Saturday was AHA Mead Day, so BOV decided to do the right thing and—you guessed it—make a mead. Though I have been home brewing beer for years, this was only my second batch of mead, but it is so incredibly simple to make I figured there was no reason not to go ahead and document it for you, my loyal readers. “Mead?”, you say- let me provide a wee background on the subject, since it seems so many are unfamiliar with this honey-wine, which at one time was held in the highest esteem but has since fallen into relative obscurity. Heck, even the lady I bought the honey from thought I was making ‘meat’ until I clarified.

Beverage historians disagree on what humankind’s first fermented beverage was. There is some evidence to support both beer & wine, but mead is certainly a good candidate. In his book, The Compleat Mead Maker, author Ken Schramm makes the case for mead, and it is compelling. For example, archæological evidence for honey-gathering certainly predates the domestication of barley or grapes. All one really needs, in truth, is some watered-down honey and a container- if left alone, it will probably start to ferment. Mr. Schramm posits the Magic Bag Theory in support of this argument, imagining a hunting party starting out, possibly robbing a hive along the way for extra sustenance, and returning with the meat & the mead. As compared with the accidental discovery of beer (which requires accidental malting) this seems much easier by far. Mead is clearly present in Classical Egyptian & Hellenic society, and by the midiæval period, monasteries are most certainly at the forefront of apiculture (or bee-keeping), using the honey for both mead and of course the beeswax for candles. Unlike grapes and barley, however, scaling-up honey production to commercial levels is difficult, which partly explains why wine and beer eventually eclipsed mead-making. Today, small meaderies are popping up all over again, but in the interval, only slavic and african cultures have continuously prepared fermented honey beverages.

Meads come in many different styles, just like beer, and the best part is that they all have cool names. For example, a strong mead is called sack mead, while a mead that incorporates any amount of malted barley (and/or hops) is called a braggot. Spiced meads are known as metheglins, and different kinds of fruits lead to cysers (apples), pyments (grapes) or, as I made, melomels (other fruits, in this case, raspberries). See- now you’re hooked, aren’t you? Imagine showing up at your friend’s house for dinner with a bottle of home-made capsicumel, mead with hot peppers: you’ve got an immediate topic for conversation.

So, let’s dive in. To begin with, you’ll need some high-quality honey. If it comes in a plastic bear, it’s not what you’re looking for- you really want raw, unpasturized (but filtered) honey, as one might buy at a farmer’s market. I hit the one on Bidwell, and after perusing the selections, decided on Erdle Farms, who were offering some nice variatals (based on what plants the bees are collecting honey from). For a three-gallon batch, I decided 8 pounds would do the trick. Besides honey, you’ll need some of the equipment pictured below:

On the left is my stainless steel kettle, 5 gal capacity. In front of the honey, you’ll find some the the other necessary ingredients. I chose Lalvin FC-1118 yeast, which is good for producing sweeter meads. You can also see two types of yeast adjuncts, one a yeast energizer and the other yeast nutrients- useful because unlike unfermented beer (wort), unfermented mead (must, the same term is used in winemaking) doesn’t provide some of the amino acids, vitamins and nitrogen that makes yeast happy. In the back, that funky-looking thing is a refractometer, used to measure the sugar content of a liquid. Finally, you’ll need a good thermometer, a big spoon, and unpictured, chemicals for cleaning and sanitizing all your equipment- like the big plastic fermentation bucket on the right. There is also a packet of pectic enzyme there, which comes into play as a result of using fruit.

The first and most important step is to clean everything that the mead with come into contact with, and to sanitize the fermentation bucket. For cleaning, I typically use PBW, but any non-detergent cleanser will do. For sanitizing, a bleach solution works, but I typically use No-Rinse sanitizer. I put 1.5 gallons of filtered tapwater into the boiling kettle, and the rest into the fermenter. Next, I brought the water up to a boil, cut the heat, and began adding honey. If you don’t stir right away, you can (carefully) ladle hot water into the honey jars, the better to get all that sugar out. Once all eight pounds of honey were added, I stirred and checked the temp. The idea here is to basically pasteurize the honey, so holding it at around 160 for 20 min or so is all you need. Towards the end, I added the yeast nutrients and energizer. Then, I carefully poured the hot honey water into the cold fermenter water, which brought the temp down closer to a proper yeast pitching temperature. In order to bring it the rest of the way down, to about 70, I stuck it into my homemade fermentation chiller, but you can also just wait, or use your wort chiller if you have one. The critical thing to remember is, again, keeping things highly sanitized- once the temp falls below about 130, there are all sorts of things that would love to grow in that very sweet must- you want to keep them out.

(This is my homemade fermentation chiller- it’s all open right now)

When the temp fell, after another few hours, I simply re-hydrated the yeast according to the instructions on the packet, tossed it in, sealed the lid, and added the fermentation lock, filled with a little vodka to inhibit any bacterial growth there. My refractometer reading was 19.6 Brix, or 1.078, meaning a potential alcohol level of around 10% if it finishes dry- I’m hoping for some residual sweetness, so I expect a little lower. Fermentation activity began in about 24 hours- below is a shot of it resting in my basement, alongside the Mutant Beer which I posted on some time ago (that’s another saga for me to tackle here at some point.)

So, what about the raspberries? I’ve been harvesting them from the canes alongside my house since the summer began, and freezing them- I have about 5 pounds by now. After the primary fermentation has ceased, I’ll transfer the mead over to a glass carboy, and add the raspberries and the pectin enzyme, to reduce haze. I’ll let those commingle for 2-3 months, and then bottle it. Once bottled, the mead should repose for another 3 months or so, at minimum- longer is even better. Voila, raspberry mead: I’m calling this batch WNYMead. Ha ha. Look for the follow-up post on that, oh, sometime next year.

So, as you see, mead is fantastically easy to make- though in contrast to beer, not ready to drink any near as soon. This is what makes it sort of a nice thing to interleave with beer batches- some short-term rewards and some long-term investments as well. I urge you to give it a shot!