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My 1st Mead! :)
I am new to real brewing, but so far I love it! I tried the "Mr Beer Kit" a few years back and it was too cookie cutter for me. I wanted to "create my own" every time. I thought I would start my brewing hobby with a simple mead. I wanted it to be a base mead to get a feel for what a generic mead tastes like so I have something to compare future mead to.
My idea was to make a black tea and oak flavored mead. I now realize I should have added those ingredients in the secondary ferment, not in the primary because of the CO2. Will the flavors still shine though once it has aged properly?
This makes a 1 gallon batch.
3lbs of plain clover honey. It seemed as basic and cheap as it came.
purified water.
2 English Breakfast black tea bags.
A handful (I know, scientific) of wood chips.
1 packet of Pasteur Champagne yeast.
I tasted it when I racked it after exactly 30 days. It was STRONG! Tasted like very strong, dry white wine. I tasted no tea or wood flavors, nor any honey or sweetness. A few minutes after sampling, I did have a residual dry honey flavor in my mouth. There was a very light aroma of oak when I smelled it, once I got pasted the strong alcoholic aroma.
It is currently in its second fermentation process for 3 months before I will bottle it for 3 months.
it should be ready to drink for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years.
Est. Original Gravity = 1.108
Final Gravity = 1.001 (after 1st racking)
ABV = 14%
Final notes: I hope it gets sweeter and more woody tasting with time.
I just sampled this yesterday. It was very good! Still a little young, but it will be ready by thanksgiving and Christmas. Now I only wish I had more of it. The "hotness" went away almost completely and a mild oak flavor lingers in the aroma and aftertaste of a nicely semisweet mead. I recommend this to any beginning mead maker or veteran trying to make a basic mead with a manly twist (the oak). Using it in the primary accented the flavor perfectly! The only advice I suggest for anyone trying to recreate this is; MAKE A LOT, ITS GOOD!
MSMike - I have been wanting to do a mead, and have been looking for a good recipe to get started with. A couple questions -
Do you think the tea added anything to the flavor? How did you add the tea?
Were the oak chips toasted, or natural white oak?
I think I am going to do a three gallon batch. I can pick up three gallons of water in a PET bottle at Menards for six bucks, hard to find a fermenter cheaper than that.
I am pretty sure the tea added no flavor, but it did help balance the ph and the tannin level. It's like a multivitamin for yeast. You don't need to use it, but the yeast will love it. The way I did it, I put .33 gallons of room temp water into a pot, put two black tea bags in there, and slowly heated up the water till almost a boil. I then removed the tea bags, cooled the water down for a few minutes so the honey wouldn't burn and added the honey. I mixed in the honey on low or no heat, your choice, for 20 mins before cooling to pitching temps.
I used the lightest toasted chips I could find. Usually in the home brew store there is 3 levels. Light, medium and dark. Don't forget to soak the chips for about 30 minutes and boil for at least 10. Increase the heat slowly so you don't burn the wood.
I had no idea that Menards sold those. I was looking at a betterbottle 3 gallon last night and almost bought one for $28. Now I know I can just go to Menards and get one for $6. I am interested to see which size stopper will fit this.
Thanks for the reply, I'm going to see if I can get this going this week.
Just about to head to Eau Claire and run some errands. Going to stop at Menards and pick up a couple, if they still have them. That's the problem with Menards, about the time you find something you like they either switch suppliers or they don't carry it any more. I guess I will find out shortly.
I'm sure the water bottle isn't as tough as a Better Bottle, but then again I am not planning on kicking it around the basement. I'm not sure what stopper it will take either, but more than likely it will be a size I don't have. Our LHBS is closed on Monday, so it will be another trip for a stopper and yeast and then go see my old neighbor Gordon and see if I can work out a honey for mead swap.
A lot of mead recipes I have looked at use either a yeast nutrient or energizer or both. Does the tea kind of do the same thing?
I don't know if the tea gives the yeast any nutrition. I'd grab a pack of yeast nutrient at the lhbs, as honey has almost none of the nutrients yeast need, you have to give the yeast something other than sugar to eat.
I also don't know about fermenting a mead in a water jug. Meads take a while to finish, and the water jug may let oxygen in slowly. The better bottles are made to be impermeable by air. Here's another plastic carboy that is less expensive than the better bottle:
http://www.williamsbrewing.com/3-GALLON … 5C278.aspx
Hogarthe - When I first saw these water bottles I checked, and the bottles were labeled as PET. They were the first water bottles I had seen that were PET. I have heard of other people using them as fermenters, and at the price I figured it was worth a shot.
I love williams brewing so much.
The tea helps in a way as yeast nutrient, but I also used the real yeast nutrient. The tea helps more with PH balance and tannin balance.
I also used this schedule for aging... 1 month primary, 3 months secondary, 3 months in bottles. total of 7 months aging after pitching. Its a long time to wait, but I think its well worth it now. Just wish I made more then 1 gallon!
I didn't make it to Menards until yesterday. I picked up a water bottle to try it out as a fermenter. I guess they are four gallon bottles, $5.49. So now I have the fermenter and water to use for the mead.
Don't know where my head was, I should have bought two so I could start a batch of e_mott's cranberry cider too. I don't want to find myself in the same situation as some people who can't brew because their carboys are all occupied by ciders 
I have four 1 gallons so I can always do a mead or cider with a 3 gallon batch of beer. I will have 4 one gallons to do mead and ciders starting sometime early next year when I buy a PET 3 gallon and use that for my beers.
Just a fair warning to new brewers to mead when tasting this at the racking stages; It is not going to taste very good. The honey flavor wont shine through for a long time and the hotness wont go away for an even longer time. But eventually it will taste fantastic. I don't want anyone to worry that they did something wrong.
E_mott's cranberry cider?
I didn't know e_mott had a cranberry cider too! Cool! 
Oops, sewer_urchin's cranberry cider.
Must be the Alzheimer kicking in..........
I really wish I didn't use such a dry yeast for this. 
I don't know if its ready to drink or not because its so dry. I have opened two bottles sofar and got mixed reviews. I think its a combination of a very dry yeast and not being aged properly yet. But if it still tastes like it does now next year, it must just be the dryness of the yeast. The next time I will try it will be in early march for my birthday. I also find that I like it ice cold better then room temp.
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