{"id":43,"date":"2007-06-09T11:51:19","date_gmt":"2007-06-09T15:51:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.washingtonwinemaker.com\/blog\/2007\/06\/09\/the-beginnings-of-a-beer-like-mead-recipe\/"},"modified":"2007-06-09T11:51:19","modified_gmt":"2007-06-09T15:51:19","slug":"the-beginnings-of-a-beer-like-mead-recipe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/washingtonwinemaker.com\/blog\/2007\/06\/09\/the-beginnings-of-a-beer-like-mead-recipe\/","title":{"rendered":"The Beginnings Of A Beer-Like Mead Recipe"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"float:right;margin:1em;\">\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"><!--\namazon_ad_tag=\"meadmaker-20\"; \namazon_ad_width=\"180\"; \namazon_ad_height=\"150\"; \namazon_color_background=\"EFEFCC\"; \namazon_color_border=\"A43907\"; \namazon_color_logo=\"FFFFFF\"; \namazon_color_link=\"A43907\"; \namazon_ad_logo=\"hide\"; \namazon_ad_title=\"Meadmaker's Store\"; \/\/--><\/script><br \/>\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/s\/asw.js\"><\/script><\/div>\n<p><strong>A quick list<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Writing about the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonwinemaker.com\/blog\/2007\/06\/06\/mead-styles-should-mead-taste-like-wine-or-beer\/\">&#8220;beer mead&#8221; vs &#8220;wine mead&#8221; divide<\/a> 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:<\/p>\n<p>malt<br \/>\nhops<br \/>\nspecialty grains<br \/>\nlow alcohol (compared to wine)<br \/>\nresidual sweetness<br \/>\nboiling<br \/>\nirish moss<br \/>\ngypsum<\/p>\n<p><strong>A little more detail<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Malt has got to be the number one defining ingredient for beer, but I&#8217;m not going to use it. There are fermented beverages made from malt and honey, called braggots, but that&#8217;s not really what I&#8217;m setting out to do. I want the approach to be reminiscent of beer, and the result to be &#8220;beer-esque.&#8221; Still, I&#8217;m making a 100% honey mead, so no malt.<\/p>\n<p>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, &#8230;). I&#8217;m not sure I want a bitter mead, but I may use hops, sparingly, for flavor and aroma. I haven&#8217;t decided yet, and since hop flavor is usually extracted by boiling, it probably depends on my decision to boil.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>A specific gravity of 1.075, 10% potential alcohol, would be low for wine and high for beer. I haven&#8217;t decided on a final target yet, but it&#8217;ll be around 1.075.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe the crystal malt will add enough sweetness for my beer-like mead, or maybe I&#8217;ll have to stabilize and sweeten. I&#8217;ll probably wait until I know the final SG before I decide to sweeten the mead.<\/p>\n<p>Boiling is necessary in homebrewing to extract bitterness and, to a lesser extent, flavor from hops. Since I don&#8217;t plan on making a bitter mead, the only reason I might <em>need<\/em> to boil is flavor extraction from hops. If I do boil, it&#8217;ll be for about ten minutes, not the hour or so that&#8217;s common in homebrewing. I&#8217;ve already <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonwinemaker.com\/blog\/2007\/06\/05\/making-mead-the-controversy-over-boiling\/\">made the case<\/a> that such a short boil will not harm the mead, and it might lend a homebrewing feel to the process.<\/p>\n<p>If I do boil, I&#8217;ll throw in some irish moss. It&#8217;s a clarifying agent, common in homebrewing, that&#8217;s added to the boil in the last 10 or 15 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>I really don&#8217;t know what gypsum is supposed to do. It&#8217;s on the list because it&#8217;s in so many beer (and some mead) recipes. I&#8217;ll try to find out more about it before I finalize the recipe.<\/p>\n<p><strong>A recipe begins to take shape<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>So that narrows things down a little. I&#8217;ll be making a 100% honey mead with a starting SG around 1.075. I&#8217;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&#8217;ll be at lower concentrations than with typical beers. If I boil, I&#8217;ll use irish moss. I haven&#8217;t decided on sweetening, and I&#8217;ll try to learn more about gypsum.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Update 6\/15\/2007<\/strong> I&#8217;ve filled in this outline to make a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonwinemaker.com\/blog\/2007\/06\/15\/fleshing-out-a-beer-like-mead-recipe\/\">beer-like mead recipe<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Update 10\/28\/2008<\/strong> 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 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonwinemaker.com\/blog\/2008\/10\/20\/judging-an-experiment-with-a-tasting-party\/\">double blind tasting<\/a>, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonwinemaker.com\/blog\/2008\/10\/28\/making-mead-testing-the-controversy-over-boiling\/\">results<\/a> are in! Boiling does indeed weaken the aroma of mead, but may improve the body and smooth out the flavor.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A quick list Writing about the &#8220;beer mead&#8221; vs &#8220;wine mead&#8221; 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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[48],"class_list":["post-43","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mead","tag-nad"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/washingtonwinemaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/washingtonwinemaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/washingtonwinemaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/washingtonwinemaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/washingtonwinemaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/washingtonwinemaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/washingtonwinemaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/washingtonwinemaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/washingtonwinemaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}