Pages: 1
Looking for a Quick and Dirty Mead Recipe
A family friend who is a bee keeper has given me a 2 gallon bucket of dark honey (I'm assuming it's wild flower honey) with the suggestion I might want to try to brew a batch of mead. I weighed it on my bathroom scale -- 17.4 pounds, so I'm guessing it's about 15-16 pounds of honey. I don't really want to spend a lot of time or money on this, so if anyone has an easy receipe I can try that would use up all -- or at least most of the honey -- that would be great. I have read elsewhere that at a very basic level you can just mix the honey with water, pitch yeast, and then wait to see what happens. I am willing to put forth a little more effort than that. I have a six gallon plastic fermeting bucket and a six gallon carboy I can use, and a local home brew store is nearby.
Thanks in advance for any input.
Actually, it really is as easy as adding water and honey and pitching.....
Personally, I like to use a 3:1 ratio in my mead making (3 pounds of honey per gallon of mead). In that case you could use 15 pounds to make a 5 gallon batch. That should give you an abv around 14.5-15%
If you wanted to make a straight up, standard mead all you would need is some yeast (I use Lalvin 1118 champagne yeast), some nutrient and some energizer. All together you're looking at about a $5 investment.
If you're looking for something more complex I would look here: http://www.gotmead.com/index.php?option … Itemid=459
Also, check out Ancient Orange Cinnamon & Clove Mead recipe. This recipe makes great mead. I still have a few bottles from when I made this recipe 2 years ago and they only get better with time. Cheers
I did the Ancient recipe, the lady loves it. Although I used Lavin 47 yeast. I think it was $1.80 at the LHBS, recently. Easy on the cloves, like 2 or 3 for the whole batch.
The thing about mead is, if you shoot for just the honey, you're completely dependent on it for all your taste. Mediocre honey, ditto flavor. Adding a little something will give you some complexity. See if you can check out a book from the library.
Maybe The Compleat Meadmaker by Ken Schramm. No, I didn't mispell it.
I am definitely gonna try the Ancient Orange Mead in a couple of weeks, once I rack off my peach raspberry mead. I only have 2 carboys and 1 bucket. It sounds so yummy and I think if I get going now by fall it shoud be ready to enjoy.
The Ancient Orange is really nice. We still have a few six packs of 12oz bottle left. It only comes out for special occasions. It seems to be better every time, either that, or it's just damn good & we don't drink it very often.
Use a lot of patience on this one.
Brewski saidL: use a lot of patience with this one.
Meaning it is so good we will want to drink it all at once? 
Brewski wrote:
I did the Ancient recipe, the lady loves it. Although I used Lavin 47 yeast. I think it was $1.80 at the LHBS, recently. Easy on the cloves, like 2 or 3 for the whole batch.
The thing about mead is, if you shoot for just the honey, you're completely dependent on it for all your taste. Mediocre honey, ditto flavor. Adding a little something will give you some complexity. See if you can check out a book from the library.
Maybe The Compleat Meadmaker by Ken Schramm. No, I didn't mispell it.
If others are interested in this book I just bought the book on ebay for 10.69 plus shipping. total was 14.68 they had 6 available and it was "buy it now" so no waiting for auction to end.
DC
Bottled my Ancient Orange a few months back. Added a 1/4 cup of honey before bottling with champayne corks and baskets. I couldn't be happier with the finished product. It dances on the tongue and the taste is full of flavor with a nice mellow honey taste that lingers on the taste buds. After popping that first cork and seeing those tiny bubbles rising to the top, I just had to do my happy dance. I have shared it with several friends, one who is a maiser also and they have all loved it. I will definitely make this one again and again.
Right on! Glad everything worked out for you. I have 3.5 gal of this mead finishing up from back in March. I split the batch into 3 containers. One contains 1.5# fresh raspberries, one with 2 cans of sour cherries, and the other is just the mead. I'll probably bottle after another month or two. This is a great recipe and fun to experiment with. Cheers!
Great,
We had a few bottles of this, brewed March this year, at Thanksgiving. Wow!!!
Gotta learn to hide that stuff, and rediscover it much later.
The spices seem to infuse with the honey, & it gets hard to tell what is what.
After a couple glasses, it gets even harder. Funny That.
Did you leave out the oranges and spice or put the cherries and raspberries right on top?
This time around I left out the raisins during primary fermentation, but did ferment with the oranges and spices. After primary fermentation was complete I just racked the cleared mead right on top of the raspberries and cherries that were already in 1 gal containers. The gravity at the time of racking was 1.002 and the mead tasted great. I put an airlock on the containers and they are happily mingling in my basement hovering between 55-60F.
I made this about 6 months ago. I am wanting it for Christmas. Should I go ahead and bottle it now or wait? Do I just bottle it the way it is or am I suppose to add priming sugar? This is my first mead attempt so I wasn't for sure.
Since this is your first mead, it wouldn't try to carbonated it. IMHO I would get a feel for making a basic mead before branching out. But you can do it either way, it tastes great both ways. If you do decide to go with priming it or back sweetening it, watch the carbonation, it can really build on you. I put my bottles in the fridge after about a month because I felt the carbonation was getting to high.
Hope you enjoy it as much as I do!
Pages: 1
Search Home Brewing Knowledge Base
Custom Search
|