Mead

I started brewing hard cider and mead about a year ago. I had never tried mead before i made my own,  I have to say if you have never tried it your missing out big time.

Ahh, mead. One of Commander Caius's favourites.

I really like mead.  My brother made some recently, which definitely ended up being quite a bit hotter than the stuff on store shelves, but still really damn tasty.

Ya mead is good. Made my first last year. Nothing fancy. #12 of firewood honey. 4.5g ferm. K & 4.5g DAP at primary activity. Waited a year to taste. Smooth. Carbed some in a keg then bottled it. Let that sit in the fridge for almost another year. Boy that stuff was good. Did the job too :)

 

Stuff I got going now is:

#12 Blackberry honey

#.20 chocolate malt (steeped)

#.20 Special B (steeped)

#.20 Dark wheat (steeped)

steeped grains at 150 degrees overnight. Sparged with 160 degree H2O.

1 vial of sweet mead yeast

1Tbsp yeast nutrient at primary 

1tbsp ferm. k at primary

repeat nutrient and ferm. k 2-3 weeks later.

wait 1 year. will let ya know what I think. Cheers!

Love mead. I would like to try my hand at making some. We have a local honey made from Africanized Honey bees from cactus and mesquite nectar, could be interesting.

I absolutely love mead. I'll just paste my personal experience with brewing from the other thread here:

"I've been brewing mead for 2 or 3 years now, I think? A few of my mates had the brilliant idea to start this because mead is incredibly expensive if you buy it in a store and sometimes impossible to find. We had no clue what we were doing the first time but it came out okay-ish. Now we brew roughly 15 liters at a time, twice a year to make sure that we have some ready for festival season and for christmas/new year's eve.

In terms of ingredients and methods: 50% water, 50% orange blossom honey from a local apiarist, enough port wine yeast + the necessary nutrient salt. Mix the honey with hot water and make sure to let it cool down to <35°C, add the yeast and salt and then let it wait for ~6 months in a dry and warm place. We try our best to stir the whole thing up and shake it around at least every 2 days, preferably once every day. That's about it, after 6 months you can filter it and put it in bottles. We don't do anything special to preserve it after that, I know that some people heat it up to 80+°C and then let it cool down again, but we usually drink it in a matter of weeks, 2 months at best. Storing it in the fridge seems to be enough.

We choose to use portwine yeast because it makes for some dry, high percentage (~18%) mead. The blossom honey gives it a well rounded overall taste. We're by no means experts when it comes to brewing, but ever since we did it that way our mead tastes really nice and we've heard quite a few compliments."

 

That said, our mead is a bit too fruity for some people. Many prefer plain mead over the extravagant versions, and if you want some amazing plain mead I've found bienenschwarm.de. Incredibly well-rounded taste and overall just great. Best plain mead that I've had so far.