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Mead Attempt Number One...suggestions?
Crystalized honey is excellent for super dry high ABV meads.
brewskinewbski wrote:
Crystalized honey is excellent for super dry high ABV meads.
I don't care as much for those... personal preference I guess. I like them fairly sweet with a soft mouthfeel and a strong floral overtone.... mountain meadows meadery's honeymoon nectar being my number one preference and the reason I got into brewing in the first place!
I have since brewed mead with plain just champagne yeast and have had good results. I have a 3g batch going right now with a Safe-Ale yeast in an attempt to create a "sweeter" dry mead. I have yet to try the OJ starter thang. Maybe I need to for my meads.
It's always worked great for me... if you want the "recipe" let me know and I'll send you the one I have.
When ageing your mead, did you pasteurize it prior to bottling? I am reading different opinions and some people allow for their mead to age after killing off the yeasts with campden tablets (after a desired FG is achieved). I want to find out whether this is required. Do the yeasts in a mead (or any other homebrew) start to die off (reach a lag phase) and hence not further ferment your mead into something undrinkable (without the need to use campden tablets)?
Regards.
Gavin
PS I'm going to give your recipe a shot as soon as some of the ingredients come in through the post. Can't wait, have not tried mead before, I'm sure it will be a good experience nevertheless.
I've never killed off my yeast with campden tabs in mead prior to bottling I usually let it sit in secondary for about 5 months though, so it pretty much dies (lags) off all on its own. (same for my summer wines) That process adds sulfites to the batch and some people are sensitive to them... me personally, I just dont like adding anything unnecessary to my stuff. (BTW I got a fabulous strawberry summer wine this year.)
I cracked a nip bottle of that Tawari mead I made this weekend (I always bottle a few nips of most my batches as taste progression samples). I am kind of disappointed; Tawari honey has a faint butterscotchy flavor that I was trying to capture in a mead, but I don't detect it in the mead and overall I think the mead was little insipid... Then again, its only about 8 months old. I guess time will tell.
I was hoping for that answer, cheers Jen.
By the by, a butterscotch tasting brew sounds great, sad to hear that you could not capture that in your mead. I'm living in a part of the world which has a high orange harvest and hence will be attempting to make my first ever batch of mead with orange blossom honey.
Many thanks
Gavin
Orange blossom mead is really very good. You should have wonderful success with it.
BTW if you like Melomels you might consider doing a 5 gallon batch of mead and then when fruit comes into season, racking off of secondary onto fruit in smaller batch jugs (I use old cheap 1 gallon wine jugs for this). Let it sit for a few months and you'll be astounded at how much more noticable and true the fruit character is using this process as opposed to having the fruit in the batch during the entire process.... colors are prettier too!
Yum yum, recommendations noted and will take on boarad...
Thanks a million.
Gavin
Hello
I am currently making my third batch of mead.
So far, I have had good success with the following
12Kg of pure Hungarian Acacia honey (I love the taste of this honey) with water, making up 28 Litres of must
Gravity at start about 1.12
Add a little nutrient, I use a mix of "normal" yeast nutrient, vitamen B1 and Marmite spread.
Used a champaigne yeast (I am now experiemting with Garvin No 3 yeast).
Then once gravity drops to about 1.04, I add more honey, taking gravity up to about 1.06 ish and allow primary ferment to continue
Takes about 6 weeks to primary, and then leave 3 months for secondary
Then use cold (leave outside on frosty nights) to shock any remaining yeast, before bottle
This makes s nice dry mead at about 17% ethanol by volume
The acacia has a subtle but very distinctive flavour. (a little like vanilla)
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