Let's make some mead!

[Deleted]

We all know what is best in life... but food and drink comes pretty close to the top! I didn't dare to make a whole thread for barbaric/historic recipes in case I get carried out with the subject, so let's start from little, one thing at a time.

It's that time of year, as spring rolls by. Time to collect sap - that sugary nectar - from birch trees. Lovely stuff and often used for the base of making mead. Those, who cannot get their hands on any spring-time birch trees for collecting sap, can rely on honey or simple cane sugar.

MAKING MEAD!

You need

2 large pots

bottles (plastic ones with a roll-over lids are just great)

cloth for straining

funnel for bottling

Incredients

2 gallons(~7litres) of  Water      /OR  Birch sap

2 pounds of Honey                   /OR    2 pounds of Sugar.  (Try half cane sugar, half Farin sugar. Is good)

1/5 teaspoon of  Yeast   
raisins       (helps you to follow the process of making)

1 Lemon     (adds a lovely taste, but not at all essential.)

1/2cup (~1dl) flowers of Humulus lupulus - plant.  (This is purely traditional and not essential at all. also, likely hard to find unless you live in rural areas.)

Use live yeast. I know it may be hard to find and brewer specialists will tell you that dry yeast does the trick, but from experience I can tell that live yeast works the best!

Step 1.  Boil the water. Add honey/sugars and mix well.

Step 2.  Put Lemon juice+lemon peel(without white parts) and humulus flowers into a large pot. Pour in the hot sugary water mix. Let the mix cool down a bit.

Step 3. Wake up the sleeping yeast. In a small cup, mix the yeast together with a bit of sugar or honey. The yeast will soften and bubble.

Step 4. Add yeast to the pot of warm liquid mix. (a bit warmer than your hand)

Cover up the pot and let rest overnight in a warm place.

Next day

1. Strain the fermented liquid.

2. Take some bottles  and drop a few raisins into the bottles.

3. Bottle the liquid. Cover bottles with lids. 

The mead readies in room temperature in about 3 days. In fridge it takes about 7days, but gets better that way.

During the process, the raisins inside the bottles go up and down like a lava-lamp. If this doesn't happen, you know something went wrong in the making. When the raisins have all settled on top of the mead, you know it is ready for drinking.

Note! The pressure in the bottles will grow during the process. It is good to leave the lids of the bottles a little loose, so you can hear from the whistling when you need to let some pressure out.

Mead preserves in a fridge for about a week.

It is not very highly alcoholic. We here in Finland give it for the kids to drink (while adults drink vodka). Gets stronger the longer you wait for it, but the taste begins to fail after 7 days of making.

You can create your own flavors by choosing your own additions! Try spices like cinnamon and gloves etc.

 

[zarono]

Sounds good!!!

[deuce]

Back in '91, a good buddy of mine and myself had access to a large amount of crystallized honey. We used beer-yeast and bottled it all in glass bottles. Our first brewing venture. I happened to be looking toward the kitchen (where the bottles were boxed up) when most of them exploded. 

The gallon or so of mead that survived was excellent. Very dry and highly alcoholic. I haven't bought commercial mead that compares in the subsequent decades.

As I've said before, mead was the traditional drink of heroes and kings (in Europe).

[deuce]

A clip on the ancient usage of mead in Europe and elsewhere:

[deuce]

Decent article:


www.techtimes.com/articles/135163/20160220/this-drink-of-the-vikings-and-gods-may-have-been-an-ancient-antibiotic.htm

However, the massive emphasis on Vikings is just idiotic. The Vikings/medieval Scandinavians -- just like other north European peoples such as the Celts, Slavs and Balts -- had a mead-drinking tradition stretching far back into prehistory. It's very likely that the Indo-European nomads, forebears of all the above, drank mead. Nomads don't tend to grow a lot of grain. Honey is where you find it. Honey is concentrated sugar and only has to be thinned with water to ferment. Grain is a bitch to malt. 

[Char-Vell]

Apr 7, 2016 11:03:24 GMT -5 zarono said:

Sounds good!!!

Did you ever sample any of Bob's mead?

[zarono]

Aug 11, 2017 15:02:36 GMT -5 Char-Vell said:

Apr 7, 2016 11:03:24 GMT -5 zarono said:

Sounds good!!!

Did you ever sample any of Bob's mead?

Yep, heady stuff! 

[Char-Vell]

I intend to try out some "pro" brewed mead from the liquor store, but I balk at spending what is usually a pretty substantial price for something I might end up pouring out.

[deuce]

Aug 13, 2017 8:06:36 GMT -5 Char-Vell said:

I intend to try out some "pro" brewed mead from the liquor store, but I balk at spending what is usually a pretty substantial price for something I might end up pouring out.

I would do some research first. In my experience, the commercial ones are too sweet. Try to find one that is described as "very dry".

The fact of the matter is, mead is an alcoholic beverage using honey as the sugar/food for the yeast. In that sense, it's no more limited than alcoholic beverages that use malted barley, for instance. Think of the vast variety in flavor of barley-derived drinks. Another example would be all of the craft ciders coming out now that are dry/sour/bitter.

The mead I made 20+yrs ago had just a hint of honey to it because we pushed the yeast to the limit alcohol-wise and we let it age. Several other people -- who had tasted commercial mead and weren't impressed -- liked it.  As I said, you'll need to do your research.