Small Batch Meads

In the last year, I have been experimenting around a bit with small batches of mead.  I have mentioned this in a few of my posts, but haven’t really gone into it in very much detail.  A lot of people get into mead from homebrewing (if you have the equipment to brew beer, you have most of the equipment you need to make mead).  As such, I figured I would share some of my experiences, recipes, and techniques here, in case anyone wants to get the feet wet and try making mead.

Let me start off by saying that I am definitely not an expert on making mead.  Everything I know about mead, is based off a few rough recipes and articles online and in magazines.  Much like my tips and techniques for homebrewing, take my mead techniques and tips with a grain of salt.  There a ton of techniques and styles for making both mead and beer.  Use techniques and equipment that best fit your preferences and time/space/financial constraints.  There is no “best” technique – simply use the one that works best for you.  The techniques and tips that I suggest here are geared towards someone from a homebrewing background, looking to experiment with making mead.  These techniques work best for me.  Adjust as needed.

Batch Size

Quality honey (the base fermentable for mead) is not cheap.  Mead takes awhile to finish out fermentation and I don’t have tons of space to dedicate to fermenters filled with mead (beer takes priority over mead for me when it comes to fermenter space).  Since mead was not something I know that much about going into my first few batches, there was a decent chance I could mess up a batch.  These are the three main reasons that I chose to keep my batches at a rather small scale – 1-2 gallons.  This allows me to do a 2-3 week primary fermentation in a carboy or bucket fermenter, then transfer the mead to one gallon jugs for secondary fermentation.  After I get more experience with mead and more space (i.e. a house), I plan to up the batch sizes to normal 5 gallon batches.

Finished product of my first mead, made with Clover honey.

Finished product of my second mead, made with South Jersey Pine Barren honey.

My third mead, a melomel, in the carboy on the day of pitching the yeast.

A sample of my melomel on the day of transferring it to 1-gallon jugs for a secondary fermentation.

Start Simple

My recipes have been based roughly on other recipes that I have seen online.  My first two meads, were made with all honey.  This allowed me to get a better feel for the character of different yeasts and honey varieties.  Like most people, there really aren’t many commercially available meads available to me (after all, this isn’t medieval Europe).  As a result, I really didn’t have a baseline of what kinds of meads and honey varieties I liked.  As a result, my first few recipes have been specifically designed to be simple and straightforward. 

Source Quality Honey

“Garbage in” equates pretty well to “garbage out”.  This one is fairly common sense (especially if you brew), but it is worth reinforcing.  Just like brewing, don’t skimp on the quality of ingredients that you use in mead making.  If you make mead with shitty honey, you’re probably going to get shitty mead.  The last couple times I have gotten my honey from local honey makers.  Most farmers markets tend to have a couple vendors that sell honey.  Lacking that, you can usually find decent honey in other grocery stores.  When it comes to adding fruit it to make melomels, source quality fruit, however you can get it.  Fresh is great, but if you can’t get what you need fresh, quality frozen fruit works great too. 

Nutrient Additions

This tip came to me compliments of an episode of Brewing TV on mead.   When making mead, it’s a good idea to add nutrients in multiple stages, rather than just on the day you make it.  I tend to do an addition at the time of pitching the yeast, about 24 hours after pitching the yeast, and another one about 72 hours after pitching the yeast.  This gives the yeast nutrients at multiple stages of its growth and fermentation process, leading to a healthier fermentation.  In theory, this also lets the mead clean up a bit quicker, making the mead drinkable quicker (i.e. instead of having to age for years to get a drinkable product). 

Pasteurizing vs. No-Heat vs. Boiling

There are a few different schools of thought when it comes to whether to heat the mead or not.  One school of thought is to boil the honey mixture to kill off any wild yeast and bacteria.  This method also causes some proteins and solids to break from solution, which allows you to skim them off, theoretically, resulting in clearer, cleaner mead.  Another school of thought is to pasteurize the honey.  This achieves the goal of killing off any wild bacteria or yeast, while preserving more of the delicate aromatics and flavors of the honey in the finished product.  The final school of thought, is the no-heat technique.  The idea on this one is preserve as much of the flavor and aroma of the honey in the finished mead.  There is a slight risk of infection while using this method, but a lot of mead makers believe that this not much of a risk since the cultured yeast that you pitch into the mead will out-compete and clean up any wild bacteria or yeast that may be present.  Personally, I subscribe to the no-heat method, and have had good results so far, with no infections.  I chose this option because it preserves the most of the honey character.  Whichever method you use, you should also factor in any treatments that have occurred to the honey prior to packaging (i.e. pasteurization, filtration, etc.), and adjust to your methods.

Patience, Young Grasshopper

Making mead, even when using staggered nutrient additions, takes longer to get a solid finished product than most beers.  Honey contains sugars that take longer for yeast to break down, requiring it to be fermented longer.  The fermentation regiment for my first few meads was a 2 – 3 week primary fermentation, a 2 – 3 month secondary fermentation, and finally at least a few months of bottle conditioning.  The conditioning time is flexible but I would recommend giving it at least a couple months to let the flavors clean up and come together, before you pop your first bottle.  Your patience will be rewarded.  Don’t expect your mead to be ready in a few weeks like your favorite homebrewed session ale. 

Clarity

There are also a several clarifying agents and methods that can be used to give you’re mead a crystal clear appearance.  These agents will knock out any residual proteins in the mead to clear up the appearance in the glass. I haven’t used any clarifying agents in my meads as of yet, mainly out of simplicity.  My first mead, a hydromel made with clover honey, came out very clear on its own through the normal fermentation bottle conditioning process.  On the other hand, my second mead, made with local South Jersey Pine Barren honey, probably could have used a clarifying agent, but I was still happy with the end result.  You can make great mead either way – use whichever method works best for your preferences.

Recipes

Clover Honey Mead:

-Batch Size: 1 Gallon

-Ingredients:

·         36oz Clover Honey

·         1 Packet Red Star Champagne Yeast

-Observed OG( 6/18/2011): 1.072

-Observed FG (7/2/2011): 0.996

South Jersey Pine Barren Honey Mead:

-Batch Size: 1 Gallon

-Ingredients:

·         3LB South Jersey Pine Barren Honey

·         1 Packet Lalvin EC-1118 Yeast

-Observed OG( 9/3/2011): 1.108

-Observed FG (12/11/2011): 1.000

Mixed Berry Melomel:

-Batch Size: 2 Gallon

-Ingredients:

·         8LB Wildflower Honey

·         5LB Frozen Berry Mix (Blackberries, Blueberries, Raspberries)  

·         1LB Fresh Organic Strawberries (added to half of the batch at secondary)

·         1 Packet Lalvin D-47 Yeast

-Observed OG (3/3/2012): ??? (forgot to get a reading, Probably around 1.200)

-Observed SG1 (3/3/2012): 1.004 (Note: this was taken at the time of transferring to the secondary, not at the time of bottling)

Hope this helps anyone who is in the same position as I am in that is looking to experiment with meads.  I’ll continue to post on mead in the future as I do more.  Until next time, cheers!

Song of the Day: “Paint it Black” by The Rolling Stones

Beer of the Day: Maine Beer Company’s Zoe