Looking for help, mead recipes?

[quark]

Hello all!!
Charm here, Strange and I have been wanting to brew some mead for a year now, and while we've done quite a lot of research and reading on the matter, we're still rather lost...
We don't really know, well, we don't know much about it...so I thought I'd poll the majority.

Have you brewed mead? (Not honeyed wine, but fermented honey...)

Do you have any help or tips for us?

Most importantly;
Do you have a recipe?!
(This has been by far our biggest hang up...we don't really know what to do because we have no recipe to start with...no idea which yeast to use or how much honey we need or anything...and we've seem to hit a solid wall in our searching...

This has been a life-long goal for me, so any help you could give, any at all is SO appreciated

Thanks much everyone :)
--Strange & Charm

 

[oldbloke]

Lots of recipes on www.gotmead.com
Also a few here if you use the Search box
Basics, though:
Either use a good honey with an actual taste, or add spices, or do a melomel instead (add fruit for flavouring)
Champagne yeast /may/ be best
It needs plenty of nutrient
It tends to be slow to take off, ferments for a very long time, and needs plenty of aging.

 

[Poly Hive]

Mead is a creature with it's own mind. You can make two batches the same day and they will be quite different creatures.

The simple recipe is to sterilise everything thoroughly. Using four pounds to a gallon bring to a simmer and skim. Cool and add to vessel. Lots of nutrient, a high alcohol yeast and lots of time and a careful hydrometer check will see you right.

A good mead is NOT sweet, rather it is a honey tasting and smelling high alcohol drink. some of mine got to 17% do beware it still has a sting in it!


PH

 

[Sly Fox]

Go for it! Get cracking sooner rather than later as well, it takes a while. Best of all, get a batch on every month, that way at some point down the line you'll have a well stocked mead cellar and you can drink plenty while still letting some mature - strong, sweet meads are built for the long haul, I have bottles 11+ years old which are phenomenal now!

There are dozens of methods, I'm sure they all work. I used to get raw honey (parents keep bees), mix in water with an egg white and simmer, skimming the waxy foam which came up. If I didn't do this they would never clear, and the flavour was unmistakeably that of their honey. Plenty of people seem afraid to damage the flavours by heating it, and with clear honey it's probably unnecessary anyway.

I see a lot of people "step feed" their meads - I never did, and made most from a very high OG. Some ended up very strong, some very sweet, some both!

Anyway, best of luck!

 

[Cononthebarber]

I've only made one mead so far and I am yet to taste it but I must say I have high hopes for it...this was the recipe I used HERE

 

[El Draco]

Im thinking of doing a mead also and have a question....

Can i use the jars of liquid honey as found in supermarkets?
And what is melomel? Ive seen it mentioned..

As ive done a few wows now, is there a way of making a mead in a similar way? ie substituting the sugar for honey?

 

[oldbloke]

Melomel is a fruit-flavoured mead.
I generally do them as the fruit masks the rawness of a young mead so you an drink them younger, and also as the fruit is the main flavour you can use cheap honey instead of finding one with a good flavour of its own.

Consider also golden syrup - about the same fermentability as honey, gives a slight toffee-ish effect. And cheaper.