I'm feeling particularly wifey today. Which means wine, canning and dessert. By the way, I got drunk on my own mead last night, which was an odd experience. I think that since I made it myself, I was somehow not expecting the alcohol to be real. Which is silly of course, the alcohol was quite real. It was a very nice sort of tipsy though, I would recommend it to anyone. Unfortunately, Between my husband, myself and the other fellow who we got drunk on my mead, we now have none left. So I'm making two more batches. and it's really easy, a lot less involved than the wine. So I'm going to explain how to do it. Anyone can do it. It's really easy, I promise.
The great thing about making mead this way is you don't have to age it for years like you do with other wines. Just give it a few months and it's good. The first batch I made was strawberry mead, fermented with wild yeast, and it was damn yummy. The ones I am doing today are a blackberry melomel and a blackberry-jalapeno capsicumel, both with commercial wine yeast. Melomel means mead with fruit and capsicumel is mead with chile peppers. I expect these to be damn yummy too.
A few things to know about mead: Honey doesnt have all the nutrients it takes to efficently sustain yeast. You can make mead with just honey, but it's more difficult. With fruit juice, the yeast has more of the various things it needs to eat, and it's tasty too. There were two other things, but I forgot them. They'll probably come to me later.
BASIC RECIPE
1 part honey
4 parts water
fruit (optional)
This recipe relies on wild yeasts to ferment the must (which is lingo for "the fruit juice and sugar which will eventually be wine mead cider or beer"), so you don't really want to sterilize anything. Clean is good, sterile isn't.
What you do is mash up the fruit with your hands, to get it juicy. Berries are great, peaches would be good, pears. As long as you can make it good and juicy it should work just fine. Use as much or as little as you want. I use a few good handfulls per gallon. Add the honey and the water, mix it so the honey is completely dissolved. Cover the container with a dish towel held with a rubber-band. Leave it for a few days; stirring it once or twice a day is a good idea. In between a day and a few days it will start to get foamy. Make sure you stir it twice a day now, and leave it out for a few more days. Then you want to strain all the fruit bits out and tranfer it into whatever you are going to leave it in for the next few months. Top it up with a mixture of 1 part honey and 4 parts water, so that the top of the liquid is about where the neck of the bottle comes in. Cap it with an airlock (you need one of these, they only cost about a dollar and you can get them at a brewing shop or on the internet). Put it somewhere dark to preserve the color, and somewhere with stable temperature. It should fizz for a while. I think mine fizzed actively for a bit less than a month. Leave it alone except for when you taste it, which can only be done (this is important, so pay attention and don't deviate from it) whenever and as often as you want. When it tastes good, have people over and drink it up. The longer you let it go the drier it will become, and flatter. (In my opinion, the better it becomes.)
I start mine in 1 gallon glass jars, filled about 3/4 full. That leaves room for foaming. Then I transfer it into 1 gallon glass jugs, like the type you get apple juice in, and top it up. The strawberry mead fermented I think for about 4 months before we drank the last of it.
I'll post some pictures of this as it goes along.
The great thing about making mead this way is you don't have to age it for years like you do with other wines. Just give it a few months and it's good. The first batch I made was strawberry mead, fermented with wild yeast, and it was damn yummy. The ones I am doing today are a blackberry melomel and a blackberry-jalapeno capsicumel, both with commercial wine yeast. Melomel means mead with fruit and capsicumel is mead with chile peppers. I expect these to be damn yummy too.
A few things to know about mead: Honey doesnt have all the nutrients it takes to efficently sustain yeast. You can make mead with just honey, but it's more difficult. With fruit juice, the yeast has more of the various things it needs to eat, and it's tasty too. There were two other things, but I forgot them. They'll probably come to me later.
BASIC RECIPE
1 part honey
4 parts water
fruit (optional)
This recipe relies on wild yeasts to ferment the must (which is lingo for "the fruit juice and sugar which will eventually be wine mead cider or beer"), so you don't really want to sterilize anything. Clean is good, sterile isn't.
What you do is mash up the fruit with your hands, to get it juicy. Berries are great, peaches would be good, pears. As long as you can make it good and juicy it should work just fine. Use as much or as little as you want. I use a few good handfulls per gallon. Add the honey and the water, mix it so the honey is completely dissolved. Cover the container with a dish towel held with a rubber-band. Leave it for a few days; stirring it once or twice a day is a good idea. In between a day and a few days it will start to get foamy. Make sure you stir it twice a day now, and leave it out for a few more days. Then you want to strain all the fruit bits out and tranfer it into whatever you are going to leave it in for the next few months. Top it up with a mixture of 1 part honey and 4 parts water, so that the top of the liquid is about where the neck of the bottle comes in. Cap it with an airlock (you need one of these, they only cost about a dollar and you can get them at a brewing shop or on the internet). Put it somewhere dark to preserve the color, and somewhere with stable temperature. It should fizz for a while. I think mine fizzed actively for a bit less than a month. Leave it alone except for when you taste it, which can only be done (this is important, so pay attention and don't deviate from it) whenever and as often as you want. When it tastes good, have people over and drink it up. The longer you let it go the drier it will become, and flatter. (In my opinion, the better it becomes.)
I start mine in 1 gallon glass jars, filled about 3/4 full. That leaves room for foaming. Then I transfer it into 1 gallon glass jugs, like the type you get apple juice in, and top it up. The strawberry mead fermented I think for about 4 months before we drank the last of it.
I'll post some pictures of this as it goes along.
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