Mead is one of the first alcohols made by man. It is an alcoholic beverage created by fermenting honey with water, sometimes with various fruits, spices, grains, or hops. The alcoholic content ranges from about 8% ABV to more than 20%; ours usually comes out at 12-16%
Naked Mead Recipe:
- 12-15 pounds of honey (Not grocery store honey! Honey straight from an apiary)
- One package of wine yeast (We usually use EC11-18)
- Distilled water (You can buy distilled water or simply leave your water out overnight)
Other Needs:
- One carboy with lid/airlock
- Large pot
- Large spoon
- bowl
How to make mead:
1. 24 hours before making mead, make sure your carboy is clean and sterilized, and then fill about 75-80%
with tap water, cover carboy and let sit.
2. We musk our honey (some mead makers prefer not to). Musking the honey helps to remove any impurities and any other things that may be in it (Like dead bee parts). When you buy straight from the apiary, the honey is unprocessed, and in our opinion best musked.
To musk honey, simply put it in a large pot, add about four cups of water, and simmer. NEVER let it boil! You will ruin the honey if it boils. It should be allowed to heat up to the point that it is bubbling, not boiling. Once it starts to bubble, a "scum" will appear on the top; it should be carefully removed (the scum is the wax, bee parts etc)
Put the removed "scum" in a bowl (We are going to use a bit of it later)
Generally musking takes about 30-45 minutes.
The above pic shows the honey with 4 cups of water on the stove
In these two pics we are removing the "scum"
3. Once the musking is done, the pot of musked honey can be poured into the carboy with the distilled water.
4. It is now time to activate the yeast; in a small bowl add one cup of tepid water, the yeast and a teaspoon of the liquid from the honey scum you set aside.
5. Once the water/honey in the carboy cools to room temperature the bowl of activated yeast can be added to it.
6. Securely put the lid and airlock on the carboy. Put the carboy in a warm (but not hot!) location.
7. The carboy should be turned slightly once a week. Wait about a year and then bottle. Wait several more years before drinking for best mead :)
A Few Points:
- The better the honey the better the mead. Cheap crap honey makes cheap crappy mead.
- Make sure everything is crazy clean! If things are not clean/sterilized it can ruin an entire batch of mead! Moldy mead sucks
- You don't need all the chemicals/yeast nutrients etc.
- If you want to make a flavoured mead you can add spices/fruit etc. Fresh fruit has "wild yeast", which can totally mess up your mead. We have found using an organic juice works better and is safer (We usually use 2-3 containers of organic juice- simply replace some of the water with juice). You are looking at spending $50-$75 on the honey, so you don't want to mess it up!
- The more honey you use the higher the alcohol content
- The yeast is "dead" when the air locks in no longer "bubbling". If mead is bottled too early it can blow its cork, which sucks! Active yeast could even make a bottle explode! If in doubt, you can use a yeast neutralizer
- A full sized carboy makes 26-30 bottles of mead
