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Posted on Tuesday February 7, 2023
I've recently taken up brewing mead as a hobby. It's been a bit of an investment but I've been enjoying it so far. It keeps my attention and gives me something to look forward to.
Around the middle of last month I was especially bored and decided to search the local craigslist listings. I found a listing by a man who was selling a few gallons of honey for a steal. I think it was in the ballpark of $20/gal, or roughly $1.60/lb. On an impulse I reached out and was able to arrange to purchase the stuff. It turns out the person selling the honey owns some local timber land. A beekeeper that he'd worked with in the past had some of his hives destroyed by a bear, and offered the landowner several gallons of raw honey if he'd let him store his hives on the man's property. I lucked out, as the man already had a lot of honey and so decided to try and sell some of it.
I felt the impulse to buy the honey because several years ago one of my housemates had brewed a few batches of mead, and I'd been wanting to try my hand at it ever since. It was one of those ideas that sits in the back of my mind for years, until I get a wild hair up my ass about it one day. I distinctly remember that one batch was flavored with acai berries, and another with green cardamom and birds eye chili. There was one unflavored batch that I enjoyed braising chicken in, as well. Once I saw the opportunity to get my hands on some cheap local honey, I felt compelled to take full advantage.
I purchased most of the necessary equipment from a homebrew supply shop in the nearest city, while some of it I could only find online:
Mainly it was the nutrients and other additives that I had to order online, as the local shop was out of them.
The first batch I worked on is currently aging in three one-gallon carboys. I used the Safale US-05 yeast, which is an ale yeast with a maximum alcohol tolerance of 11% (it has a reputation for unexpectedly exceeding that tolerance, however). I chose this yeast because its relatively low alcohol tolerance meant that it would likely die off before the mead became dry, leaving me with a sweeter end product. The must consisted of three gallons of tap water and 10.5 lbs of honey. This resulted in an original gravity of 1.150. I waited a few days after pitching the yeast to add extra nutrients, as I had read somewhere that staggering the nutrient addition can help prevent fermentation from stalling.
It took a few days for any noticeable bubbles to start forming in the bucket's airlock. For the first week I took hydrometer readings every morning, after which I would aerate and de-gas the mead (meaning I stirred it vigorously with a long spoon). Once the specific gravity indicated that a third of the sugars had been metabolized, I left it alone for a couple of weeks.
Once the specific gravity started leveling out, I racked the mead into carboys and added the stabilizers. I boiled some Earl Grey and added that to one of the carboys. I became impatient with how slowly the clarifying was occurring, and tried refridgerating the carboys (referred to as 'cold-crashing') in order to try and 'kill' the yeast and draw them out of solution. I left them in the cold for a few days before re-racking and adding bentonite clay. The bentonite gels nicely and pulled a lot of the sediment down into the bottom of the carboy.
I took a sample to share with my partner and we both agreed that we preferred it to the handful of store-bought meads we've had. It's quite sweet, but otherwise pretty unremarkable. It sits at almost exactly 11% ABV. I don't think I added enough Earl Grey to the one gallon in order for it to be detectable, so I want to try adding some more prior to bottling.
I regret losing my patience during the clarifying process. For my next batch (which I started yesterday), I'll be better about not babying the thing. Repeated racking exposes the mead to oxygen, which can ruin the flavor (pushing it toward 'wet cardboard' on the extreme end). Brewing can benefit greatly from a 'set it and forget it' approach. I decided to order a digital thermometer, as I recently learned that hydrometer readings (which measure the density of liquids) can vary somewhat with changes in temperature. I also decided against staggering the nutrient addition this time, opting instead to add the Fermaid and DAP at pitch. I doubt it will make much of a difference honestly, and it's less for me to have to keep track of.
The next batch is using a proper wine yeast (Lalvin EC-1118) and I'm using only 3 lbs of honey per gallon, rather than 3.5, so I'm hoping that this one winds up drier and with a higher ABV.
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