Mead Attempt Number One...suggestions?
I am going to start my first mead shortly, here is my potential recipe for a 3-gallon batch:
10-lbs wildflower honey
2 1/4 tsp gypsum
2 1/4 tsp acid blend
1/2 oz yeast nutrients
either cote de blancs (10 g) or WYeast Dry Mead Yeast
i wanted to include the acid blend to balance some of the flavors, because i am hoping for a higher octane mead but i do not want that alocohol "hotness". i would like a relatively dry mead with a bit of sweetness for flavor, but not overwhelmingly sweet like nearly every commercial mead i have tasted. due to the high ratio of honey to water, i intend to overload it with the yeast nutrients to insure that fermentation does not stall or quit early.
as to the yeat...i am torn. i have heard that the champagne yeasts finish really high octane but drive off nearly all the honey flavor and sweetness leaving you with some high gravity "hotness". however, i don't want to use the dry mead yeast and have it finish in the beer range and leave my mead overpoweringly sweet.
any suggestions/discussion on the use of yeast nutrients and their potential affect on flavor would be much appreciated. same with the choice of yeasts, as i still have the opportunity to change my mind. i have seen yeast energizer mentioned, what is this? same as yeast nutrients or ghost hulls?
as well as any input on the general recipe. i would like my first mead to be a traditional still mead, no fruits or spice flavoring this round.
thanks all.
I don't know if I should even reply seeins as my first mead is still in the works. But I used the Wyeast sweet mead smack pack. So far the sample I have taken for gravities have tasted better and better. Lightly sweet, smooth and a nice warmth (as in it warms from the tummy up not burns like hell from the mouth down). But that was only with 5#'s of honey w/ 15.5oz of maple syrup and racked onto another 15.5oz of maple. I do have a second batch going with a lot more honey in it this time and I used champagne yeast. I'll let you know how it works out.
so i have racked my first mead to the secondary. my O.G. was 1.091 (22 Balling) and at racking i had a gravity of 1.020 (5 Balling). should i expect much more change in gravity, or is this the best i am going to get?
i modified my above recipe, using:
2 tsp gypsum
2 1/4 tsp acid blend
3/4 oz yeast nutrient
1/2 tsp yeast energizer
WYeast Dry Mead Yeast 4632
i tasted what i had in the hydrometer, it actually tastes fairly good. still a little sweet but i am hoping this will mellow with time. i pitched on May 14 and just transferred to the secondary today (June 06), so i still have a deal of clarification time and then ageing in bottles.
my intention was for a 12% ABV dry mead. is there still hope?
i bottled the mead today, F.G. of 1.018, so it is has finished at approximately 9.5% ABV. a little lower than i had desired, but it tastes pretty damn good.
i am drinking what i had in the hydrometer tube and it is really smooth. i let the mead bulk age in the a carboy for just over 6 weeks. i have high hopes for this. if it tastes this good three months after birth, so to speak, i am excited to taste it around the holidays.
sweet up front (but not too sweet), smooth finish, and a nice warm feeling in the stomach.
next time i do this recipe, i will up the honey to 15-lbs (5-lbs honey per gallon water). suffice to say, i will be doing this again.
i think this recipe is a simple to make, uncomplicated, pure honey mead. i am actually feeling pretty proud of myself for concocting this recipe and finding out it actually tastes good. i had no little apprehension going in to this.
definitely would reccommend it to someone as a first mead recipe.
this mead turned out awesome. i gave a few bottles to a couple fo friends that are mead drinkers and they liked it a great deal.
i have 3 liters left, and i am going to let this age for a good bit of time. i will be brewing this again shortly to get the ageing process going so i can be drinking it again as soon as possible.
only change i am going to make is up the honey pounds per gallon to 5, and make 5 gallons of it rather than three, now that i know it tastes good and is not a waste of all that dear cash.
You could also try pitching more yeast a month into the secondary. I have a batch going now that I initially pitched with Wyeast Dry Mead yeast and it petered out at 10%ABV. So I made a yeast starter with 1/4# of the same honey I used for the mead, added nutrients and made a champagne yeast culture. I pitched it in 8 weeks into the secondary. It took a week but the airlock started chugging again. I am hoping to get it to finish out at around 17%ABV. But when this is done I'll take whatever I get from it.
Did you prime it when you bottled it???? If you didn't you need to try a batch of sparkling(carbonated) mead. It's a whole other animal than still mead.
i didn't prime, i wanted the first attempt to be more towards the purist route, so i went still.
but i am going to be doing this up again in the near future, to get the ageing process going so this fall when i get the itch for mead i will have some ready. i intend to use my same recipe, with the modificatiosn as mentioned above and do half still, half sparkling.
i will give that re-pitch a try to see if i can get it to boost up.
mind if i ask why you used a different yeast the second time? just because the WYeast quit at 10% and the champagne will go further? or did you have a flavor profile you were going for? i ask because i know how much you love your honey and thought maybe i could pick your brain for a bit of your knowldege from experience.
I think I am a little late on this one, but this is a good example of using OJ in a starter rather than the acid blend.....
You might also consider trying a straight varietal honey (clover, basswood, orange blossom) over wild flower next time. I was astounded by the difference and I later learned that wild flower honey isn't regulated as far as what kinds of flowers or what percentage gets used so it's hard to get consistent results... I guess that some wildflower honeys are ragweed and dandelion and other more bitter plants... just a thought.
I finished with the champagne yeast because the sweet was way to sweet. The dryer the mead the better IMO.
Wildflower is a lable given where the nectar cannot be speculated to have come from at least 70% of one type of flower.
if i read you right, the sweet mead yeast finished up and the mead was still too sweet for you, so you pitched the champagne to eat down the residual sugars. correct?
would you have pitched a second yest if you had used that champagne yeast initially?
i had been using the wildflower because my LHBS had it in bulk for just under $4 a pound. last time i was there they had a raspberry honey, i believe. so i guess i will use whatever is on hand.
i did just meet a guy last weekend who lives out in colorado but comes to this area frequently to visit family, and he has him self some colonies and we talked. i think i am going to get myself a honey-for-mead exchange program going. i think its mixed source honey, but hey it will be free!