Making Mead

[dc59]

Hey boys and girls I just bought a book titled "Making Mead" the other day and is proving to be an enjoyable read so far. Plus the method doesn't seem too bad to be honest.

Just wondering if anyone with some experience at brewing meads can give me any advice. My only question I have so far is where you go to get honey like 'Acacia blossom honey' or 'Clover Honey', and can the honey found in supermarkets be used to make successful (ie, drinkable/enjoyable) meads.

I'll have to check on some of the HBS for unusual yeasts. Though one of the recipes uses champagne yeast which most places sell ans the Ale Mead just calls on a brewing yeast, so I imagine any ale yeast would be sufficient. Not sure where you'd find Steinberg or Sauternes yeast.

Either way it should be fun, any advice in regard to honey or any other general tips are very much appreciated.

Dave.

 

[barls]

go to www.gotmead.com and start reading mate its a wealth of info mate other than that have fun and try you local health food store for honey. also try here http://www.beekeepers.com.au/2.htm

 

[matti]

I thinking of getting that book.
All I know of Mead is that it is called many things around the world and different type of "hunny" is used.
It is called Sima in Finland and I recall my dad getting caught in the customs with two cases of it in the boot.
The custom guys confiscated one case, smiled and said. "one case only"!

I bet they went home and enjoyed it later.

What little I know about mead is that it takes 6 months before it is good to drink.

 

[beernography]

I made 2 batches of mead years ago. One came out drinkable, it had an insipid honey flavour and a strong alcoholic afterburn, what I would imagine moonshine to taste like.

I added apple juice to the other one and it was rank. Still choked it back mixed with lemon cordial!

 

[dc59]

Thanks Barls both sites look like they'll get plenty of use.

Yeah matti from what I understand so far (which is very little) is that there are lots of different versions of mead some similar to ales while a lot are closer to wines than beers. So the ones which use wine styled yeast inparticular will probably take awhile to mature.

Ps I put this topic in the commonground area cause I wasn't sure where else it fit in, hope moderators are ok with it.

Dave

 

[dc59]

Good to see you didn't waste it, despite what your commonsense would of been saying.

For the drinkable version you made, was it just common household honey you used?

 

[beernography]

Oh yeah...it was bush honey. My dad had bee hives. It tasted a lot stronger than shop honey so I reckon you would want to try and get some stinky wild stuff.

 

[AndrewQLD]

Yet again I have been tempted to branch out to another "hobby", I wish you guys would stop stimulating my interest <_< .
Being in Bundaberg, getting any kind of honey except store bought stuff is impossible so I googled and came up with this mob The Honey Farm for honey supplies.

They have quite a range but I'm not sure how the prices rate. Anyway, thanks again. I'm looking forward to my first Mead.

Andrew

 

[earle]

Andrew, up here in Proserpine we have a bloke with bees that the farmers (cane I think) pay to bring his hives onto their farms for pollination. He sells the honey as well. You've got a bit of cane down that way as well so I wonder if there is a similar honey bloke.

 

[SpillsMostOfIt]

I've been using exclusively supermarket honey to date, because I expect it will be well filtered and pasteurised, which works for me because I don't want to boil it and possibly lose some of its flavour. It's also the cheapest I could find in my lazy search of honey sources.

It's good fun, but an exercise in patience. The aforementioned gotmead site is a useful resource.

 

[AndrewQLD]

Andrew, up here in Proserpine we have a bloke with bees that the farmers (cane I think) pay to bring his hives onto their farms for pollination. He sells the honey as well. You've got a bit of cane down that way as well so I wonder if there is a similar honey bloke.

Sounds promising, I'll have a look around, maybe the local markets might have someone. Thanks for that.

SpillsMostOfIt Posted Today, 08:08 AM
I've been using exclusively supermarket honey to date, because I expect it will be well filtered and pasteurised, which works for me because I don't want to boil it and possibly lose some of its flavour. It's also the cheapest I could find in my lazy search of honey sources.

It's good fun, but an exercise in patience. The aforementioned gotmead site is a useful resource.

Ok, I was under the assumption that the supermarket honeys were blended and a little coarse for Mead making, I thought you needed a specific strain and preferably not gum tree honey. If you getting good results with store bought stuff I might try that first, any particular brand?



Cheers
Andrew

 

[SpillsMostOfIt]

Ok, I was under the assumption that the supermarket honeys were blended and a little coarse for Mead making, I thought you needed a specific strain and preferably not gum tree honey. If you getting good results with store bought stuff I might try that first, any particular brand?

Home mead makers are just as opinionated as home brewers, I think... I'm both, so make up your own mind.

An apiarist told me that bees have a daily flight range of something less than 3km, so I don't understand how you would get reasonable quantities of Australian honey that doesn't contain anything derived from gums of some sort. I visited Maxwell's winery in McLarenvale earlier in the year and was told that the blander the honey the better, which is consistent with cheap and so a strategy I am happy to embrace.

I'd suggest making as small a batch as you can reasonably manage - I use a fresh wort jerry can to make up ~10litre batches (finished).

For my 'base honey', I have used Capilano and both the major chains' home brand (which I *think* is Capilano anyhow) simply because it was the cheapest I could find. In my very first batch, I added a kilogram of an 'organic rainforest' honey - the brand of which I forget. I used a small quantity of yellow box in one I bottled this week and it was okay.

I've probably disguised any small differences in the honey itself with all the other crap I've added as flavourings - I'm yet to make a straight honey mead. Maybe that will be my fifth batch...

 

[dc59]

The book "Making Mead" recommends single blossom honeys, inparticular clover honey which fortunately happens to be one of the most common. This is because clover honey and some of the others don't need as long to mature.

Heather honey which has a very strong honey taste is supposedly really good but will need ages (~8 years) to mature into a really good mead (much longer than I'm prepared to wait).

 

[///]

Aussie honeys from Eucalypts got a real slapping and stemmed from poor quality imports years back.

have made a few and they go down well. Just dont make with watermelon, made paint peel off walls....

good yeast and nutrient and away you go.

Scotty

 

[Airgead]

Clover honey...no Eucalyptus... huumm.. sounds like the Acton and Duncan book.

In truth, Eucalypt honeys make perfectly good meads. I use them all the time. Ironbark is great. Yellow and Whit Box make fantastic meads. Just about any good honey you can buy will make a nice mead and they all add diferent flavours. Experiment. I even made a mead out of some weird honey an apiarist friend pulled out of a hive that had been neglected for 5 years.. thick and black more like treacle than honey. But it made a very interesting mead.

If you are new to mead than start with fruit meads (melomels) first as they mature faster so you can learn quicker. Any of the berry fruits go very well in a mead and are a good place to start. As someone said, use nutrient. You'll probably come across the boil/no boil controversy at some point. I'm firmly in the no boil camp others are just as firmly in the boil camp. Whatever works for you.


Oh... and judging by the quality of the Maxwell meads, if they advise using a bland honey, do just the opposite. In all my meadmaking I have always found that a nice strong honey leads to a meads with nice flavours. A bland honey leads to a bland mead.

Cheers
Dave

 

[mickoz]

I've made a few meads. Usually using Orange Blossum honey that I pick up from a local wholesaler (Gaganis) for around $20 for 3KG. Typically I will use 6KG to make around 5 Gallons. I aim for a OG of around 1.130 and ferment with good old US-56, this gives a pretty sweet mead (a little like a sweet sherry but thicker). Very nice if you can leave it sit long enough to be truly ready (6 -12 months).
Make sure you add some yeast nutrient (DAP) as honey doen't provide nutrients that yeasts need for healthy growth.

Time can often make a bad mead into a good mead. Let it sit long enough and it will probably taste alright if not pretty damn good.

Mick