I was thinking this morning 'hmmm, I like mead', after this thought I realised I'd drunk all of the last batch and as such decided to make some more. Because of how easy mead is to make, and how tasty mead is once it's made I thought I'd show the folk here on Bit-Tech how it's done. The mead I made today is 'Joe Mattioli's Ancient Orange and Spice Mead' with a recipe I looted from winepress.us and as such can't take credit for it, but here goes anyway. You will need: - 3 1/2lb of honey (clover preferably) (runny honey, not set) - 1 large orange - 1 small handful of raisins - 1 stick of cinnamon - a clove or two - yeast (baking yeast will do the trick, I used champagne today) In terms of equipment you need a container (demijohn (1 gallon)) to ferment in and an airlock. First sterilize your demijohn, airlock and bung, once done rinse because you don't want your mead to taste of sterilizer. Dissolve your honey in water, and add to demijohn, cut your orange into eighths or so and put them in your demijohn (leave the peel on), add your cinnamon, raisins, cloves, and add water until you're ~3" from the top of your demijohn (it needs some room to form krausen), then sprinkle in your yeast. Put your airlock on and put the whole lot somewhere dark with a steady temperature (not too hot, not too cold either though), and forget about it for a couple of months. After this time the fermentation should slow down, and the mead should begin to clear, once this has finished and your mead is clear it's ready to bottle up and drink (though it only gets better with age). You don't need to bother racking with recipe, it will clear of its own accord. It will look something like the left image when you start, and something like the right image when you finish. I hope you like mead too.
It's OK on a cold night outside (say Bonfire night), especially mulled, but I wouldn't quaff great amounts of it. It's too sweet.
Bleeouuuurrgghhh. Nice guide, just reminded me how much I hate mead. It's one of those things (christmas pudding, mulled wine) and that I just can't stomach and even thinking too hard about it gives me a nauseous headache. I'm not thread bashing, it's a nice thread nicer than mead. yuk!
Ugh. Have to say that I hate mead - much more of a homemade wine or cider drinker. Mead is just far, far to sweet and sickly for me and I prefer a decent XO Brandy over almost any type of dessert wine. I went to a cider talk shortly before joining bit-tech and it was great to watch the guy show some pictures of his home built cider-apple press and talk about the apples, but he almost got booed off stage when he tried to go into a tangent about the process of making mead. Demijohns can be picked up quite widely - try charity shops and junk shops. You can also pick them up from specialist places, though ebay is a good starting point. Me and the gf have got some home made wine fermenting back home too - will have to break open a bottle or two of it when its ready - Radswine, we call it.
Nice guide to modding stuff into mead. Im interested though, cardjoe - homemade cider? Id love to know how thats made?
That seriously looks like one of those jars you might see a pickled cat or human foetus in... The liquid inside looks a bit funky too However, I do like what you seem to be decribing.
Or if you're really hardcore, just apple juice... Some of the best cider (or cyder if you're being a pedant) is just that, which self ferments due to naturally occuring yeasts (none added), and the sugars in the juice itself.
It takes a LOT more work than home made beer or home made mead and wine. You need to build a cider press for starters and the amount of effort you put into it will be reflected in the wuality of the finished product. Takes a whole lot of apples too. Wheelbarrows full. Still, if you're really curious then the guy who gave the talk mentioned this site which goes through the process of making a cider press. http://www.ukcider.co.uk I once made alcholic marmite too. Started with some gone off homebrew beer which we forgot about and left in the garage for a few months by accident :S. My brother and I pulled out a load of the sludge from the bottom - which is essentially what marmite is, really - and the proceeded to freeze it over and over. After a day or two, we skimmed off whatever didn't freeze and carried on until we had a few shots of the most vile, murky crap ever. Even tried some of it on toast.
I've made cider from bought apple juice before now, you just have to ensure you get one with no preservatives in.
Get the honey:water ratio right and use a proper wine yeast with higher alcohol tolerance than bread yeast and you'll ferment all the sugar and end up with a dry mead. I used to make my own, but now supermarket wine is cheap and decent it's too much time and effort.
Well, two months on and it's finished and ready to be bottled, it's gone from the grim looking brown fluid in the first photo to this.
Mead is still foul though, unless you want to send us a batch and let us review it in which case I'll reconsider that How's it taste?
I don't like mead, but I'm quite envious still. There's sod all good local beers I can find up here and I've not had a real pallete tingler since my and my lady finished off a bottle of Bowmore 12yr a few weeks ago Even the local nettle beer I had on holiday wasn't up to my usual Derbyshire standards somehow... And crushed vikings? QUOTE OF THE DAY!
The last home brew larger my dad made came out like london pride, apparently it tasted great though lol The time before that we did some ozzy larger and that was beautiful!! Blew your ******** off though, must have been near wine in percentage terms, Woooooooootles
Very interesting - awesome thread, love mead.... but what's with all the additions? Call me a purist How are you knowing when to stop it, just when it's gone amber clear or do you have some super secret method
I wait until the airlock has stopped bubbling which suggests fermentation has finished. If you want to use science though you can get a hydrometer which measures the specific gravity of fluids, and use this to take readings, you know it's finished when the sg remains constant over a period of time (a few days).
