I’ve heard so much talk here about making honey mead, I thought it was about time we had a thread specifically for it. Anyone have any good recipes? Tips? Success and/or failure stories?
I don’t know any recipes but I love honeymead so I am bumping your little thread. Thanks!
I’ve recently started experimenting with home brews. I’ve made one batch of wine, and waiting for the second. So far I’ve I’ve been reading about how to make mead, though I haven’t actually tried it yet.
Recipe : honey, water and yeast.
Brew for a month then store for two years before drinking. Two years, really. Apparently, it’s the easiest drink there is to make, it just takes a large investment of time. It’s said to be disgusting in 6 months, drinkable in a year, good in 2 years and excellent in 3.
If you want to try it, just google, there’s hundreds of recipes out there.
As a matter of fact, I have recently received a mead-making kit and plan to start my first batch of grape mead in the next month or so.
I’ve always been a fan, after discovering Blackberry Mead at the Rocky Mountain Meadery. I can’t wait to try to make my own!
Mead was the original drink of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. Words for wine or alcohol in various IE languages were derived from a root word for honey, **medhu-*. These include Sanskrit madhu and Greek methu, both meaning ‘wine’. In Balto-Slavic, for example Lithuanian medus or Polish miód, it means ‘honey’. Of all Indo-European languages, English mead shows the honey-wine connection the best.
Oh, no! Honey mead me move this to Cafe Society (our forum for food threads). I had no choice!
One thing you’ll definitely want besides honey, water, and yeast is a yeast nutrient. While yeast can survive on sugar alone, it won’t thrive on it, and you’ll end up with a very low alcohol concentration. You can Google and get specific recipes but it basically goes something like:
-Activate yeast (You can find specific mead yeasts, but champagne yeast will do fine)
-Mix honey and water (1lb. of honey per water, or more), add yeast nutrient
-Some people boil the honeywater to make sure all bacteria are killed, since bacteria can and will ruin your brew. Others swear that boiling ruins the flavor of the honey. At the very least, boil the water first.
-Make sure the wort is cooled to room temp, then pitch the yeast.
-Let it ferment for a few weeks, checking it ever day or so to make sure it still bubbles. If you have a triple-scale hydrometer, you can measure the potential alcohol of it, and when it’s near 0 it’s done. Otherwise you’ll have to rely on the bubble method, which could be deceptive if you have a stuck fermentation.
-Once it’s done fermenting, it’s time to bottle. Probably use dark bottles.
-Store in a dark place for an unknown amount of time, taste testing periodicaly.
Electronic Chaos, who brewed his first mead in November of 2005, still waiting for it to progress beyond the raw rocket fuel stage.
I’ve found it kinda depends - I’ve made mead with an excess of honey (as in, there’s enough honey left after fermentation finishes to make quite a sweet mead) and that was as good as it ever got at 9 months. A friend’s 4yo dry mead, otoh, is better every time we crack a new bottle.
Grolsch beer bottles (with the wire & porcelain caps) are great for bottling mead.
Get the purest/most homogenous honey for the best mead, IMO. Either all-wildflower or all-orangeblossom or whatever. Makes the end-product more distinctive.
My other favourite is metheglin, a spiced mead. Lovely stuff.
I love mead, but a slight nitpick -“honey mead” is redundant - Is there any other kind?
I was taught to make it without the yeast–just honey, water, and fruit or any other additive you might want to try. Boil down to half of what you started with, strain, and ferment for a month. Then strain again, bottle, and give it another month or so before drinking.
Of course, my first batch didn’t work at all, but my second is coming along nicely. In about three weeks, I’ll let you know how the third batch goes. 
Here is a good forum on mead making (plus wine & cider).
Be sure to read the FAQs.
Did the ancients live with low alcohol-content mead, or is there a traditional something that they would use as “yeast nutrient” that didn’t come in little vials labelled, “yeast nutrient?”
That’s 'cause your mix is catching yeast out of the air. Like sourdough bread starters, sometimes you catch a great strain, and sometimes you get ickiness (or nothing). Adding yeast from a packet is more foolproof, but also takes some of the “eureka!” joy out of a really good batch.
I honestly don’t know. You could add some fruit, which I’d imagine gives you some of the nutrients. I think nitrogen is the main thing you’re looking for. Usually the main thing in yeast nutrient is urea, which is usually derived from urine. I hesitate to say this, but the ancients may have even peed in the mead.
But probably, they just lived with low alcohol content mead (when I say low, I mean probably 4-5%, pretty alright for a beer, but for a wine it’s not that great).
I should note that most of the above is a mix of conjecture and WAGing. In no way should it be taken as fact (unless someone comes along with a cite, in which case, I’ll take all the credit 
)
Well I can’t speak for the ancients, but one way would be to boil the yeast left over from the last batch.
I once knew a guy who’d wax lyrical about this recipie for Barkshack Gingermead . It supposedly come out “sparkling”, like champagne.
I think you mean “pitch” the yeast from the last batch. Boiling would kill the little yeasties. On top of all that, boiling drives off all the nice flavor compounds in honey and robs your mead of its proper aromatics.
Never boil!!!
I don’t know about the Vikings, but the ancient Greeks always watered their wine anyway. They totally preferred lower alcohol content. They thought only barbarians drank undiluted wine. So low-alcohol mead would have been to their taste.
“Honey mead” could mean that it’s mead without any added flavor.
No, I was answering this question:
Boiling the yeast will kill it, yes. But it will add nutrients to the water. I didn’t say anything about boiling honey.
After you mix the cooled, nutrient rich water and the honey, THEN you pitch fresh yeast.