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thinking about doing a mead
I've never done one before, dont even know if i should, what does mead taste like? where should i start? what style of mead is more favorable to the mead newbie?
I recently started thinking about making a mead and had many of the same questions. So I went to the local wine and beer store and bought one of each of the bottles of mead they had. There were 4 different bottles that I bought. First I'll tell you, it took me a long time to find a store that sold mead and I just kinda stumbled on to it in the dessert wine section. There is a lot to learn about when talking mead and you kinda need to taste it to really understand....and I am no expect by far.
But, you have dry mead that is a lot like a white wine. you have semi-sweet mead that is kinda dry but also has a honey taste to it, and you have sweet mead which is very heavy and wet and very sweet. These all come in still (uncarbonated) or carbonated. All meads I've seen are still meads.
Recipes can range from simple (honey, water, yeast, yeast supplement) to complicated (includes a lot of different herbs, spices, and varieties of honey). Most meads take some time to age out (3 to 6 months).
I found a lot of good info on www.gotmead.com you might want to check it out. I'd also recommend going down to the local Barnes and Noble (or other local book store) and spending an afternoon reading books on mead.
The best place to start is the research and get an idea for what you might like and not like, part of the research is to find out if you have any local bee keeps, its usually cheaper to buy honey from them then the store.
i did find some for sale at the state liquor store web site, i'm going down tomorrow and pick up a few bottles
can i keg mead? or should i plan on bottling it?
I've never had a carbonated mead so I can't tell you what it would taste like, although I imagine that it would be very much like a sparkling white wine. I plan to ferment mine and let it age out in the secondary fermenter then bottle without adding additional sugar, creating a bottled, still mead.
bought 2 bottles today, plan on trying it tonight
Great. Make sure to let me know the type of mead and what you think of them.
Papazian has a section on mead & a few recipes. Some meads require long aging. I made a couple dry sparkling ones, pretty good. But you have to be patient.
Sam's Club had 5# of honey for under $9. So you could try it without a serious investment.
K, heres my input on the two bottles of mead i tried, the first one was a local on from NH, Piscassic Pond Halfsaett traditional mead, smelt like urine and was way too sweet, they claim it was mid range, i was able to swallow it but dont plan to ever visit it again. the second one was from California, Chaucers, rated a 92 out of 100 from wine enthusiast, much better more like a wine but much sweeter, so at this point im not convinced that i should take on this endeavor, so with this experience im not afraid to try another, maybe something more dry if i can find it.
for my tastes, dry mead is the way to go. it is still sweet and tastes like honey but is not overwhelmingly sweet and cloying.
all mead is ready to drink as soon as it clears (technically). but ,as with some beer styles, mead taste developes exponentially with age. in my experience, 6 months is a minimum but the longer the better.
brewluva, i would say try a simple, uncomplicated traditional mead recipe without spices and adjuncts just to see if mead is your thing. use a good yeast that will finish dry and than be patient. all you need is honey, water, yeast, and some yeast nutrient and acid blend. the yeast nutirent serves to keep the yeast healthy, as the sugar in honey is singular and the yeast can poop out early if they do not have a balanced diet. the acid blend helps balance the sweetness of the honey and give it a more... well, balanced flavor profile. not cloying.
when i was looking to taste meads, i found that 99% of what is sold commerically is way too sweet for my palate. even those marketed as "dry" were still too sweet for me. so don't be discouraged about mead yet. see if you can't get a tasting of some homebrewed meads at a competition or local get together.
as for kegging, i dont see why you couldn't age/condition it in the keg, although i prefer still mead to the carbonated variety. i personally think the carbonated variety came on the scene later in the game to get fru-frus to drink, like wine coolers. just my humble, unbiased, totally objective opinion.
jen has a lot of experience with mead, maybe you should send her a PM to ask her some questions.
I've run into something of the same situation. I thought I would like mead but once I started tasting it I realized that most of what was out there wasn't to my liking. I've found that the dry mead that has left just a hint of honey is pretty good though. A lot of commercial brands are fermented out and then have honey added back in to resweeten it. I think that most of those are too sweet, thick, and cloying.
I would do (and am going to do) as krausenator suggests as well as working with small batches of 1 or 2 gallons at a time. But to mead isn't for everyone and its defiantly something that I wouldn't drink often.
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