Country wine, second wine, and melomel
Cherry mead, often called “cherry melomel”, is usually made like a country wine. You make a country wine with small amount of fruit, 2-6 lb, per gallon of water (250-750 g/L) with enough sugar to bring the alcohol up to 12% and acid to balance. You would do something similar […]
Category Archive for 'mead'
Still No Supply Squeeze From Colony Collapse Disorder
Posted in colony collapse disorder, mead on Jul 2nd, 2007
My cherry wine is fermenting nicely. I plan to press it soon, and use the pomace to make a cherry mead. The good price on the cherries worked out really well, but it did leave me with a dilemma about the honey. Use the wildflower that I have? It would be much better in the […]
A good deal on cherries and a honey varietal dilemma
Posted in cherry wine, mead on Jun 28th, 2007
An opportunity needs to be siezed
Safeway is having a sale, cherries for $1.49/lb, and that got me thinking about honey varietals. Let me back up a little. About this time last year, I bought 40 lb of cherries, some from Safeway, and made cherry wine. After I pressed the wine, I made cherry mead in […]
Bottling Day
Posted in apple wine, mead, tasting on Jun 21st, 2007
I bottled four 1-gallon batches, three meads and an apple wine, yesterday.
2005 Apple Wine
I harvested 13 lb of Liberty apples from my backyard, in 2005, and turned them, along with a gallon of Trader Joe’s Gravestein apple juice, into a batch of apple wine. It’s got a rich golden color, a wonderful aroma, and it’s […]
Fleshing Out A Beer-Like Mead Recipe
Posted in mead on Jun 15th, 2007
I’ve done some thinking and some research on my beer-like mead recipe. I decided to use just one specialty grain, crystal malt. Since I’m counting on it to do a lot of heavy lifting, I wanted to use a high concentration - still within the range that you’d see in a beer, but at the […]
The Beginnings Of A Beer-Like Mead Recipe
Posted in mead on Jun 9th, 2007
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 […]
Mead Styles: Should mead taste like wine? or beer?
Posted in mead on Jun 6th, 2007
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 […]
Making Mead: The controversy over boiling
Posted in mead on Jun 5th, 2007
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 […]
A Simple Mead Recipe: Rack to secondary
Posted in mead on May 28th, 2007
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.
It took me quite […]
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 […]