Mead Recipes

Back to my large batches. This is a 5 gallon recipe. This would make a good holiday drink. Sadly, it’s generally around the holidays that you can usually find cranberries the easiest. Which means you’re most likely making next year’s batch.

Ingredients – Primary

• 7.5 lbs of Wildflower honey
• 4 lbs of Cranberries
• 6 Earl Grey teabags in 4 cups of water
• 0.5 cup Craisins
• Lavlin 71B

Ingredients – Secondary

• 2 lb honey to back sweeten

Original Gravity: 1.048

Final Gravity: 0.96

ABV: 11.5%

You’ll notice the tea bags for this one are a new addition compared to my previous brews. Tea can be used as a quick and dirty method to add tannins to drinks. I won’t go too into depth on this topic, but tannin will add a certain mouthfeel to a drink. Wine gets it from the skins of grapes. It can give your tongue a bit of a dry tingly feeling. They can be important in drier meads and wines that don’t have as much sugar to give it a body, to prevent it from feeling too watery.

Notes

This one has a nice bite to it, but is still a bit tart. And a tad watery. I started with less honey in this one, as I wasn’t looking to make a monster 18% drink with this one. I just racked this into the carboy, and added some Potassium Sorbate and Potassium Metabisulphate to prevent fermentation from restarting when I backsweeten it tomorrow. This will definitely thicken it up some, and I’m hoping that the added sweetness will help to balance the tartness of the cranberry.

UPDATE: After nearly a year, I went back to this one and gave it a taste. I believe it had actually managed to restart fermenting again, so had gone dry. The cranberry flavor was quite strong, with a solid tartness. However, I felt it was a bit too much, as well as a little one note. I decided to pick up from medium toast french oak cubes and soak them in some rum for a few weeks, before adding them to the carboy. It sat on these for several weeks and gave it a bit more mouthfeel and a bit of a kick in the finish. The cranberry flavor seems to be entirely up front. I also added 1.125 lbs of honey to help the body some more, as well as temper the tart flavor slightly with some sweetness.

I wanted to make use of the one gallon glass jugs I had purchased some apple juice in from whole foods. I figured these would be perfect for some small experimental batches.

With this one, I also wanted to try making a wild ferment mead.

Ingredients – Primary

3 lbs of honey

2 Large Pears

Ginger bug – wild yeast starter

Ingredients – Secondary

1/2 lb honey to back sweeten

 

I did not measure the gravity for this batch, unfortunately.

You’ll notice in this batch I did not use a commercial packet of yeast to get started. Instead I created what is known as a ginger bug to use as my starter. Essentially I took a small mason jar, sliced up some fresh ginger root (which is a good source of wild yeast), and added maybe a cup of honey to it. After shaking it all up, I covered this with a cheese cloth but left it otherwise uncovered. After a day or two, I noticed I had some bubbles forming and knew my fermentation had kicked off. I had cultivated some wild yeast!

Again, I cut up the pears into small pieces and boiled them in some water to extract as much juice as I could. I’ve tried this on both of my small experimental batches. While it works well to keep the sediment down in the jars, it also limits the flavor, I have found. Trying this again, I’d either add more pears, or add them directly to the primary. Maybe both, pear is a light flavor.

Notes

This one turned out not too bad. It’s not immediately recognizable as pear. I think even the small amount of ginger overpowers it. But it is a nice little kick. It is currently still sitting in it’s jug, unbottled, so I could add some more pear juice to it and see how that fares.
Overall, it was really cool to see I could ferment a drink without any added yeast. But had this been excellent, that may have made it more difficult to reproduce, unless I use some of the lees, or a small bit of this mead as a starter. Yeast can have a decent effect on the flavor of your mead, so putting that aspect on random can have an interesting outcome.

I wanted to make use of the one gallon glass jugs I had purchased some apple juice in from whole foods. I figured these would be perfect for some small experimental batches.

Ingredients – Primary

• 3 lbs of honey
• 2 Mangoes
• 2 large Serrano Peppers (quartered)
• US-05 Ale Yeast

Ingredients – Secondary

• 1/2 lb honey to back sweeten

I did not measure the gravity for this batch, unfortunately.

I had originally envisioned doing a mango habenero pepper mead, but the store I went to did not have any habenero peppers in, so I substituted Serrano peppers. For this one, I wanted to try a few different techniques. Instead of placing the whole fruit into the primary fermenting container, I decided to boil the mango flesh in some water. This extracted a lot of the juices and flavoring from the fruit. I then filtered out the larger pieces as I poured this slurry into the glass jug.

Next I cleaned and quartered the peppers. Removed the seeds, which would have imparted a bitter taste, and placed these into the jug with the rest of the ingredients.

Brew Notes

This one fermented quite vigorously, but managed to stay within the jug for the most part. This was the first time I had done a primary batch in anything other than the bucket, so watching it happen through the glass was interesting. The yeast were making enough CO2 that it looked like a soft drink. You could hear it through the container, gurgling away. And the smell it made! I was a delicious peppery, almost barbecue scent that filled my apartment.

Tasting Notes

I really enjoyed the flavor of this one. Of all the batches I’ve made, this is my favorite thus far. It’s got a slight sweetness to it, with a mouth filling heat aftertaste. But not in a burn your mouth way. It’s a pleasant mixture.

The mango flavor is not the most apparent, so when I recreate this one, I will likely add some more of that to try to bring it out more. Adding it to the primary likely ate up a lot of it, and the verdict is still out on the boiling method. It lead to less sediment, which was nice in such a small container, but likely lead to less of the flavor coming through.

Carbonating

As I write this, I am using this mead as my first test force carbonation using my new mini keg. I think some carbonation in this one will help liven it up even more. It is already a bit closer in flavor and texture to a beer than my other flavors, so it felt like a good candidate.

 

Read more about how to keg and carbonate your mead here.

This Cyser, Apple Mead, recipe is from my third batch. I grew up with apples trees in my backyard, so it was only natural I try an apple flavored mead at some point. Not having access to the fresh stuff, I used store bought juice for this. I also got a couple small 1 gallon glass jugs that some of the juice came in that I was able to use for some smaller batches later on.

Ingredients – Primary

15 lbs of honey

4 gallons of apple juice/cider (I only had access to juice at the time, but doing it again I’d use cider)

For this, the apple juice essentially replaced the water in the batch.

Lavlin 71B Yeast

Ingredients – Secondary

Two gallons of cider
2 tsp Mahlab (Mahlep/mahaleb – ground cherry pits)

Original Gravity: 1.082

Final: 1.020

This was about 8.14% prior to the secondary cider addition. Although, I’m not sure how well the honey was mixed in this one, so this measurement could be way off.

Notes

This one had an interesting flavor. The 71B yeast, as I found out, tends to eat the compound that makes apples taste appley. It was pretty good, just not what you’d expect when you’re drinking an apple drink. It was like an apple wine. So I added some fermentation stoppers and then split my batch in two and added another gallon of cider to each half. This turned out really tastey. With enough apple flavor to satisfy me. This is one of my best to date. Will definitely try it again when the first bunch runs out.

While this one was brewing, I had also read about the Mahlab powder. I thought adding a hint of almond/cherry to it could mix it up a bit. I’m not sure how prevalent the flavor came out, I’m still experimenting with spices as I tend to not be able to pick out their flavors in the final product.

I have a friend who does not like cinnamon, so I left it out of this batch, but a lot of meadmakers will add it to their cysers, as those flavors go quite well together.

The traditional newbie starter brew. There’s been many modifications over the years to attempt to improve it. I’ve included the original recipe, and a newer attempt.

Original (1 Gallon Recipe)

• 3 1/2 lbs Clover or your choice honey
• 1 Large orange (cut in eighths, include rind/peel)
• 1 small handful of raisins
• 1 stick of cinnamon
• 1 whole clove ( or 2 if you like – they are quite strong)
• optional (a pinch of nutmeg and allspice )
• 1 teaspoon of Fleishmann’s bread yeast
• Balance water to one gallon

The raisins add nutrients to the mix, as honey alone is pretty nutrient deficient. The instructions are basically dissolve the honey in the water and throw everything else in. Shake/Stir vigorously to aerate, and let it sit for two months and a few days until it clears up. If you wait long enough, even the oranges will sink to the bottom.

Modified (1 Gallon)

• 2 1/2 lbs Alfalfa/Clover or your choice honey
• 1 Large orange
• 1 stick of cinnamon
• 1 whole clove
• Wyeast Mead Yeast
• Yeast Nutrient
• Balance water to one gallon

Zest and squeeze out the juice of the orange. You will not need the rest. Steep the spices in some hot water for about 20 minutes before adding this water to the the container. Mix everything up, aerate and leave it to ferment. Should finish fermenting between two to three weeks. Age as appropriate.

 

My second batch, I decided to try a modifying a version of the traditional newbie brew recipe: Joe’s Ancient Orange Mead. See the Original Recipe here.

Ingredients – Primary

• Five oranges – quartered, a few I scraped off the pith from the peels
• Lavlin 71B yeast
• Three Cinnamon Sticks
• Three Cloves

Ingredients – Secondary

• Lactose
• 5 Vanilla beans
• 1 Orange’s zest

This one I had some issue with. I went off book from the recipe online, and used a wine yeast instead of the baker’s yeast that this bare bones recipe uses. The baker’s yeast does not have a high alcohol tolerance, so it tends to leave it very sweet. This sweetness will balance out the bitter flavor from the orange pith (white flaky stuff on the inside of the peel). The wine yeast, however, will ferment it dry and draw out that bitterness. I’ve since read that for the best orange flavor, you really don’t need the juice or any part of the inside of the fruit, just the zest.

So that’s what I tried adding to help my brew. But that just added more orange on top of that bitter flavor. So I got the idea of trying to make it more like an orange creamscicle. So I added some lactose sugar (which is interesting because yeast cannot metabolize it – no need to prevent fermentation). I also soaked some vanilla beans in it – my first attempt with these that did not come across well. (The key to vanilla is soaking them in vodka and making a tincture out of it and adding that in to taste. I’ve tried soaking them directly in two different meads and the flavor does not come through at all).

Notes

So there were a lot of missteps with this batch. It finally turned out not too bad, but required a fair bit of tweaking.

Don’t be afraid to experiment if it’s not perfect right from the get go. Also, aging can do some strange things, especially when spices are involved. Flavors tend to mellow out and mi together, while others that weren’t always noticeable can become more prominent.

Update

Tasted this again recently. It’s a great example of how flavors can change with time. I originally could not taste the vanilla at all when it first finished. Now it’s very strongly vanilla flavor. Probably a bit too much at this point. I’m hoping it mellows out with a little more age. I’ve read about it a lot, but it’s one of those things you have to experience for yourself to really grasp just how drastically these things can morph over time. If you use vanilla, I’d recommend the tincture route. Soak it in a small amount of vodka and use that as an additive to your mead – to taste. It should be much more precise.

Original (1 Gallon Recipe)

• 3 1/2 lbs Clover or your choice honey
• 1 Large orange (cut in eighths, include rind/peel)
• 1 small handful of raisins
• 1 stick of cinnamon
• 1 whole clove ( or 2 if you like – they are quite strong)
• optional (a pinch of nutmeg and allspice )
• 1 teaspoon of Fleishmann’s bread yeast
• Balance water to one gallon

Raisins add nutrients to the mix, as honey alone is pretty nutrient deficient. The instructions are basically dissolve the honey in the water and throw everything else in. Shake/Stir vigorously to aerate, and let it sit for two months and a few days until it clears up. If you wait long enough, even the oranges will sink to the bottom.

Modified (1 Gallon)

• 2 1/2 lbs Alfalfa/Clover or your choice honey
• 1 Large orange
• 1 stick of cinnamon
• 1 whole clove
• Wyeast Mead Yeast
• Yeast Nutrient
• Balance water to one gallon

Zest and squeeze out the juice of the orange. You will not need the rest. Steep the spices in some hot water for about 20 minutes before adding this water to the the container. Mix everything up, aerate and leave it to ferment. Should finish fermenting between two to three weeks. Age as appropriate.