Mead Recipes

[wfuavenger]

Does anyone have a good mead recipe? Lets try to get a list going.

[Highlandsfreedom]

OH OH ME ME ME ME ME!!!!!!!! PICK ME!!!!!!!!!! I LOVE MEAD!!!!!   I have a traditional dry mead in bottles and a Prickly pear mead in the ol' carboy.

My traditional mead is 16# of honey and 5 gals of water.  I used a reg. dry champain yeast.  I will post more recipes up when we get back from our walk. 

[wfuavenger]

I suggest everyone read my blog about beekeeping and mead making as it has a pic and some interesting side notes about the chocolate mead.....

jareds bees and mead

Joes Ancient Orange Cinnamon Clove Mead

Filled 6 gallon carbouy to just under top line

3 ½ gallons water
2 large naval oranges cut into 16ths then halfs
3 medium/small naval oranges cut the same
3 pinches nutmeg
5 cinnomon sticks
4 cloves
18 lbs clover honey (1.5 gallons)
½ cup loosely packed Sunkist raisins
2 packets fleschmans baking yeast (4.5 oz)
2 tsp Fermax nutrient
(I will be topping it off once the bubbling slows)

JW's Chocolate Mead

Filled 6 gallon carbouy just under top line

8.2 oz Nestley quick milk mix 25% reduced sugar
8 oz Hershey’s chocolate syrup
18 lbs clover honey (1.5 gallons)
3.5 tsp acid blend
5 tsp Fermax nutrient
1 pack D-47 yeast

The chocolate mead is my own variation of the Lady Bridget version here: http://www.ladybridget.com/m/chocmead.html and a few other recipes....

[iddee]

Highlandsfreedom 16 lb. of honey should be a bit more than 5 quarts. Add 5 gallon of water and you have over 6 gal. total. How large is your carboy? I've never seen one that big.

[Highlandsfreedom]

I have a 6.5 gal carboy used for wine.... I have 3, 5 gal. carboys and 2, 6.5 gal. ones  they also have a thing called a Demijohn  I want one really bad but I am trying to convince my wife she tells me I already make enough beer but.......

Here is a line for one...http://www.homebrewit.com/aisle/p/5160

[wfuavenger]

highlands, where are those recipes? I assume you are back from running! and is that you on the got mead forums?

[Rebecka]

Green Tea Mead.

Brew up 2.5 gallons of green tea. Being very careful not to over steep and get that awful bitter taste. Cool to room temp. Use the traditional sweet mead recipe less 2.5 gallons of water. If you use tannin in your mead, you can omit it with this recipe.

Coffee variation.

Brew a strong pot ( 12 cup coffee maker)  of a nice espresso roast coffee. The standard dry mead recipe is best here, again no tannin and I like champagne yeast for this one. This one produces a mead that has this amazing color I cant even begin to describe.

[wfuavenger]

How would you describe the taste on both of those?

[Rebecka]

The green tea mead has this nice light, almost fruity aroma and a similar taste. I am frequently asked what fruit I put in the mead when I serve it. The coffee mead, well thats just the best of both worlds. Coffee and Mead! I don't know any other way of describing it other than Coffee and Mead! I neglected to mention, you want to use a really good coffee. Lesser coffees like Maxwell House and the like will lack the body needed to really make this a nice mead. I have heard of people who used instant coffee and I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Mead is just far to sacred to risk  ;)

[Atomic]

Bada Bing!  Cherry Melomel

(2) 1gal. carboys
3 lbs. honey
5 lbs dark sweet cherries
Yeast of your choice

I use 1gal. carboys due to the ease of making small batches.

I split the honey and 1gal. of clean filtered water equally between each carboy.

I don't heat the honey to pastuerize.  It makes it a little harder to mix, but I don't like losing any of the honey aromatics and I haven't had any issues with infected batches.  It might be a little more difficulty if doing a larger batch. 

Add honey, yeast, and yeast nutrient if desired.  Shake well.  Apply airlocks.

Wash and pit the cherries, then freeze in Ziplock bags.  This breaks the cell walls to juice them.

Let ferment about 1 week.  Shake each carboy a couple of times each day during the first week to remove CO2 and oxygenate the must.

After 1 week, thaw the cherries, squish them up good while still in the bags, then add in equal parts to each carboy.

Let ferment another week or until fermentation begins to slow and most of the cherries have been bleached of their color and settled to the bottom.

Rack off into secondary.  Forget the batch exists and let sit for as long as you can bear it!  Don't forget to check your airlocks every now n' then so they don't go dry.

This makes about 1.5 gals.  My first batch was so delicious that it didn't make it into bottles!  Subsequent batches I have been able to control myself and found some green 6oz bottles that accept a traditional beer cap.  Maybe one day I'll get a corker.

This last batch I added a whole bourbon vanilla bean, with scraped seeds and bean body chopped.  It's still waiting in secondary.