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  • Metheglin win

    A friend of mine is a beekeeper and I made some mead for him last year.

    The first Mead was entered in the metheglin class at a beekeepers show and won first !!

    Nice

    Has anyone got any recipes for red mead?
    Gluten free, caffeine free, dairy free, fat free – you gotta love this red wine diet!

  • #2
    Originally posted by Cellar_Rat View Post
    A friend of mine is a beekeeper and I made some mead for him last year.

    The first Mead was entered in the metheglin class at a beekeepers show and won first !!

    Nice

    Has anyone got any recipes for red mead?
    here and here are the sort of places too look Brian. Plus it depends on what you mean by "red meads"? Red in just colour or more like red wines ?

    There's also other stuff to consider i.e. how much and what type of flavour you want. For example, if you want a fermented fruit flavour to the brew, then you can just put all the fruit into primary and it follows a similar path to grape reds, just that you have to work out whether you want a good honey profile in the batch or whether you want the fruit to be the main focus of flavour.

    If you want more of the original fruit flavour, which after all, is what we tend to like about a specific fruit, then you need to think about how much is gonna go into secondary, as that retains much more of the original fruity flavour.

    Then there's another variable, which as with all "country" wines, needs consideration i.e. is the fruit one that will possibly be over powering in taste if made with just that type of fruit - a good example is raspberry, which can, if all the sugars are fermented away, be mega-strong yet acidic tasting, so not good for a dry one generally, whereas if the fruit is used in secondary or it's back sweetened well, you can get something good.

    Hence it seems it's less about "parrotting" recipes than working out what it is that you're aiming for in the batch.

    Don't forget, honey can be strange stuff to work with. pH swings can be quite wild, older recipes that suggest boiling the hell out of the honey use outdated methodology as the heating process can cause the loss of a lot of the aromatics and some of the flavours that make the honey special - like a varietal type.

    The two links should give you some ideas about what you can find locally either fresh or in the freezer dept of Iceland (apart from the Shergar burgers of course ).

    So if you can define "red" a bit more, then maybe we can offer better suggestions.

    For instance, my "fresh grape pyments" last year, still have much of the character of a heavish red wine, but as I step fed them during the ferment, they still also have some honey notes, etc etc.

    With methyglins for example, you do have to be cautious of how much spice(s) are used. Too much and they can become undrinkable. Cloves are a good example. Equally, Vanilla can give bitter notes if over used in a dry batch, whereas that can be masked with residual sugars.

    Etc etc etc........
    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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    • #3
      I was thinking big red. I have considered in the past doing a second run red with honey to make up the fermentable SG. Perhaps just a 5 gall batch.
      5 gall of pressings (skins) from say merlot, made up with 5 gall water + 12lb honey, couple of oranges/cinnamon & cloves etc. Bread yeast?
      Gluten free, caffeine free, dairy free, fat free – you gotta love this red wine diet!

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      • #4
        Originally posted by Cellar_Rat View Post
        I was thinking big red. I have considered in the past doing a second run red with honey to make up the fermentable SG. Perhaps just a 5 gall batch.
        5 gall of pressings (skins) from say merlot, made up with 5 gall water + 12lb honey, couple of oranges/cinnamon & cloves etc. Bread yeast?
        Well there's no real standards for meads, so you could just give it a try. If the skins from the merlot were fermented with something that was a bit on the more robust side (the skins I put in the freezer were fermented originally with K1-V1116 so if I did another pyment type thing, but used supermarket juice, then I'd probably have to stick with K1V - as it would likely kill off bread yeast) then you might have to run with that. I'd just add enough honey to bring it up to somewhere near the tolerance of whatever you used for the merlot originally - bread yeast tends to go to about 12% without any trouble, but whatever you used on the merlot skins in the first place would likely do more.......

        How "big" it might turn out, is anyones guess - which is one of the reasons I like doing meads, they can be so unpredictable.......
        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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        • #5
          A big big red Melomel can be made with lots of elderberries in a mead, dried or fresh. Now you can get your beek to split out some varietal honeys for you to make even more refined meads. WVMJ
          WVMountaineer Jacks Elderberry and Meads USA

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          • #6
            ooo thats sound like it has potential.
            Gluten free, caffeine free, dairy free, fat free – you gotta love this red wine diet!

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            • #7
              Originally posted by Cellar_Rat View Post
              ooo thats sound like it has potential.
              Well I can say for dried elderberry that Jack might have access too, but I don't like the ones usually available here as they seem to give a powdery/dry sort of taste.

              I'd wait until you can get fresh or even a can of concentrate........

              but that might just be personal preference.
              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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