Thing Forty-Five: Mead
Mar. 23rd, 2014 05:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
badseed1980Rome wasn't built in a day, and mead wasn't made in a day. That said, today, I started a new batch of mead. It's two batches, really, with two different honeys. I bought a three-pound jar of mesquite honey from Trader Joe's a while back, with the idea of making a gallon of mead with it. It sat there for some time. This past summer, at the Maryland Renaissance Festival, I went to see the Bee Folks (honey and wax vendors), and bought a SIX-pound jar of Brazilian pepper honey, intending to make a two-gallon batch of mead with that. Of course, what with being in the middle of planning a wedding at that time, I didn't get around to it for a while. I kept intending to do so, but it didn't actually happen until today.
I had decided early on that I wanted these honeys to be used in simple, straight-up varietal meads: meads that showcase the flavor of a particular type of honey, and don't have any juices or spices or herbs added. The ingredients for a plain mead are simple: honey, water, yeast, and yeast nutrient are the most important things. You can (and probably should) add some kind of acid as well, and some people like adding a little tannin. Both of these help to balance the flavor.
Now, when you make mead, it's smart to pasteurize your must--the honey-and-water mixture--before adding yeast. While bacteria and fungi won't grow in plain honey, diluting it in water makes for an environment where any beasties that are in there can grow and multiply, which can ruin or at least damage the flavor of your mead. I decided this time around, I would use Campden tablets (sulfites) to clean my must up. So, with each of the honeys, I added them to water, heated the must up just enough to dissolve all the honey, and poured them into gallon jugs. I used filtered water to top the jugs up. I crushed up three Campden tablets, putting one into each jug. Now, I need to let them sit for 24 hours, uncovered, to let the gases produced by the tablets escape.
When I get home from work tomorrow, I will "smack the pack." That means I'll take the Wyeast Sweet Mead yeast packet out of the fridge, give it a whack to break the inner packet, shake it up, and let it sit for a few hours until it's swollen up with carbon dioxide given off by the awakened yeast. I'll add some to each jug, and put a fermentation lock on each one. Then, it will bubble away for quite a while until it's time to rack it: siphon it off into new jugs, making sure that none of the sediment that's fallen to the bottom gets siphoned into the new jugs. It will need to ferment for a long time. Then, when I feel it's done, I'll taste it and see how much acid (I will use a packaged malic/tartaric blend) and tannin I want to add to each one. Then, I'll bottle. Once it's bottled, there will still be a long wait, as mead requires long aging, like wine does. Then it will be time to taste and enjoy!
I decided on a sweet mead yeast this time around because while I enjoy a dry mead, I worry that without having any extra honey of the type I used, I wouldn't be able to add more if a dry mead yeast or champagne yeast gobbled up all the available sugars and left me with something as dry as paint thinner. Also, it seems like within my group of friends, sweeter meads are more widely appreciated (though my husband is an exception). So, we'll see how this turns out. I'm excited to find out!
I had decided early on that I wanted these honeys to be used in simple, straight-up varietal meads: meads that showcase the flavor of a particular type of honey, and don't have any juices or spices or herbs added. The ingredients for a plain mead are simple: honey, water, yeast, and yeast nutrient are the most important things. You can (and probably should) add some kind of acid as well, and some people like adding a little tannin. Both of these help to balance the flavor.
Now, when you make mead, it's smart to pasteurize your must--the honey-and-water mixture--before adding yeast. While bacteria and fungi won't grow in plain honey, diluting it in water makes for an environment where any beasties that are in there can grow and multiply, which can ruin or at least damage the flavor of your mead. I decided this time around, I would use Campden tablets (sulfites) to clean my must up. So, with each of the honeys, I added them to water, heated the must up just enough to dissolve all the honey, and poured them into gallon jugs. I used filtered water to top the jugs up. I crushed up three Campden tablets, putting one into each jug. Now, I need to let them sit for 24 hours, uncovered, to let the gases produced by the tablets escape.
When I get home from work tomorrow, I will "smack the pack." That means I'll take the Wyeast Sweet Mead yeast packet out of the fridge, give it a whack to break the inner packet, shake it up, and let it sit for a few hours until it's swollen up with carbon dioxide given off by the awakened yeast. I'll add some to each jug, and put a fermentation lock on each one. Then, it will bubble away for quite a while until it's time to rack it: siphon it off into new jugs, making sure that none of the sediment that's fallen to the bottom gets siphoned into the new jugs. It will need to ferment for a long time. Then, when I feel it's done, I'll taste it and see how much acid (I will use a packaged malic/tartaric blend) and tannin I want to add to each one. Then, I'll bottle. Once it's bottled, there will still be a long wait, as mead requires long aging, like wine does. Then it will be time to taste and enjoy!
I decided on a sweet mead yeast this time around because while I enjoy a dry mead, I worry that without having any extra honey of the type I used, I wouldn't be able to add more if a dry mead yeast or champagne yeast gobbled up all the available sugars and left me with something as dry as paint thinner. Also, it seems like within my group of friends, sweeter meads are more widely appreciated (though my husband is an exception). So, we'll see how this turns out. I'm excited to find out!
