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[chickiemama]

Oh man, now you've got me itching to make mead.

I had some when I went to Scotland about 10 yrs ago. I brought back a bottle and saved it for forever before finally drinking it.

That was the last time I ever had any. I can't seem to find it here in NC.

This might be something to try this spring. How long do you have to age it for?

 

[Neko-chan]

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[freemotion]

Much of what I've read on mead says it really improves with aging, like 3-5 years. I doubt any will last that long here, unless it is really rocket fuel. Sandor Katz' tej recipes are kinda like a very young mead, I think it is a month. But it is probably still in the sweet stage, not yet as high in alcohol. I haven't made it, but that would be my guess. Based on sips taken when racking.

 

[cuallaidh]

I am new to these boards, this is my first post.

I've been a mazer (mead maker) for a couple of years now, and I love the stuff. It is so versatile and every batch is so very different. I have a 5 gal batch of bone dry chocolate strawberry mead clarifying in my kitchen now, a gallon of garlic mead itching to be bottled, two bottles of my award winning oak aged chai mead still around (saving for a mead competition) two bottles of my cyser (apple mead), about 6 bottles of rum fortified banana mead, three bottles each of two different batches of plain buckwheat mead, and about three gallons of sack mead (very sweet high alcohol content mead) I am planning to cold distill.

If you've never tried mead go out and try to find a bottle of Moniak mead, its about the best sweet mead you can get on the market, otherwise most states have a local meadery, and if you are Canadian there are a few Canadian meaderies too. That being said commercial mead is rarely better than homebrew.

If you are looking to try to make mead I run an online mead community called The Mead Hall (mead.lilleypress.com) that has tons of recipes and tips on mead making. Hope you don't take this as spam.

As for the person who was wondering about pasteurized vs raw honey, I always use raw, any processing is bound to take out some of the complexity of the honey and the more complex the honey the more interesting a mead it will produce. As for the risk of bacterial infection on honey, honey is naturally resistant to bacterial infection the water content is too low for bacteria to survive, that's why honey that is even thousands of years old is still edible. The only advantage pasteurized honey has over raw is that pasteurized honey won't crystallize as quickly, but even this isn't really a benefit as even rock hard honey can be re-liquefied by simply submerging the container in a hot water bath. Really mead can be made with almost any honey, even the store bought highly processed national brands.

Yeast types vary and will depend on what end result you want. Want a dry or high alcohol content, use champagne yeast such as Lalvin 1118, it has high alcohol tolerance and ferments super fast. Want something a little sweeter with the alcohol content closer to a white wine, use Lalvin D47 yeast, it will ferment slower but won't have the off flavours champagne yeast can sometimes produce, it has a lower alcohol tolerance so will leave your final product sweeter. If you want a beer like mead (aka braggot) use ale yeast and put some hops in the must. Even standard bread yeast can be used with wonderful results.

Aging your mead varies alot as well, a sweeter mead can be drunk younger, sometimes immediately upon bottling. Dryer meads benifit more from aging. Meads generally age slower than wines as they are not as quick to oxidize, which is part of the aging process. Meads stand up better over time, and some meads will be fine aged 10 years or more. Generally speaking 6 months to a year is ideal, but its best to open a bottle every now and then and taste how the process is coming along. One method of doing this is to open a bottle at 3mo 6mo 9mo 1yr 2yr 3yr 4yr and 5yr tasting at all the different aging stages, try to take detailed notes so you know how long a specific recipe takes to age to perfection. Of course this process isn't really necessary, and to be honest I've never had a batch last much more than a year in my closet, I can't resist a good glass o' mead.

 

[freemotion]

I have a 5 gallon carboy and some honey reserved for a batch of chai mead, but haven't found a recipe and am reluctant to experiment as such a newbie. Care to share? I have all the spices waiting here, too!

 

[cuallaidh]

I have a 5 gallon carboy and some honey reserved for a batch of chai mead, but haven't found a recipe and am reluctant to experiment as such a newbie. Care to share? I have all the spices waiting here, too!

absolutely, its available on my website as well but here it is:

This mead won me the gold medal at the tenth annual Urich Von Den See Mead Tasting Competition held at the Trillium War and SCA event. The award came as a surprise, when I first tasted this batch (before aging) I was not overly impressed. But the aging with Oak enhanced the flavour considerably more than I expected.

The main issue I had with this mead is that I used Potassium Metabisulphate to stop the fermentation, this left a distinctly chemical flavour to the mead. The metabisulphate does age out, but it is not something I will be doing from now on. After this batch I vowed to allow my meads to ferment dry rather than add the off flavour of metabisulphate.


* 10 Chai tea bags
* water
* 22lbs of honey
* cubibs
* star anise
* cloves
* half a stick of cinnamon
* casia buds
* 1 pkg of Lavin EC-1118 champaign yeast
* a tsp of lemon juice for acid



Brew the 10 chai tea bags in a large pot with a couple gallons of water. Make the tea quite strong as you want the tanins to come out. Allow the tea to cool to room temperature and put it into your primary fermenter, mix all the other ingredients, I know the spice ingredients are not exact measurements, do this to taste, be careful of the cloves, only add a couple as they are a very strong flavour.

Allow it to ferment to a Specific Gravity of 1.07 which should give you an alcoholic content of about 10% and leave it still quite sweet. Add a small amount of potassium metabisulphate to the must and wait 20 minutes, if it is still crackling from fermentation add some more metabisulphate and repeat until it is completely stopped. Rack it to a new carboy add oak chips to the carboy and set aside for at least six months, no longer than a year. Within six months the metabisulphate flavour will have vanished and a slight vanilla flavour would have been extracted from the oak. Bottle and enjoy at your leasure.

Now if I was to make this again I would not use sulfites, I prefer to let the mead naturally stop fermenting now as I can't stand the sulfite flavour, if it dries out too much just backsweeten.

 

[cuallaidh]

Oh and never be afraid to experiment, the great thing about mead, is even a bad batch can be fixed.

too dry - backsweeten
off flavour - try aging
- cold distill
- use as a cooking mead
- turn into vinegar
too sweet - allow to ferment some more, if you are at the maximum for the yeast you are using try a more hearty yeast such as a champagne yeast

experimentation is the funnest part of mead making.

 

[freemotion]

OK, thanks, but I never follow a recipe exactly....I think the sky would fall if I did! I don't care for commercial chai tea and make my own from whole spices. So I have to ask a few questions....

What is cubibs?

What are casia buds?

This looks like a five gallon batch?

Since I make my chai with whole spices, I'm guessing I should also add some black tea to get the tannins?

Oak chips? I have TONS of oak here. Can I just use a hatchet and whack a few bits off a hunk of firewood? I like to be as self-sufficient as possible, but I realize there is not much ss with chai in New England as most of the spices are tropical!

 

[cuallaidh]

cubibs are a spice, as are casia buds, casia buds specifically are the unopened flowers of the cinnamon tree. Cubibs I can't really tell you much about.

I would probably add some black tee just to get the tannins, but you shouldn't need much as the star anise and cubibs will have some.

Yes it is a five gallon batch.

As for the oak, you can hatchet off some, depending on the type of oak you use, but it will have to be toasted to preference as well, raw oak won't have the proper effect as toasted. I use oak chips from a wine supply store, but I imagine if you toast your own chips to a medium dark it would work just as well. Usually oak is toasted by blasting super heated steam, but that's for barrels, not sure if the process is the same for chips. Its an interesting question, I'll have to do some research, might make a great article for my website .

 

[chickiemama]

Wow! Thank you so much cuallaidh! Now to convince my husband we can do this. And to buy all the supplies!

I'll definitely be checking out your website!