I have conquered quarantine level: make your own alcohol. My home-brew mead turned out fantastic; way tastier than the cough-syrup served at commercial renaissance fairs. For months of backstory, you can read all these posts:
Otherwise, we’re going to jump right into the recipe and process so that you can make your own.
What you’ll need
- Half gallon mason jar(s)
- Fermentation lid(s) with airlock
- Pot, stirring utensil, a towel is useful
- Cheese cloth or metal strainer
- Pour-top mason jar lid is very helpful
- Food thermometer
- A funnel
- Bottles or jars for the finished product. Narrow-necks are safer, smaller sizes better for preserving more longer
Ingredients
- 1 1/3 to 2 cups raw honey. More honey = sweet, less = dry
- 1 cup flavor additive (I’ve tried blueberries, maple syrup, mint leaves)
- A pinch of tannins (I used craisins or lime pith, but you can use raisins too) When I say a pinch I mean like, 3 raisins.
- 5 cups distilled water, plus more later for topping off
- 1/4 packet of champagne yeast (don’t ask me about different kinds of champagne yeast, I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about there.)
A word on adding flavors to mead. You want to avoid anything too acidic that might negatively impact the chemistry of your ferment. If you want to add orange slices, only let them marinate for a day, and then remove. The skins of citrus is fine, less so the juice. You can add all manner of herbs to mead like basil, thyme, sage, tarragon, for different results. Berries impart a subtle flavor, so go heavy, and mash them up a little to get more out of them. You can try adding chocolate, syrups, even hot peppers! The beauty of a small batch is there’s little investment other than time if something goes horribly wrong. Whatever you add, agitate it first with clean hands to break down the cellular walls and extract more flavor.
Process
- Clean everything really well. The airlock, the mason jar especially well. Soap and hot water. Let air-dry on a clean towel.
- Fill your airlock to the line or halfway (depending on the brand) with tap water and insert into fermentation lid
- Lay out airlock, mason jar, honey, additives, and all clean utensils on your very clean work station
- Bring 5 cups (you can add a little more for evaporation) of distilled water to a boil, then remove from heat
- Add your honey to the mason jar
- Pour in hot, but no longer boiling water to the mason jar and stir honey until well dissolved, leaving a little leftover to dissolve the yeast
- Add flavor additives and stir vigorously, mashing it all about for about a minute
- Let cool to between 90-100 degrees (warm to touch) I place a towel over the top or a jar lid on loosely to prevent dog hair from finding it’s way into the jar while it’s cooling
- When your mixture is close to the right temp, dissolve about 1/4 packet of champagne yeast in a separate small container of warm distilled water (90-100 degrees). Seal up the packet to make 3 more meads with
- Once the yeast is awake (slight frothing), add it to the big jar and stir
- Cap the jar with your fermentation lid and airlock, and store in a cool dark place for one week
- Every day for the next week, open the jar and stir the contents with a clean utensil. You will see bubbles after a few days. Bubbles and foam means happy yeast
Racking the mead
After the first week of fermentation (called the primary ferment) you’ll notice a slow-down in the number of bubbles being released. It’s time to rack the mead.
- On the day you plan to rack your mead, don’t stir. You’ll see a lot of dead yeast fallen to the bottom of the jar. That’s icky, and we want to not take all of that into the next jar
- Prepare another clean half gallon mason jar, your mason jar pour top, and cheesecloth or a mesh strainer. Clean and refill your airlock or have a new one ready to go
- Put the pour top lid on the mead jar, if you’re using cheesecloth, put it between the jar and the lid in two layers. If you’re using a mesh strainer, position the strainer over the new clean jar
- Be strong, and in one smooth pour, gently and slowing pour the mead from the old container to the new container, straining our your tannins and flavor bits, and leaving behind the thickest dregs at the bottom. It’s ok if some of the cloudy stuff gets into the new jar, because we’re going to do this again in 2-3 more weeks.
- If you lost a lot of volume when you racked, either from taking out fruit or spilling, top off your mead jar with more distilled water so that there’s only an inch or two of headspace.
- If you used berries to flavor your mead, save that shit and make fermented jam. It’s delicious, but back-sweeten it.
Secondary Ferment
Once your mead is in it’s new clean jar, put on a new airlock, and store it back in its dark place for 2 to 3 more weeks. No stirring this time. Check on it occasionally to make sure nothing’s bubbling so much as to overflow and make a mess. When the bubbles have really slowed down, rack the mead again, or if you’re not seeing any bubbles, go straight to bottling.
There’s a sweet spot with bottling. If you let the mead ferment too long, you increase the chances of spoiling. Bubbles are a good sign that your yeast is alive, which means other harmful bacteria is not. However if you bottle too soon, and there are too many bubbles, you might shatter some glass or have a really explosive drink.
Bottling
Clean your bottles ahead of time and airdry. Put your pour-top lid on the jar with cheesecloth between and get the funnel. Once again, in one smooth pour, transfer the mead from the jar to the bottles, leaving only about an inch of headspace. More headspace = more air = more danger germs. There will be cloudy stuff at the bottom of your ferment jar. Try to leave that behind, but its ok if a little gets in. It doesn’t taste good. If you really mess up and can’t bottle all in one pour, you can let the ferment jar sit for a few hours to separate again, and try again. Cap the bottles and store in a dark place for at least 2 weeks.
You can drink the mead right away, but it won’t taste good. I label my jars and bottles with the dates of the last rack or bottling (as well as the flavor) so that I know when they’re ready. I do not know how long the mead will last unopened, but it should be several months. Once open, refrigerate and consume within two weeks-sh…I don’t really know.
Something went wrong
I chose to make mead instead of wine or beer because it’s harder to poison myself with mead. In theory, even if things go very wrong in the ferment, it should still be safe to consume, even if it tastes bad. Molded fruit can simply be discarded, the mixture re-racked. Discolored froth on the top can be scraped off. If it turns to vinegar, you can make salad dressing. Fortunately, none of this happened to my brews, not even the first one. I tried to keep everything very clean, but I didn’t use any fancy sterilization chemicals that you find in beer-brewing.
How does it taste?
Good! It’s like a crisp fruity wine, but meads can be dry or sweet. 1 and 1/3 cups of honey to 5 cups of water will get you a dry mead while 2 cups will be very sweet. Adding maple syrup to my mead made it crazy sweet. Like French toast in a glass. The mint mead was dry and a little spicy, but not really minty. If you drink the “green” leftovers from bottling without aging, its a little sour and yeasty, but aged for over two weeks that all somehow disappears.
