collecting wine bottles from work, and i know a friend with access to a corker. i will probably put all the mead i have into wine bottles some carded and some still.
I am planning a few things for my mead. After it sits in the primary for 30 days I want to take and put it into different vessels for secondary. One 3 gallon of just straight sweet mead, and then 3 seperate one gallon containers with different ingredients. I am thinking of vanilla cinnamon, pomegranete, and something else with some fresh berries from the area. I have two cherry trees in my backyard that I hope will bear some this year so maybe a little of them will be included.
Once these are done I plan on bottling some still and some sparkling. I will probably do a mixture of regular 12 oz beer bottles, 22 oz beer bottles, wine bottles, and possibly some champagne bottles for the sparkling. As far as corking goes, you can get a hand corker for around $7 and it works well without having the hassle of borrowing one. good luck
sounds like a great idea to split up the batch. are you planning on using fresh pomegranete or juice? also, how long are you planing on the mead being in the secondary for? i was thinking, for mine, three weeks in primary and then four weeks in secondary. then letting them bottle condition for about two weeks before i open one. is this too long at any stage or not long enough. i've heard of mead being aged for a short while(four weeks total) to as long as one year. i suppose it's all up to the brewer and the desired results though.
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