My First Mead

[BikeGeek]

After sampling several of Jay's (of Jay's Brewing Supplies) meads at the recent potlatch I was inspired to try to make one of my own. Browsing various sites on the topic was enough to make my head spin - it can be a bit more involved than the extract brewing I'm currently doing and the price of good honey is higher than I expected. Then I found a recipe for something called Joe's Ancient Orange which seemed fairly simple and inexpensive. A trip to Costco and $25 later and I've got 4.5 gallons of my first mead going in the fermenter. :)

Here's the recipe (http://www.gotmead.com/index.php?option=com_smf&Itemid=2&topic=600.msg3709#msg3709) as I found it at gotmead.com.

Here's what I did for 4.5 gallons:
14 lbs Dutch Gold clover honey
4 naval oranges, cut into eighths
2 small boxes of raisins
3 cinnamon sticks (about 6" each)
3 cloves
1 packet of Fleishmann’s bread yeast

Bring 2 gallons of water to a boil. Remove from heat and dissolve honey in water while stirring. Adjust volume to 4.5 gallons. Cool to ~ 80F. Aerate. Add to carboy with oranges, raisins, cinnamon, and cloves. Add yeast. Put the airlock on and let it ferment in a dark, warm (~70F) place.

OG: 1.122

It supposedly only takes ~ 3 months for this one to finish. We'll see what happens.

[Jay]

Recently there was a podcast from thebrewingnetwork.com that covered Meade, from what I can tell really well. They had a meade maker from a local place on answering all kinds of questions :)

The Bread Yeast, that's kinda neat - never thought of using that. I'll be real interested to taste this once it's ready (or when your ready to share!)

[BikeGeek]

The Bread Yeast, that's kinda neat - never thought of using that. I'll be real interested to taste this once it's ready (or when your ready to share!)

Me either. The recipe's creator calls it "ancient" mead because the ingredients were readily available back in the day. I guess bread yeast is what would have been most common, who knows.

[BikeGeek]

This one's winding down already. Gravity is at ~1.028, fruit has fallen to the bottom of the carboy, and it's starting to clear. A taste of my sample revealed an initial taste of orange followed by a semi-bitter (the yeast?) alcohol spiciness, finishing like a sweet mulled wine. I'm anxious to see how this tastes in a couple of months.

[Jay]

That sounds interesting. We had an interesting mead last night at out meeting - it was sparkeling (not on purpose) and was very much different. Not that I'm a mead person by any strech - but I can appreciate the flavors and the work that goes into making mead. You'll have to bring a bottle to sample to out next meeting :)