Category Archives: Mead

It can be as simple as mixing honey and water then adding yeast. It’s sometimes called honey wine, and you can use a lot of your winemaking knowledge. But once you start, you’ll notice a whole world of possibilities.

The Beginnings Of A Beer-Like Mead Recipe

8 Replies

A quick list

Writing about the “beer mead” vs “wine mead” divide made me reconsider how I make my own mead. All my meads have been squarely in the wine-mead category, and it got me thinking about making my first beer-like mead. What would such a mead be like? How would I make it? To answer that, I made a list of all the things that came to mind when I thought about homebrewed beer:

malt
hops
specialty grains
low alcohol (compared to wine)
residual sweetness
boiling
irish moss
gypsum

A little more detail

Malt has got to be the number one defining ingredient for beer, but I’m not going to use it. There are fermented beverages made from malt and honey, called braggots, but that’s not really what I’m setting out to do. I want the approach to be reminiscent of beer, and the result to be “beer-esque.” Still, I’m making a 100% honey mead, so no malt.

Hops have become ubiquitous in beer, but this was not always so. A host of other herbs provided bitterness (heather, nettle, sage to name a few), flavoring (juniper, oregano, and more), and aroma (rosemary, lavender, …). I’m not sure I want a bitter mead, but I may use hops, sparingly, for flavor and aroma. I haven’t decided yet, and since hop flavor is usually extracted by boiling, it probably depends on my decision to boil.

I like the idea of using specialty grains like crystal malt, which is said to add sweetness, body, and aid in head retention. I want to avoid having to mash any grain, which is a seperate step that converts starches to sugars, so that limits my choices to: black patent malt, chocolate malt, crystal malt, and roasted barley.

A specific gravity of 1.075, 10% potential alcohol, would be low for wine and high for beer. I haven’t decided on a final target yet, but it’ll be around 1.075.

Maybe the crystal malt will add enough sweetness for my beer-like mead, or maybe I’ll have to stabilize and sweeten. I’ll probably wait until I know the final SG before I decide to sweeten the mead.

Boiling is necessary in homebrewing to extract bitterness and, to a lesser extent, flavor from hops. Since I don’t plan on making a bitter mead, the only reason I might need to boil is flavor extraction from hops. If I do boil, it’ll be for about ten minutes, not the hour or so that’s common in homebrewing. I’ve already made the case that such a short boil will not harm the mead, and it might lend a homebrewing feel to the process.

If I do boil, I’ll throw in some irish moss. It’s a clarifying agent, common in homebrewing, that’s added to the boil in the last 10 or 15 minutes.

I really don’t know what gypsum is supposed to do. It’s on the list because it’s in so many beer (and some mead) recipes. I’ll try to find out more about it before I finalize the recipe.

A recipe begins to take shape

So that narrows things down a little. I’ll be making a 100% honey mead with a starting SG around 1.075. I’ll use crystal malt, and maybe other specialty grains. I might boil, and I might use hops for flavor and/or aroma. If I do use hops, it’ll be at lower concentrations than with typical beers. If I boil, I’ll use irish moss. I haven’t decided on sweetening, and I’ll try to learn more about gypsum.

Update 6/15/2007 I’ve filled in this outline to make a beer-like mead recipe.

Update 10/28/2008 Some time after I made the case that a short boil does no harm, I concluded an experiment to test the effects of boiling on mead. After a carefully arranged double blind tasting, the results are in! Boiling does indeed weaken the aroma of mead, but may improve the body and smooth out the flavor.



Mead Styles: Should mead taste like wine? or beer?

14 Replies

Many meadmakers were first winemakers or homebrewers, and they have applied experience with wine or beer to the craft of making mead. From looking at the many mead recipes, in print and on the web, it seems they have formed cliques. What I call “beer-mead” recipes tend to call for boiling, gypsum, irish moss, and low (around 1.060) original gravities. These are all familiar to homebrewers, as is the occasional use of corn sugar to boost the OG. The use of sulfites, tannin, and maybe the no heat approach are more prevalent in “wine mead” recipes, and they usually have higher OGs. My simple mead recipe falls in the wine-mead category.

The extent of this beer-mead vs wine-mead divide became clear to me when I offered some of my own mead to a homebrewing friend. It was a three year old plain, still, sweet mead. He loved it and said the aroma made him want to “run outside and roll around in the grass,” but then he got a puzzled look and said, “I thought mead tasted more like beer.” It was the second time I got that reaction (the “like beer” reaction, not the “roll around in the grass” one), and it makes me think that these two cliques should mingle.

They can learn a lot more from each other than either of them realize because so much less is known about mead than beer or wine. Beer and wine have been important industries for some time, and there is extensive research about them. Though mead is an old beverage, there has been relatively little study of it. So while its perfectly natural for winemakers and homebrewers to bring their knowledge and experience with them when they start making mead, it’s easy for them to develop tunnel vision. When winemakers assert that mead is like wine and homebrewers insist that it is like beer, I think of the story about the blind men and the elephant.

I, for one, want to learn a lot more about mead before I start arguing over what it “should” be like.

Update 6/15/2007 I’ve thought about what a beer-like mead would be like, then I filled in some detail to make a recipe.



Making Mead: The controversy over boiling

5 Replies

It used to be pretty common for meadmakers to boil the honey-water mixture, but more and more are preparing their meads without heat. Ken Schramm makes a good case for the no-heat method in his The Compleat Meadmaker : Home Production of Honey Wine From Your First Batch to Award-winning Fruit and Herb Variations. Adherents of this method are taking aim at the older practice of boiling. They argue that there is no need to kill or suppress spoilage organisms because they can’t survive in honey anyway. Honey will last for years at room temperature without going bad, so I think they’re right about this. When they say that boiling, even briefly, will “ruin” honey or “drive off it’s delicate aroma,” I become more skeptical.

I’ve made mead both ways, and I just haven’t noticed that the no-boil or no-heat meads are any more aromatic. If there really is a difference in aroma between boiled and no-heat meads, then it’s too small a difference to notice in a casual way. So in February 2006 I started two 1-gallon batches of mead. I prepared them the same way except that one was boiled and one was not. When they’re ready to drink, and I don’t expect that before February 2009, I plan to have a blind tasting party. Maybe we’ll notice something. Maybe not.

Suppose that there isn’t a difference in aroma. If you don’t need to boil for sanitation, why boil at all? You might want to boil for clarity. Simple meads (just honey, water, yeast, nutrient, and acid) will not clear on their own to my satisfaction. I’ve written about fining with bentonite, and that’s one way to clear your mead. Another is to boil the honey water mixture. I have found that a short boil, about five to ten minutes, will clear mead just as effectively as bentonite.

So my current thinking, and this may change with the results of the tasting party or other new information, is that a short boil does no harm and can be useful in clearing your mead. It is not necessary if you’d rather fine, if you’re not concerned about clarity, or if you think that your mead gets sufficiently clear on its own.

Update 10/28/2008 I ran a controlled experiment to test the effects of boiling. After a carefully arranged double blind tasting, the results are in! Boiling does indeed weaken the aroma of mead, but may improve the body and smooth out the flavor.

A Simple Mead Recipe: Rack to secondary

Leave a reply

Today’s the day. I waited until the yeast had fermented all the available sugar (here’s why), I prepared a bentonite slurry, and I set aside all morning so I’d have the time. Once I sanitized my equipment, added sulfite and the bentonite slurry to the 5-gallon carboy, I started my siphon.

Starting the siphon by sucking on the end of the siphon tube

It took me quite a while to get used to the idea of starting a siphon by sucking on the end of the siphon tube. People debated the topic in online forums, and discussed various gadgets and clever siphon-starting methods aimed at ever more antiseptic siphoning. Invariably some old timer would tell us that he’d been making wine, and starting his siphons by mouth, for decades and hadn’t had a problem. “Yeah, old timer,” I thought, “but in the meantime we’ve invented antibiotics, fluoridated our water, and learned the importance of washing our hands.” I think I’ve still got plenty of years ahead of me, but on this issue, I’ve become an old timer.

What changed my mind? Whatever I was afraid of getting into my mead (or wine or beer) would be adapted to conditions in my mouth: about 100 Fahrenheit (about 38 Celsius), non-alcoholic (most of the time), and pH neutral. Without warning, I would plunge these critters into an acidic, alcoholic liquid that was about 40F (22C) colder. Any that survived would be under severe and permanent stress. They wouldn’t be able to reproduce and spoil my mead. So I could relax and watch my mead meander into its new home.

Siphoning the mead from the primary fermenter, a 10-gallon Rubbermaid Brute container, into a 5-gallon glass carboy

The siphon went off without a hitch. Because I waited for the mead to ferment to dryness, I didn’t have CO2 coming out of solution and interrupting the siphon. Once I filled the 5-gallon carboy, I moved the end of the siphon hose into the 1-gallon jug (using a measuring cup to catch the still-flowing liquid while I transfered between the two). I came pretty close to filling both containers to the top. You never have the precise amount of mead (or wine or beer) to fill your containers, though, so it’s important to plan ahead.

A 5-gallon carboy filled to the top with mead, a 1-gallon jug that's not quite full, and two wine bottles filled with older mead that I'll use to top up

As you can see in the above photo, I was able to fill the 5-gallon carboy to the top. Not so the 1-gallon jug. The two wine bottles are filled with mead from older batches, and I’ll use them to top up the 1-gallon jug. Since I started with six gallons of liquid (one gallon of honey and five gallons of water), I knew that I’d need at most six gallons of capacity. I also knew that one container would not be completely full, so I needed to be ready for that. Since I make mead regularly, I had some bottles I could use to top up the 1-gallon jug. Another way to do it would be to have many different sized bottles handy, a 0.5-gallon jug, two wine bottles, and a beer bottle, for example. That would have left me with several full small containers. I’ve done it both ways, and either way works. You just don’t want to find yourself with too little capacity (like I would have if I only prepared the 5-gallon carboy) or no way to handle odd sizes (either with a collection of various sized containers or something to top up with).

You’ll still have a little bit left over. A cup or so. Usually just enough to fill a wine glass, and here again, proper planning is vital. I transfered the excess to a waiting wine glass. Raised it in salute to all those old timers I had silently ridiculed and … disposed of it 🙂

A Simple Mead Recipe: Fining with bentonite

3 Replies

When I rack the mead from it’s primary fermenter to a 5-gallon carboy, it will throw off a deposit of mostly dormant yeast. To separate the mead from this sediment, or lees as it’s called, I’ll have to rack again in a month or so. Since I’m going to have to rack again anyway, I’ve decided to fine the mead at this step. Fining clarifies the mead by adding something that combines with suspended or dissolved solids then quickly falls to the bottom of the container. The “something” I’m going to add is called bentonite, a type of clay that’s very good at removing protein from mead. I’ve waited as long as three years for some mead to clear on its own, and still not been satisfied. Bentonite has worked for me every time.

Ready to measure bentonite with 150 ml water in a measuring cup, bentonite powder in a jar, and measuring spoons.

Bentonite is usually sold in powdered form, and you need to sort-of-dissolve (hydrate) it in water first. It doesn’t dissolve, but if you mix it into hot water and let it sit overnight, it will form a usable slurry. The way to do this is to measure the right amount, in grams, and use 10-20X that amount of water, in milliliters, to hydrate it. What’s the right amount? I’ve found that advice varies a lot. I use 0.5 g/L. Since I’m racking to a 5-gallon carboy and 1 gallon is about 3.785 liters, I need enough for about 19 liters – just under 10 grams. My problem is that I haven’t got a scale that’s accurate for such small quantities, so I use rules of thumb that say 1 tablespoon of bentonite weighs 11-12 grams. A tablespoon in 5-gallons works out to about 0.6 g/L, which is what I’ll use. I could try to get closer to my target of 0.5 g/L using a combination of teaspoons, quarter teaspoons, and so on, but the measuring errors would add up quickly.

So I boiled about 150 ml water in the microwave (about 2.5 minutes), added 1 tablespoon of the bentonite powder, and stirred.

It takes a good 20 minutes of stirring and scraping to turn clumpy wet bentonite clay into a smooth slurry.

And stirred, and stirred, and stirred. It got gooey and clumped. I scraped (with a knife- don’t use your fingers!) and stirred some more. It was thick. I added more water. When you do this, you will start to think that it will never work. But after 20 minutes of constant stirring (don’t stop). You will get a reasonably smooth slurry.

Pouring the thick but smooth bentonite slurry from a measuring cup into a jar.

After pouring it into a jar, I’ll let it sit overnight. I’ll give the jar a forceful twist, whenever I pass, just for good measure. Tomorrow, I’ll pour it into my sanitized carboy, along with a dose of sulfite, and rack the mead into it.

A Simple Mead Recipe: Time to rack!

1 Reply

It took three weeks instead of two, but the mead has fermented out.

Hydrometer reads 1.003, indicating the mead has fermented out

In the photo above, a hydrometer floating in a sample of mead indicates a specific gravity of about 1.003, and that’s close enough to 1.000 for me to call it done. It looks closer to 1.004 because the camera was a little high and is looking slightly down. When I looked at it, placing my eye exactly at the surface level, it was 1.003.

Temperature reads almost 70 Fahrenheit, indicating that the specific gravity of the mead sample should be adjusted upward by 0.001 It turns out the the specific gravity needs to be adjusted upward by 0.001 because the temperature of the sample is almost 70 Fahrenheit (21 Celsius), and my hydrometer is calibrated for 60F. Coincidentally, the SG really is 1.004, as it appears in the photo.

I’ve been pretty impatient to rack, and now that I can … it turns out that I ran into an old friend the other day. I haven’t seen her or her husband in years, but there I was out on my morning walk and well, there she was! Marsha and I had arranged to have dinner with them tonight, so the mead is going to have to wait just a little bit longer.

A pH of 3.6ish: Why I’d like a pH meter

2 Replies

When I checked on my mead two days ago, I measured the pH as well as the specific gravity. I use pH papers, little test strips treated with indicators that change color at a known pH. After dipping it into the mead, I compare the strip’s color to a chart.

A pH paper dipped in the mead has changed color. A comparison with the chart next to it in the photo indicates a pH of 3.6 - 5/20/07

It’s rare that the test strip’s precise color appears on the chart. Here it looks to me like there is some purple and some yellow, indicating that the pH is within the test strip’s range. I think 3.6 is the best fit. These test strips are cheap and easy to use, but they have a considerable margin of error.

So it’s important to use them correctly and not make them any less accurate than they already are. Since they depend on seeing a color change and accurately matching it to a chart, it’s important to read them in good light. Indoors, during the day, with lots of light from a window is best. I once tried to use pH papers under florescent lighting, and the test strip turned green – not even close to anything on the chart. Moving to a well lit room cleared it right up. Trying to measure something with an intense color, a red wine for example, won’t work very well because the color of the sample will affect the color of the test strip.

I did mention that they’re cheap and easy, didn’t I? After a while a high maintenance pH meter with expensive tastes starts to look pretty alluring 🙂

Honey Prices: Making sense of colony collapse disorder

1 Reply

When I buy honey for mead, I do it in 5 gallon (60 lb) buckets. With last year’s dip in US honey production and Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) wiping out honeybee colonies, I’m keeping a wary eye on prices. Predicting 2007 production and prices is as dicey as guessing the cause of CCD, so I’ll start with what we know about 2006.

The USDA reports that the number of colonies fell by 1% to 2.39 million, in 2006, and the yield per colony fell by 11% to 64.7 lb of honey. Total production fell by 11% to 155 million lb, and inventories held by producers fell by 3% to 60.5 million lb. We also know that US beekeepers have lost 25% of their colonies, recently, to CCD.

We could start with that 25% loss and forecast a 25% drop in production, on top of last year’s 11% drop, to 116 million lb. I think two things will push that number higher. First of all, beekeepers are trying to rebuild their colonies so even if they can’t fully recoup their losses, the number of producing colonies should be higher than 1.79 million. Last year’s production suffered from unfavorable weather, so if this is a more normal year then yield per colony should be higher. If we just use 2005’s figure of 72.4 lb of honey per colony, and use the 1.79 million colonies then we get almost 130 million lb. That’s more than a 15% drop, but it assumes that beekeepers are unable to rebuild their colonies at all. With researchers hard at work on CCD, I think that’s far too pessimistic. If beekeepers can replace half their losses (I’m just pulling that number out of thin air), then we’d have 2.09 million colonies. Using 2005 yields would give us 151 million lb of honey – just a 2.6% drop from 2006. There are too many variables to rely on the 151 million lb number (I won’t even call it a forecast), but I think it shows that a supply squeeze is not in the cards.

Beekeepers produce honey all over the world and I haven’t forgotten about them, I just know more about the US industry. CCD has struck Europe and South America, as well as 27 US states, but my sense is that the US has been hit harder than the rest of the world. If that’s so, then there will be even less pressure on prices this year.

I still might buy my honey early this year. After all, it’s hard to imagine prices falling much in this environment.

Update 5/16/07
Here’s my source for US honey industry information:

NASS Honey Report 2/28/07

The National Agricultural Statistics Service, part of the USDA, puts out this summery every year.

Update 8/8/07: Honey prices drift upward
Over the following three months, honey prices have risen modestly, so while I don’t have any information on this year’s production I remain confident in my analysis.

Update 3/9/08: US honeybee population rises despite Colony Collapse Disorder
The latest honey report shows producing honeybee colonies rose 2% in 2007, and honey production fell by 4% – not far at all from my -2.6% “unprediction!” Read more here.

Update 10/6/2008: Honey prices surge

I’ve heard many explainations, from poor crops in Brazil to a falling dollar, but whatever the cause, honey prices surged in the fall of 2008.

Update 1/12/2009: Honey prices keep rising

The advance in honey prices, that I first noticed in the fall of 2008, continues into early 2009.

Update 3/9/2009: Honeybees hang in there for another year

The 2008 Honey Report indicated that managed colonies in the US fell by only 6%. Honey production and per colony yield rose. It’s looking more and more like Colony Collapse Disorder is not a catastrophe.

A Simple Mead Recipe: Not yet

1 Reply

I measured the specific gravity (SG) of my fermenting mead yesterday, and it came to 1.046 @ 64 degrees Fahrenheit. So fermentation is about halfway done.

Temperature affects the measurement, so it’s important to record and adjust for it. Hydrometers are calibrated to work at a particular temperature, 60 degrees Fahrenheit (about 15.5 Celsius) in my case, and come with a table that shows you how much to adjust your measurement for higher or lower temperatures. 64 degrees is close enough that no adjustment is required, but my reading was still off because of the suspended CO2 in my fermenting mead.

The sample I took had some froth on the surface, so I could actually see this CO2. It provided some “lift” to the hydrometer and made it float a little higher than it would have, so the actual SG of my sample was a bit less than 1.046. I could have “degassed” my sample by shaking/stirring until it didn’t bubble anymore or microwaving it until it started to boil then cooling it right away. My measurement would have been more accurate then. I just wanted a rough idea of how far along the fermentation was, so I skipped that step.

This little exercise was all about answering the question, “is it time to rack?” The answer is: Not yet.