Updated May 28
I've taken the plunge and brewed my first batch of mead. With my wife's help we made pretty quick work of it and the concoction that went into the fermenter smelled heavenly. Here's what we did:
Ingredients (targeting a 2 gal batch ) :
- 6 lbs tupelo honey from Florida's panhandle
- 2 lbs fresh strawberries
- 12 oz fresh rasberries
- 12 oz fresh blackberries
- 3 gal purified water
- 1/2 tsp yeast nutrient
- 1 packet Red Star Premier Cuvee active dry wine yeast
- 1/2 cup dextrose for priming
In prep put 1 gal of the purified water in the freezer.
Start by adding the 6lbs honey to 1 gal water in an 8qt pot. Stir to dissolve the honey and bring to a boil
While waiting for the honey water to boil go ahead and wash and chop the berries.
Also, bring 1/2 cup of water to a boil in a small sauce pan. Let this cool a bit and then add to a sanitized thick glass or glass jar and cover with clean aluminum foil. Keep an eye on the temp of this as once it drops back down to 105 or 100 F we'll add the yeast and yeast nutrient to this in order to rehydrate and prepare for pitching.
Let the honey water boil for 10 minutes or so, then turn off burner. Put pot in an ice bath to get the temp down to around 170 F and then add the berries to the pot- this will further drop the temp of the wort. Monitor temp and put back on burner if necessary to keep wort at 150 F for ~15 minutes.
After steeping the berries per above, get the pot back in an ice bath the get the temp down to 90 or 95 F.
Now add the gallon of water that's been in the freezer to the primary fermenter (I think the bucket type fermenter is easier for this because of the fruit). Now add the warm wort with berries and all to the fermenter. Use a sanitized plastic spoon to stir the wort with the chilled water. Now we added 1/2 gal of room temp purified water to the fermenter to make a total of about 2.5 gal of water used in all. Given what we lost in the boil and what we'll loose after the primary fermentation I figure this will whittle down to the target 2 gal.
After checking the temp of the wort to confirm that it's at 80 F I pitched the rehydrated yeast. Then I sealed the bucket fermenter and popped my fermentation lock into place.
Today is Fri, Feb 27 2009. My hope is that the primary fermentation will run two weeks and then I'll transfer to 2 one gallon glass jugs that I've bought for this purpose. I figure the next 3 or 4 months in the jugs should get me to bottling. At that point I'll prime with dextrose and bottle to make a sparkling berry mead!
I'll update as this comes along. I can't wait!
Update: March 16- I racked the mead after 9 days (on March 8th) in the primary fermenter. After using a sanitized handheld sieve to scoop most of the berries off I siphoned to two one gallon jugs that I fitted with stoppers and airlocks. After racking to the secondaries I had enough mead to bottle to 2x22ox and 2x12oz bottles. After one week in these bottles the mead was highly carbonated and fun to drink. The mead is still cloudy, but otherwise it was great. The mead that was racked is still bubbling away. I'm hoping that another week in the 2nds will do the trick and then I can bottle the rest. We'll see.
Update 2:
May 28- I've been less than diligent than I'd hoped on keeping dates here. Nonetheless, this melomel cleared up after 6 weeks or so in the 2ndary fermenters and we bottled it a couple weekends ago. At bottling we primed with 2oz of tupelo honey for 2 gal of mead. After a couple weeks in the bottles there is some carbonation- I'd like to see more, but that will only come with time.
Mead definitely takes more patience than beer (ales) and everything I've read says that this patience will be rewarded. While we're enjoying this young mead I'm going to make a point of putting some aside for the long haul.
My overall impression of this recipe is that the champagne yeast really dried it out too much. I'm hoping that with time and increased carbonation it will become lively enough to balance the dryness of the mead.
