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A simple mead tutorial step by step - It ain't hard!

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  • #16
    great tutorial. Made my first batch yesterday following your lesson. Father in law is a bee keeper so always have plenty of honey to hand. Simmered it and skimmed it but if any little bits did get through will they just fall out of the mead as sediment?


    thanks
    Ant

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    • #17
      Originally posted by parsnipman View Post
      but if any little bits did get through will they just fall out of the mead as sediment?
      yes they will, gravity is our friend (as are hydrometers!)
      N.G.W.B.J.
      Member of 5 Towns Wine and Beer Makers Society (Yorkshire's newest)
      Wine, mead and beer maker

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      • #18
        Originally posted by parsnipman View Post
        great tutorial. Made my first batch yesterday following your lesson. Father in law is a bee keeper so always have plenty of honey to hand. Simmered it and skimmed it but if any little bits did get through will they just fall out of the mead as sediment?


        thanks
        Ant
        Same reply as Bob, but I'd recommend that you don't simmer and skim. Why? because you'll notice a reduction in the more aromatic elements and some of the finer flavour.

        You will find that any bit's and bobs that get through, will usually drop out with the gross lees anyway and that even if some did get through you can just filter/screen them out before bottling.

        Oh, and don't be surprised if it's reasonably quick to make, but does need at least 12 months ageing. If you read the great Ken Schramms book, "The Compleat Meadmaker", you'd see that he does point out that some newly finished meads are almost horrible to taste. With faults like medicinal/Listerine sort of taste etc. These will mellow with age.

        The original idea of the tutorial was taken from "The Gales Book of Honey", but there's plenty of similar suggestions/methods/techniques out there.....

        regards

        jtfb

        p.s. Oh and since I wrote the original tutorial, I've changed to a different yeast as my "favourite". If I can, I like to use the wisdom of the late, great, Brother Adam or Buckfast Abbey fame. Now in a lot of his original writings, he said that he used "Maury" yeast. The Maury region of France does have it's own AOC, but this yeast isn't easily available now in Home Brew sized packs (it's listed as Lalvin D21). Yes it can be obtained, but pretty much only from http://morewinemaking.com/ (as it seems that they repackage it from the normal commercial sized packs) but I also found out that when he found that difficult to obtain he used the Gervin version of the Lalvin K1V-1116 (Montpellier I think it is.....). So if I can get some, I go for the D21, but it is much easier to obtain K1V-1116 as it's one of the "usual suspects".
        Last edited by fatbloke; 04-04-2010, 11:04 AM.
        Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they are sexy.

        Some blog ramblings

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        • #19
          Hi,
          I followed these steps and began fermentation on the 14th April, I have been monitoring the gulping of the air lock but I think its pretty much finished what it was intending to do. The solution is still very hazy would you recommend using pectin to remove the haze or a finning agent? Would you rack it or is it ready to be bottled now?
          Many thanks
          Marc

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          • #20
            Give it some more time, it will start to clear it has only been fermenting 10 days, it likely isnt finished yet, but even if it is, gravity needs a little more time i think

            regards
            Bob
            Last edited by lockwood1956; 10-05-2013, 06:14 PM.
            N.G.W.B.J.
            Member of 5 Towns Wine and Beer Makers Society (Yorkshire's newest)
            Wine, mead and beer maker

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            • #21
              + 1 to Bob, but also to add you will never need pectinase as there is so little protein in the recipe (provided you are following the recipe at post #1) that any haze will be other than a protein one.

              Biggest problem with the actual fermentation is having adequate nutrients, I think.

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              • #22
                A very interesting and well put together tutorial.

                After I have a couple of wines under my belt, I'll give mead a whirl, I don't know whether I could leave it alone for 6 months though.

                The wife has some sort of green herbal tea, she uses it cos she is always "Bunged Up" if you know what I mean. I don't want to use that.

                The only cheap tea that's really available is Tetleys and Yorkshire.

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                • #23
                  What's a good ball park fg? I'm not too keen on what i have made but don't know what i should really be sweetening it to.

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                  • #24
                    Damn I'd forgotten about this (sorry)........

                    Ok, so when I've tasted commercially made (in the UK) traditional meads, I've found them sweet and sometimes quite cloying........

                    A bit of measuring showed them all to be IRO 1.040 (plus or minus 5 points). Which is too sweet for me.

                    If I'm going to back sweeten, it's done to about the 1.015 area.

                    I've got into the habit of doing the ferment, then once I'm happy it's finished, I do the first rack to take the batch off the gross lees, but it gets racked onto stabilising chems which are crushed campden tablets and potassium sorbate/wine stabiliser.

                    That in turn, gets left for a day or two, then I add small increments of honey (an ounce or two), which gets gently mixed with a little of the finished ferment mead, then gently added and slowly stirred in. I leave it for a day then test the gravity to see if it's close to my target gravity.

                    I like my meads at about 1.015, but as long as its somewhere between 1.010 and 1.020 that's fine.

                    Now I do this BEFORE the main clearing process because honey has a bad habit of causing a haze in already clear meads - it seems this is to do with proteins in the honey (I find the less processed the honey is, the greater the likelihood, but that's not guaranteed). So I stabilise and sweeten to the numbers and let the honey taste and aging do the rest.

                    By doing the sweetening/sugars then, any hazing caused can't be seen and drops out with the other yeast debris. Plus it means only clearing it only once and reduces racking loses.......

                    That lot is just how I've managed to work out for ease of making (plus given you only get 6 standard bottles from a full gallon, racking loss needs to be remembered)......
                    Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they are sexy.

                    Some blog ramblings

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