Mead Help

[dico]

Hi Guys,

Im new to AussieHomeBrewer and home brewing in general, I have done 3 homebrews myself, but they have all been from those cans of Coopers that you find in the supermarket, anyway they all turned out terrible, and had an awful yeasty taste and aroma about them, and they never actually got started fermenting very well in the first place.

Anywhoo... During my recent visit to Ireland, me and my family decided to take a day out at Bunratty Castle, which is quite famous for its "Bunratty Mead", having never tried Mead before I was rather sceptical about it and took my first sip from a hand fashioned stone cup, the Mead ran smoothly down my throat and delivered a lovely sweet taste, followed by a sort of wine like light alcoholic zing... It was fantastic. At this point I parted with the best of a 20 euro note and bought two bottles of Bunratty Mead from the man, who then informed me that Mead was the drink of choice of the High Kings of Ireland, and was also traditionally used to toast the Bride and Groom on their wedding night, thus being nicknamed the "Honey-Mooners Drink". I thanked him for such information and made on my way, the bottles survived the trip around Ireland and England, but when they arrived into Australia, they were soon consumed by me and my friends who all appreciated the fine taste so very much.

Now I am left with a problem... The Mead was so lovely, that myself, my family and my friends all wich to partake in more Mead drinking, I could have more bottles shipped here but the cost is outragous. My friend suggested that we make our own, I said it was a silly idea and that I would just make a complete hash of it all like I usually do and someone would probably end up in the emergency room with some sort of bacterial poisoning on my behalf.

However the idea dwelled in my thoughts and I did some research into it, it dosent sound too complex at all. So I have decided that "Yes" I will make some home brewed Mead... But I will do it damned well this time and make sure that everything works out and I cover all factors, to ensure a top quality product that everyone will enjoy. This is where this forum comes into the mix, I am hoping that I can achieve the said results above, with your help.

So I have a few questions to start you all off:

What sort of recipe should I use? There are so many different ones, and I would like one that yeilds good results, but is also accessible and understandable to a complete newbie.

Can I use any honey? Or should I aim to use all natural honeys, I have access to all natural redgum honey for $5 for 2.4 kg's.

Is my Coopers MicroBrewery brewing barrel sufficient? It is plastic with a tap and an airlock, and holds upto 30 litres.

What yeast would give the best results? And where can I get this from?

Are 640ml plastic PET screwlid bottles sufficient for storage?

What temperatures should the brewing commence at? My house is seriously cold, could I counteract this with a heating band and some insulation (ie a sleepingbag)?

If all of these questions seem very noobish, please do not flame me, like I said I am a complete noob to this and do generally make a hash of things that I dont thoughourly understand.

Thank you for your help,

Mark

 

[pdilley]

Hey Mark,

Great post, you're sellin' the idea of Mead to the masses!

Its late so I'll see about setting out some time tomorrow to respond properly unless Dave or others can chime in and start answering some of your questions.

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[dico]

Thanks a lot Pete,

I really appreciate the help, I saw your other JAO Mead recipe post, and thought to myself wow that looks like a great recipe, but then I was saddened to learn that the Mead can take upto 9 months to produce... Especially in my old, cold and creakey house. Unfortunatley this is unfiasable for my palate as my cravings for delicious Mead grow stronger by the minute.

A bit off topic, but my Mum came home from Ireland sick, and I mixed her up a hot toddy with:

150ml Boiled Water
60ml Bunratty Mead
30ml Ballantines Finest
1/2 Stick of Cinnamon
1/2 Squeezed Lemon Juice

The concotion went down well and soothed her throat, honey is such a wonderful product, it has many antibacterical and soothing qualities about it, we even put honey into the dogs water at the animal shelter, when they develop "kennel cough".

Other studies have shown that honey was used to aid in the healing of cuts and wounds in ancient Greece, and also that Redgum and Jarrah Honey both work very well at reducing and/or curing notorious Golden Staph infections. The honey bee is the only insect that produces a sustance that humans commonly cunsume...

So however you look at it really, Honey is wonderful stuff, and best of all its natural!

~Mark

 

[bum]

Mmmm...bee vomit. YUM!

 

[Airgead]

Hi Dico

its a slow day here at work so I'll start...

So I have a few questions to start you all off:

What sort of recipe should I use? There are so many different ones, and I would like one that yeilds good results, but is also accessible and understandable to a complete newbie.

Can I use any honey? Or should I aim to use all natural honeys, I have access to all natural redgum honey for $5 for 2.4 kg's.

Is my Coopers MicroBrewery brewing barrel sufficient? It is plastic with a tap and an airlock, and holds upto 30 litres.

What yeast would give the best results? And where can I get this from?

Are 640ml plastic PET screwlid bottles sufficient for storage?

What temperatures should the brewing commence at? My house is seriously cold, could I counteract this with a heating band and some insulation (ie a sleepingbag)?

OK. Recipe. The answer is - it depends. You can do just straight honey and water or add fruit (melomel) or spices (metheglyn) or apple juice (cyser) or grape juice (pyment). Generally straight meads take longer to age so they aren't the best choice for learning as it takes so long to work out whether you did it right or not. I just bottles up a boysenberry that fermented out quickly and is pretty damn drinkable after a couple of weeks in the bottle (though it will get better with age). Look for the boysenberry melomel thread here on the forum. I think I posted the recipe there. if not I'll look it up at home and post it for you. BP swears by his JAO mead for beginners and there's a long thread on that one here as well.

Honey - any honey will do. Especially if you ad a lot of fruit. Having said that though, the better the honey the better the mead. Get some good stuff. I really like the darker honeys. they take a little longer to age but i think its worth it. Get some good local varietal honey from a local market or hippy food shop and you will be right. You are best avoiding the blended supermarket honeys as they have very little flavour. Some sources will tell you that eucalyptus honeys can't be used for mead. They are wrong. That's a myth that grew up in England. Apparently someone exported a bunch of Australian honeys over there a few years ago but didn't treat them right so they tasted pretty off. The Brits thought that was what the honeys were supposed to taste like. I use eucalyptus all the time and it makes fantastic mead 9pretty much all they honey you get here in oz is eucalyptus of one kind or another anyway).

I use pretty much the same type of fermenter (bunnings water barrel) for my 30l batches. Once fermented you will want to age in something a little less permeable to oxygen so bottle age or bulk age in a glass carboy.

Yeast wise I use wine yeasts. Your local brew shop should have some. A champagne yeast is fairly neutral and good for a first batch or you can play around with the various types to see what flavours they give. BP may tell you to use bread yeast. Please ignore him. He's got some good ideas but that isn't one of them h34r: (sorry BP couldn't resist :beer: )

I wouldn't use PET for a mead. You will be aging this for months if not years. PET will not keep the oxygen away properly for long term storage. You really want to use glass bottles and either corks or crown seals.

Temp wise it depends on the yeast you use. They will all have a recommended temp range. If you use a heating band, you really want to team that with a thermostat so it doesn't get too hot. Those things tend to make your brew way too hot and you get off flavours. That could be why your initial beers didn't taste so good by the way. I use a heater pad during winter and the thermostat lets me set it exactly where I want it. I have a braggot sitting on it now and its set to 18c.

Hope this helps.

Cheers
Dave

 

[breadenhound]

You should check out the Basic Brewing podcasts. James and Steve go through some interesting pointers on mead and also whip up a simple recipe. It is right down the bottom of the page, marked April 2006 - Making Mead:

Basic Brewing Video

Also check out the audio podcasts, as there are a few shows on Mead that might interest you.

 

[DJbrewer]

Hi,

Link to another thread by a newbie (me) about making mead

Heaps of good help in that thread.
using teh small-batch principle: I have two meads on the go in a cold house... (my first meads)
i don't think they will ever go clear... but it has only been four weeks.

 

[pdilley]

There you go Mark you got a lot of great information already. Sorry to tell you Mead isn't Beer and while Beer ferments and is drunk quickly and normally doesn't do well in long aging, Mead is the exact opposite and will stand up to time and in all but rare cases get better and better the older it gets.

Don't mind Dave He and I agree on everything except the choice of one yeast in one single recipe. But its our defining point of our relationship so I never wanted to tell him that somewhere in someone's closet or a book there-a-bouts, this person talked about all the receipts (recipes) he had sent into him from across the countries showing what was commonly in use for fermenting Meads "There are some that put either Yeast of Beer, or Leaven of bread into it, to make it work....." seems to strike a cord or is that a quote. I found all yeast forms used in recipes collected through the ages before ending up in Digby's book. Ale, Bread, Wine, Wild, and fresh inoculations and putting Meads into vessels with yeast already in the wood. But I never had the heart to tell him h34r: because I cherish what we have so much ... Its singular item the chew on that will set us into our deepest old ages as grumpiest old men

As you now know, trying to reproduce Bunratty Mead isn't going to be as easy your first Mead out of the fermenter. Honeys have over 100 flavour constituents all in varying degrees of levels which makes it difficult to match flavours from one honey to the next. You would need to know which varietal is used in Bunratty and then understand that a varietal while being predominately one type of nectar, that other nearby nectars and pollens are also collected and used by the bees that gather them.

That said you can make some pretty damn good Meads that might even put the ol' Bunratty to the test.

Meads are the easiest thing you'll make, quick as anything to put together into the fermenter. With more scientific SNA-1/3rd sugar break management you can speed up the primary fermentation time and bring down the aging time but we are still talking longer times than you would prefer if you are used to drinking fermented beer in a month or less of making it.

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[sinkas]

This thread woudl have been much funnier if the title was I Mead Help

get it!

 

[bum]

This thread woudl have been much funnier if the title was I Mead Help

get it!

 

[JonnyAnchovy]

Bit bored tonight, Bum?

 

[dico]

Guys,

Thank you all ever so much for the abundance of information, and also clearing up the questions that I had. Sorry that im replying quite late, it has been a rather hectic day to say the least, the family decided today to add another puppy to the household, a 7 week old Kelpie X Staffy, I got the choice of the litter and decided upon the chubby little brindle/golden coloured female... I also won the delightful honour of naming her. I decided on a suitable name: "Honey", because of her colour and my new found choice of favourite alcoholic drink.

So heres a toast to the newest member of the family... "Dammit my Mead mug is still empty..."

Anyways, I have decided to do two things:

The first will be to give BP's JAO Mead a whirl, as I cant resist its fundamental simplicity and traditional process. For the JAO Mead im planning on doing two of the five litre Demijohns, as I figure that well if it is going to take upto nine months to age nicely, I might aswell make ten litres, put it out of the way and forget about it. My only issue with this is, that my house is that cold, that it currently drops down to close to 4 degrees overnight inside of the house (its old, with no insulation or good windows), what should I do to solve this?

My second thing to do will be to make one of the other recipes, perhaps the boysenberry melomel as Airgead mentioned earlier, I will do this in my 30 litre Coopers barrel and see how that goes.

Im going to plan up a shopping list for both of the projects and post it up on here before I go out and buy everything, so you guys can review it and make sure im getting the right stuff.

Anyways im off for a Hoegaarden,

Cheers!

~Mark

 

[Airgead]

My only issue with this is, that my house is that cold, that it currently drops down to close to 4 degrees overnight inside of the house (its old, with no insulation or good windows), what should I do to solve this?

You have a few options for simple temp control. One is to take your fermeters to bed with you overnight. That one usually doesn't go down too well with the womenfolk so I'll move on to option 2.

Make up a big polystyrene box out of those foam boxes you get fruit in. You local grocers should have dozens of them out the back. Cut and tape pieces together to make a box and lid big enough to put your fermenters in. Make it pretty thick and minimise any gaps. Duct takpe stick form together really well. So does liquid nails. Once the yeast gets going they should generate their own heat so all you need to to is warm them while fermentation starts. You can use hot water bottles, heat packs that you put on sprains, big jugs of hot water, a low wattage incandescent bulb, whatever. You can even use the heat belt you already have. One heat belt in a sealed box will keep several fermenters warm.

Option three is to go a little more sophisticated and add a thermostat to the mix. You can get really nice digital thermostats with temp probes from mashmaster or craftbrewer (see logos on the top of every page) for not a whole lot of $. I use one. They are great (no affiliation etc etc). That will let you set the temp of your fermentation exactly and will give a much better result.

Options four plus are just variations on the same theme with increasing cost and mostly involve more sophisticated boxes (like an old fridge that you can use to cool fermentations in the summer as well).

Cheers
Dave

 

[pdilley]

Another stepping stone would be submersible aquarium heater. New ones can be completely submerged in liquid. Thus gives you three options. Submersed directly in a fermenter - this requires a top that can be made to accept the heater trough it and then sealed as well as santising the heater before placing it inside. The second is a heated bath in another container such as a plastic fruit washing container or any container that you can fill with water - the fermenter(s) is placed in the bath and is warmed slowly up to the water temperature. The third is using the heater in a large jar inside the styrofoam container. The jar slowly heats the air inside which then heats the fermenter(s).

The first is direct heating, second indirect and slower heat transfer, third slowest heat transfer.

$20 gets you a heater and it has a built in thermostat to turn it off when it reaches temperature.

Cons would be the temperature setting dial is not accurate on some. The solution is to use a thermometer to double check what temperature its actually heating the test water to before using it for your first fermentation.

Another con would be they don't normally go to very low temperatures which is not much of a con so long as you can get near 18 to 20 C then that is low enough.

The pro is you can still use it if and when you go get a dedicated temperature controller like the TempMate. When you do you can just set your fishtank heater to maximum and let the TempMate turn it on and off as needed to maintain the temperature you dial in. This means it can be used at very low temperature ranges that the built in controller was not built for.

And JAO can be as short as 2 to 3 months if you can maintain the proper temperatures. As soon as fruit drops is good enough in most cases to taste a sample. If you like it as is have at it. It wont do as well with the years of aging as with normal Meads. I'm just slack Mine fermented at a decent temperature. Ive just been keeping it at ambient house temperatures since then. I have a spare heater and also a dedicated brew fridge with TempMate control so theres no excuse

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[Airgead]

Another stepping stone would be submersible aquarium heater.

I've looked at using them a few times (back before I had the full temp control setup) but could never find one that would go low enough. They are designed for tropical fish which want the water in the 25ish range. From memory some would adjust down to 20 but I never found one that would go to the 16-18 where I brew ales. And yes, the adjustment is pretty inaccurate.

Coupled with a thermostat though its not a bad option.

If he already has a heater belt though, I'd say use that and just add a cheap thermostat to keep the temp under control.

Cheers
Dave

 

[pdilley]

I've looked at using them a few times (back before I had the full temp control setup) but could never find one that would go low enough. They are designed for tropical fish which want the water in the 25ish range. From memory some would adjust down to 20 but I never found one that would go to the 16-18 where I brew ales. And yes, the adjustment is pretty inaccurate.

Coupled with a thermostat though its not a bad option.

If he already has a heater belt though, I'd say use that and just add a cheap thermostat to keep the temp under control.

Cheers
Dave

Alright Dave,

You made me crack open one of my brand new heaters in the box since the working ones are in the shed in the brew fridge.

These heaters go down to 16C and up to 34C with the built in thermostat. This one is actually pretty accurate even though the set gauge is analogue. Its fully sealed and submersible. $20 from the local fish nutter up the road. RESUN model SUNLIKE-300. Bit overkill in wattage but up to temp in no time at all.

It will raise 1 Litre of water 10 degrees C in 139 seconds!
heheh 2 Minutes and 19 seconds.

It will raise 1 Gallon of water (3.79 Litres = The JAO standard batch size) 10 degrees C in 542 seconds, which is 9 minutes and 2 seconds.

It will raise a standard 23 Litre brew batch size 10 degrees C in 3,210 seconds, or 53 minutes.

and of course they come in 100W and 150W and 200W sizes, etc. Just that they cost the same from the fish nutter no matter the wattage so I just got the 300W which is the most watts for the same $20.



Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[breadenhound]

Sounds like these heaters are designed to boil your fish in no time at all!

 

[pdilley]

Best of all with tropical fish you dont need to add salt, just a squeeze of lemon.

The 300W is longest in size and will stick out of a 5L glass demijohn so smaller Wattage is better if you want to use it in one of them. Except for JAOs, my main Mead fermenter of late is a 60 litre size one so I'm set to try the RESUN on its own thermostat on a batch as a trial run if the brew fridge is otherwise engaged with beer on my next run.

I really should put that 14kg of Ironbark honey down with D-47 yeast and a SNA-1/3 Sugar Break fermentation management shedule. Ive just been spending too much time building beer gear and making beer of late, time to return to my roots

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[dico]

Right,

Im going to fathom out some sort of foam box like structure and keep my demijohns in there, there should be some foam boxing flying around at work that I will use.

Pete im putting bread yeast in one demijohn and Dave im putting some wine yeast in the other demijohn, then ill taste them both and compare the differences.

Keep your eyes peeled for my shopping list as soon as I get some foam boxing from work, I do have one of those aquarium fish heater thingo's in the house, but its currently warming fish so I dont think the family will be too impressed if I "borrow" it for a while, knowing the current climate of my house, the fish will probably freeze...

Ill use the foam box system and a rubber heat band around the 2 demijohns and everything should be dandy!

In the meantime, does anyone know of a good place to buy mead in Perth? Or better yet does anyone want to sell me some handmade mead who lives in the Perth region?

Cheers,

Mark

 

[Airgead]

Alright Dave,

You made me crack open one of my brand new heaters in the box since the working ones are in the shed in the brew fridge.

These heaters go down to 16C and up to 34C with the built in thermostat. This one is actually pretty accurate even though the set gauge is analogue. Its fully sealed and submersible. $20 from the local fish nutter up the road. RESUN model SUNLIKE-300. Bit overkill in wattage but up to temp in no time at all.

That's pretty good. What brand? We used to breed bristlenose catfish so I've seen the odd tank heater or two in my time but not one that was controllable down to 16 (and not for $20 either).

I might investigate that for the ocasions where I have more fermenters going than I have room in the fridge. or when the fridge is lagering.

Cheers
Dave