Hi, I'd like to make up 2 wine sized bottles of mead. Can someone tell me what am I doing? No one seems to say how to make it other than add honey, water, and yeast (and others stuff if you like).
Now Do I want to boil the water first?
Do I want the Must mixed so it's a wine like liquid or can it still be mostly honey and glob around as honey mostly does?
Basically step by step can someone tell me what I should be doing and what to look for. I'm interested in a simple mead that doesn't take vary long to become drinkable, and also tastes good.
Thank you in advance.
Some people boil the water and dissolve the honey in the hot water. I feel that this will drive off some of the aroma. Others use campden tablets (sulfites) to disinfect - but this is not absolutely necessary. The guy that wrote the Compleat Meadmaker said he usually does not boil or use sulfites, and things turn out fine. If you are not going to boil or sulfite, I would suggest using a healthy dose of yeast to get things going in the right direction.
Last batch (which looks, smells and tastes good so far) I put the honey in a 5 gallon carboy and added about half the amount of water needed. I then swirled and swooshed it so that much (not all) of the honey dissolved. The rest of the honey dissolved fine while it fermented. (Many people believe that the must should be initially aerated so the yeast can grow aerobically before they switch into anaerobic mode - using room temperature water and shaking or swooshing to dissolve the honey does this.) Then I topped it off with water (not all the way - leave some space for the bubbles) and added the yeast and a little yeast nutrient, put the stopper with air-lock on it. Put it in a cool spot (75 d F) where it wouldn't get bright light, and it started bubbling away.
You might want to add some acid (lemon juice, tartaric acid crystals) and some tannin (I use green tea). The acid improves the chance of a good fermentation, and a certain amount of both acid and tannin make for a better tasting mead.
After about a month, I 'rack' the wine - carefully siphon off the wine but leave behind the yeast that is on the bottom. Add a little water to bring the bottle back up towards being full (reduce oxygen in the bottle) and let it go for another month or so, rack again. Repeat a third time, and the mead should be ready for bottling. If you have a wine filter system, or use bentonite clay or gelatin finings, you could bottle after one or two rackings and cut a few months off the process. You do need to be sure that the fermentation is complete and isn't 'stuck' - if there is a little fermentation in the bottles, you get sparkling mead. If there is a little more fermentation in the bottles, they could explode. So it is good to wait longer before bottling, at least until you are familiar with the process. Some people use hydrometers to measure the amount of sugar present before and after the fermentation to see if things are done - I have a hydrometer, but don't bother with it any more. After bottling, there is aging - some wines might be good at 6 months, but a year is usually better.
Only 2 bottles? One gallon will yield ~5 bottles.
Do you want a dry, sweet, or very sweet (dessert wine) product? I usually use 2 to 3 pounds honey per gallon to get a medium to sweet wine, with a decent alcohol level (12-14% estimated). But I have made some excellent meads using much more honey - it had a high alcohol content, and was very sweet but delicious.