Mead

[Loyalist Dave]

I'm betting wine--the grape stuff--is about the earliest of tipples. Imagine trying to preserve grape juice around the Mediterranean. Smoosh grapes, drain off the juice, wait. The one I've always wondered about is the making of ales and beers. There are a lot more steps to making them. And then there's distillation. Bless the Irish, they figured that out centuries ago. And shared it with the world.

Actually, mead is either simultaneous to wine, or the first alcoholic beverage.  It is also the first that we can find records for, as it is simply made by adding water to honey to thin it until the natural yeast contained in the raw honey ferments.  It is probable that "ale" is the son of mead, for two reasons..., it first appears in mead areas, and the ancient word "alü" meant"ale" in some parts of Europe, and meant "mead" in other parts.  Making ale is not nearly as complicated as folks think, and if you have baked bread and water, you can have ale.  

Now sorry to burst your bubble, but the people of the Emerald Isle did not invent distillation.  It was imported to British Isles by Roman Catholic Monks returning from pilgrimage to Rome, or from holy crusades.  (Folks in Italy were getting smashed on grappa long before the Irish had pot-cheen)  Distillation was first used by the monks to make medicines, as much of early herbal medicine was made with tinctures, and to produce that you need to start with something alcoholic, such as barley ale..., then distil it to higher alcohol content, and Irish pot-cheen was born.  They then found that aging it in barrels turned it into uisge beatha..., water-of-life, and the word "uisge" became "whisky".  Distillation in Scotland is even younger than in Ireland.

Modern "pot-cheen" is normally not made with a grain today, as when the Irish switched from grain as the main staple to potatoes, so did the pot-cheen.

LD

[vermontfreedom]

I have made about 50 gallons of mead in the last 8 years. I started brewing beer perhaps 12 years ago. I graduated to wine about 8 years ago with the primary intention of trying to make a good mead.

I use only local honey - my supplier sells me unfiltered dregs super cheap. He gets I think $4/lb for table honey, but he'll sell me 20 pounds for $20-40.

I have made good, not-so-good, and fairly poor mead. The worst ones are too sweet - when fermentation is incomplete. Strangely this has happened most often when using liquid yeast starters.

Because the flavor of mead usually is very light, even the slightest off flavor is noticeable, which is why I believe mead is the hardest of beer, wine, and mead to make.

A batch or two ago, I made 4 gallons and decided to flavor 3 out of the 4 gallons with different herbs and spices - also called metheglin. (One correction to an above statement that mead is also called melomel: melomels are meads with a fruit in the recipe - they are not one and the same.) My intent was to use the flavored ones as marinades for game meat. I ended up drinking them

The unflavored gallon was good - a little dry, but dry mead can be good, too.

One was ginger-clove-orange (I used powdered ginger - first mistake) and dried orange peels. It was on the sweet side, but good.

The second was rosemary-lavender. You couldn't detect the rosemary because I used 4 times as much (dried) lavender as I should have. If you have ever heard an alcoholic beverage described as "medicinal," this was it. The lavender was overpowering. However, I like strong flavors and I liked it quite a bit.

The last, I dry-hopped with hops I grow myself. You might think this a strange combination, but it was fantastic.  I grow 4 varieties, but at the time only my Cascade were doing well so this is probably what I used. The  bitterness of the hops cut the sweetness of the mead very well.

If you're wanting to try making mead, my recommendations are to make two or three batches simultaneously, maybe stick with just 1 gallon each. Make one with 1-2 pounds of honey to the gallon and one with 2 or 3 and one with 4 or 5 pounds. This will give you results at the extreme ends of light and very sweet mead.

Use wild honey - don't use store bought. Wild honey actually has flavor.

Use good water - not hard or too soft.

Use wine or mead yeast. Champagne yeast is probably best because it will impart no flavors of its own and tolerates high alcohol content, which your mead will be especially if  you use a lot of sugar and it ferments to completion.

A packet of good yeast will run you $1 or $2. Don't bother with liquid yeasts ($4-$10) unless you're really serious. SPend the extra $0.50 or $1 over bread yeast.

That said, I have made good wine with bread yeast. In fact, the best apple wine I ever made I used bread yeast. I can be done, but your results will be more consistent with wine or mead yeast.

You can make a "small" mead with only 1-1.5 pounds of honey per gallon and ferment it with an ale, wine, or mead yeast, this will be the quickest of fermentations. The others should be fermented for 4-18 months. Make sure you kill the must with campden before bottling or similar else it could referment you can have popped corks and a very sticky mess or at worst burst bottles. I speak from experience!

It's also a good idea to let the mead condition in the bottle for 6-18 months. Mead really does improve with age up to about 6 years.

Good luck.

[Stormrider51]

Thank you for that.  Excellent information!

Storm

[Woodrock]

My first wife's father made several types of mead..all good, and traditional. One of which always meant taking a taxi home. I watched him make it several times, and was really shocked to see raw lean beef going in for the protein. The FIL would not use the protein supplements others used.  Each batch was made in food grade plastic 44 gallon drums (55 US gallons) I believe he used a champagne yeast for the ''taxi''' mead, not what he called it of course, and he said it usually ran about 18%. One glass it kicked my butt. I saw the mead racked off several times, and was always amazed to see the big chunk of beef completely gone. Whilst, I have never made mead, I have made root beer, and ginger beer with champagne yeast. The ginger beer is drinkable after a month or so, but the root beer takes a year in the bottle to mellow out.
Woody

[Ironhand]

I tried some of the Mead I bottled last fall. Very good, kind of like Scotch with honey.
I have also been making Ciser. That is Mead made with apple juice or cider instead of water. First batch has aged about 10 months.  It was good when fresh, it is great now. Very mellow.

[Loyalist Dave]

and he said it usually ran about 18%

Um..., uh..., probably more like 14% or lower.  You have a really tough time getting anything to ferment close to 14% regardless of how much the hydrometer says it may reach, because natural yeast does have fermentation limits, and wine and champagne yeast will go higher than ale, but they don't tolerate higher alcohol levels than about 14%.  He could have bought a custom, laboratory prepped yeast like Turbo Pure http://www.brewhaus.com/Turbo-Pure-48-P842C103.aspx or Distiller's Yeast http://www.brewhaus.com/Distillers-Turbo-Yeast-P837C103.aspx , but a regular champagne yeast, doubtful.  

The process to make barely wine or imperial stout kicks those beverages up to around 12% - 14%, by fermenting with ale yeast and finishing with champagne yeast.  Some companies are selling 15%, 18%, 22%, 26%, and a whopping 39% alcohol by volume Imperial Stout..., but they age the stout in hard liquor casks to get a some extra alcohol, and 18-39 percent is obtained by the Eisbock process, where they apply freezing temps to the beverage, and then remove the ice to further concentrate the alcohol.  This is the same process used to make true Applejack.

LD

[Woodrock]

Dave: I know yeast limit themselves, and just went with what the FIL said...the stuff was strong. BTW, the FIL was a chemist, so the 'champagne' yeast may have been one of the super yeasts. This was in the '70s in New Zealand.

Now, what is the difference between Applejack, and Hard Cider?  My maternal grandfather made what he called Hard Cider by freezing cider, and throwing out everything that stayed in a sieve. This was a common practice on Nantucket whilst growing up, unfortunately I never got old enough to sample any before my grandfather passed.
Woody

[Loyalist Dave]

First, Fil may have been reading the hydrometer right, the problem is the dang things are designed for use with sugar and water.  When we add stuff that makes flavor..., it throws off the readings, as residual starch, pollen, proteins, tannins, etc cause the reading to be skewed.  

On the other hand, yeast is odd stuff, and in New Zealand maybe there is a local strain of champagne yeast that was available to the home vintner, that would go that high??   You never know.  

Your grandfather was making classic Applejack, which is sometimes called cider Oil.  Hard cider is simply fermented cider.  You can boost it by taking a gallon, and boiling it down to a quart, and adding that to another gallon to jump up the sugar, or you can simply add more sugar.  If you use a wine yeast, you will get maximum alcohol that the yeast will allow, about 8% - 10%, but you may not use up all the sugar.

Now when you freeze it and remove the water, you are freeze distilling.   This is legal in many places where traditional boil distilling is not.  However, you will concentrate trace chemicals by doing so, and thus the condition known as cider palsy sometimes happens (on a temporary basis).  When these commercial brewing companies do the Eisbock method for their Imperial Stout, they are doing the same thing, but when they start pushing beyond 15% alcohol-by-volume..., the Eisbock process is supposed to filter out some of the nasty chemicals like the methenol.  I mean one version is 26% and one is 39%, which are 52 proof and 78 proof..., which would really screw up the drinker if one didn't extract the non-potable chemicals.  

Now if the FIL was a chemist, he might very well have been doing some freeze distilling, and perhaps never mentioned it as he may not have known if it was legal or not?  All you need is a freezer set at 0° F and give it 24 hours, then scoop out the ice crystals, and then bottle.  The trace impurities will add to the "knock you on your butt" effect.  

LD

[Geezer in NH]

My 6 year old mead was bottled this year. It is at 18% made with champion yeast. Bottled 3 months ago it is smooth!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am drinking a bottle now with iced tea Sweet indeed.