[Q] How to do that Honey drink?
Stephen Wittenberg
Well I am going to begin with a question.
I have gone through the process of brewing beer (etc. bocks
and pils) but have yet to try mead. Two things that i would like to
know.
1) What is the process of making mead (ie. ingredients, time)
2) Does anyone have any wonderful recipes that they would
care to share with me or with the group?
Thanks for your time.
Witt
--
0^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Stephen Wittenberg
Psychology Student at ISU
sw...@iastate.edu
Brown, Derek S
>
>In article <CDrs3...@acsu.buffalo.edu>, dhi...@acsu.buffalo.edu (ED - The New Cult Leader) writes...
>>
>>Well, I have yet to make mead yet, but I believe this is the
>>simple recipe for it.
>> Use about a pound of honey to a gallon of apple cider.
>
>Not that I'm an expert or anything (not even close - heh), but I think
>Cider and Honey is called a Cyser; methinks mead is made with only honey
>and water. If you add fruit to mead, you get something else, and spices
>yet something else again. The term melamel (sp?) refers to one of em, and I
>can't remember the other.
>
>Then of course, there is the ever famous "Dangerous Cyser".
>
>/greg
If you add honey and fruit together, you get a melomel. If you add spices and
mead together you get a methygin.
Derek
K.D. Colagio
-> Howdy,
Hello!
-> 1) What is the process of making mead (ie. ingredients, time)
The recipe that I have for mead is as follows:
2 quarts honey
12 oz boiling water
Disolve the hone with the water in a crock pot, allow to ferment
before bottling and sealing. [note: this is out of a drink book,
see below]
-> 2) Does anyone have any wonderful recipes that they would
-> care to share with me or with the group?
I will post my grandfather's recipes that I have in another post.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Kevin Colagio aka KDC...@ultb.isc.rit.edu KiLar on IRC
Bear code? You think I know what that is? B2/4 w g++ K s- h+ r
Finger kdc...@ultb.isc.rit.edu public pgp key and misc stuff...
One man's perversion is another man's persuasion --me
Make it "Equal Rights" and I'll agree. Silence ~= Death
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
ED - The New Cult Leader
>Howdy,
> Well I am going to begin with a question.
> I have gone through the process of brewing beer (etc. bocks
>and pils) but have yet to try mead. Two things that i would like to
>know.
> 1) What is the process of making mead (ie. ingredients, time)
> 2) Does anyone have any wonderful recipes that they would
> care to share with me or with the group?
> Thanks for your time.
> Witt
Well, I have yet to make mead yet, but I believe this is the
simple recipe for it.
Use about a pound of honey to a gallon of apple cider.
Allow to sit in an air tight container with a water
air lock. Wait until no more gasses are leaving the
mixture. Or until it is almost over (poor man's champaign)
Then bottle and allow to age in a cool place (cellar)
for 3 months, i believe. I think that is the process.
If I am wrong, someone please correct me... I am thinking of trying
it finally this fall.
David J. Hicks
dhi...@acsu.buffalo.edu _____..---========+*+==========---.._____
______________________ __,-='=====____ =================== _____=====`=
(._____________________I__) - _-=_/ `---------=+=--------'
/ /__...---===='---+---_'
'------'---.___ - _ = _.-' "Live Long
`--------' and Prosper"
Greg Roody
In article <CDrs3...@acsu.buffalo.edu>, dhi...@acsu.buffalo.edu (ED - The New Cult Leader) writes...
>
>simple recipe for it.
> Use about a pound of honey to a gallon of apple cider.
Not that I'm an expert or anything (not even close - heh), but I think
Philip Groff
>
>In article <CDrs3...@acsu.buffalo.edu>, dhi...@acsu.buffalo.edu (ED - The New Cult Leader) writes...
>>
>>Well, I have yet to make mead yet, but I believe this is the
>>simple recipe for it.
>> Use about a pound of honey to a gallon of apple cider.
>
>Not that I'm an expert or anything (not even close - heh), but I think
>Cider and Honey is called a Cyser; methinks mead is made with only honey
>and water. If you add fruit to mead, you get something else, and spices
>yet something else again. The term melamel (sp?) refers to one of em, and I
>can't remember the other.
>
Cider and honey is indeed called Cyser. Fruit juices and honey are
called melomels, and if the fruit is grape (ie grape wine made with
honey as extra sugar) then it's called pyment. Spices or herbs with
honey give you an hippocris and adding herbs or spices to a melomel
results in a methaglen.
Cheers,
Phil Groff
p.s. for an interesting hippocris, try using cardamom pods (whole). My
batch has just finnished ageing and is quite exceptional IMHO.
p.p.s. after much frustration over the slow fermentation (primary) time
for my meads, I've discovered that adding Pilsner enzymes to the must
greatly speeds the process and has the added bonus of clearing much of
the sediment as well, sortening the racking time!
PG
--
"What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry
combined with a belief that the torture of millions is not desirable, whether
inflicted by Stalin or by a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer."
-Bertrand Russell
Ludwig Van.
>Howdy,
> Well I am going to begin with a question.
> I have gone through the process of brewing beer (etc. bocks
>and pils) but have yet to try mead. Two things that i would like to
>know.
>
> 1) What is the process of making mead (ie. ingredients, time)
> 2) Does anyone have any wonderful recipes that they would
> care to share with me or with the group?
>
> Thanks for your time.
> Witt
commercial yeasts and chemicals, that they could unselfishly share the
recipe with? I've shown you mine... :> ]
Here is the recipe that I use, one which gets me lots o' compliments.
(though they could just be due to the fact that I'm giving people free
alcohol :>) It doesn't make a terribly horribly strong alcohol
content, but there is enough alcohol in the final product to get you a
bit silly after a glass. Make sure you sterilize the bottles good. I
just had a batch get mold in it which I think was either from not
adequately cleaning the bottles, or dust getting into the mixture
during the cooling period. *sigh* Now I'm down to one quart which
should be ready next week. I've got my fingers crossed. Well, here
it is:
H O W T O M A K E L O U ' S M E A D
(based almost entirely on a recipe from SCA's Known World Handbook)
Ingredients:
(for 1 quart of mead)
1/2 big lemon
4/10ths of a 16 ounce jar of honey
1 liter of water
some nutmeg
tools:
a hot-pot or a 1 quart capacity cooking vessel of some sort.
something to stir with
something to skim the foam off of the brew with...(like a washcloth)
a 1 quart pepsi bottle (plastic) (NOTE I don't know if the pressure will build
correctly in a larger size bottle unless the same liquid-volume
proportions are preserved)
if the cooking vessel is metal: something non-metal to let the brew stand in.
Instructions: (based very very heavily on the mead instructions listed in
the SCA's magnificent "The Known World Handbook")
Take the lemon's skin off and break the lemon up into a few pieces. Save
some of the skin, but not all. Mix the water and the honey and 4/5ths of your
1/2 lemon (1/10th of a whole lemon) and whatever amount of skin you saved
together in your cooking vessel. Set the remaining 1/5th aside someplace
where it will be safe. You'll need it tomorrow. Bring the mixture to a boil.
While it is boiling, add a bit of nutmeg. When you see the white foam,
skim it off the top. For some reason, you don't want the white foam to stay.
Keep this behaviour up until the white foam is gone. I like to suck the foam
out of the washcloth while I'm waiting, but that is just a vice of my own.
(I like to taste what I am cooking while I am cooking it -- come on, its being
boiled anyway...) Once the foam doesn't rise to the top anymore, shut it off
and let it cool down. Let it set for a day. Do not let it set in a metal
container. That is bad. For some reason, metal does naughty things to the
mixture and when the wee yeasties go to work they will do the wrong thing.
Let it set in something made of glass or plastic. I just let it set in the
hot pot. WHen you let it set, let it set uncovered. That way, the wee
yeasties found in the air everywhere can find their way into your mead.
If you cover it, they won't find it and you will just have lousy lemonade
after the fermenting period. OK, now that the day has gone by and the mead
has cooled in its little container, take that little piece of lemon left over
from before that I told you to save, and squeeze the juice into the mead.
Stir it up real good, and then pour the whole mixture into your clean 1 quart
pepsi bottle. The instructions say to strain well, but I just strain out the
really big chunks of lemon. I like my mead to have a little character, and if
you make something with surgical precision, you are going to end up with
something that tastes sterile (IMHO). OK, now that you have it safely inside
of its bottle, tightly closed, let it set in a cool dark place for about two
to four weeks. Wait until a couple of days after the plastic bottle feels
like glass. (believe me, that really does happen) and put it in the
refrigerator for about a day before opening it. BE CAREFUL TO OPEN IT NEAR A
SINK. Otherwise it may spew all over your nice carpet. Do not point it at
anyone before or during opening. Shelf life after opening is rumoured to be
about five or six weeks, but after tasting it, shelf life will probably not
be a concern for you.
Cheers,
-Lou
jamie w burnside
|>
|>Cider and honey is indeed called Cyser. Fruit juices and honey are
|>called melomels, and if the fruit is grape (ie grape wine made with
|>honey as extra sugar) then it's called pyment. Spices or herbs with
|>honey give you an hippocris and adding herbs or spices to a melomel
|>results in a methaglen.
I have brewed one batch of the Barshack Ginger Mead from the Papazian beer brewing book.
(I have brewed many beer batches, but this was my first try at something wine-like.)
I guess that is should be called a melomel or maybe a methaglen, since besides honey
and ginger, it also includes orange and lemon rind, and rasberries, which gave it a
lovely pink hue. This is a dry mead, since it is designed for complete fermentation
of the available sugars. It also was carbonated, so it ended up looking a little
bit like pink champagne. That was the idea, since I brewed it as a champagne
alternative at my recent wedding. I was pleased with the results. It was a
little bit fruity, sweet, and tart compared to champagne, but I think most people liked it.
You could tell the hints of the rasberries and the citrus, plus the dry taste of
the ginger.
I think that traditional meads tend to be rather sweet, with incomplete fermentation
and much residual sugar from the honey. I have seen recipes which call for 15 lbs.(!) of
honey for a standard 5-gallon batch. The Barshack Ginger Mead recipe calls for about
7 1/2 pounds of honey (I think) and I ended up with an alcohol content of about 9 1/2%
by volume. There is an Ethiopian restaurant in Boston across from Symphony Hall which
serves their own Tej, which is the traditional Ethiopian mead made from lots of honey.
It's not bad, very cheap, and very sweet.
BTW, the derivation of the term "honeymoon" is from an old tradition of celebrating a wedding
for a month (moon) by drinking mead (honey), according to Papazian. I thought it would
be an appropriate celebration drink for my wedding.
CHEERS!
-JWB
----------------------------------------------------------------------
| |\/\/\/| ___________________ |
| | | / \ |
| | | / Jamie W. Burnside \ |
| | (o)(o) ( jbur...@ll.mit.edu ) |
| C _) / \_____________________/ |
| | ,___| / |
| | / |
| / __\ |
| / \ |
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Malcolm Bebb
[stuff deleted]
>
> p.p.s. after much frustration over the slow fermentation (primary) time
> for my meads, I've discovered that adding Pilsner enzymes to the must
> greatly speeds the process and has the added bonus of clearing much of
> the sediment as well, sortening the racking time!
>
> PG
I remember reading that honey and other mead ingredients are low in yeast
nutrients, therefore yeast nutrients should be used. I don't know how they
are packaged in the US, here I could buy a small sachet that was enough,
say, for a gallon.
Malcolm be...@ferndown.ate.slb.com (Usual disclaimers apply)
mb...@cix.compulink.co.uk
Ben William Brumfield
> 2) Does anyone have any wonderful recipes that they would
> care to share with me or with the group?
Here's how we brew mead at Wiess College:
Preliminary:
1 Swipe about 40 1-oz honey packets from the cafeteria
2 Scavange recycling bins till you find a 1-gal cider jug/3l wine bottle
Brewing:
3 Scoop out all honey from packets into a pot: usually works fastest if you
set up an assembly line with one person opening and emptying packets
and a second scraping the sides with a spoon
4 Add enough water to fill most of the room left in your bottle after you think
you've counted for the honey.
5 Add random fruit/spices. Successful mixtures have been apple, cherry, cinnamon,
orange, lemon, grape, nutmeg, and rosemary. cherry-cider-cinnamon was
pretty good too, even though it was a bit of a mistake.
6 Heat the water-honey mixture until it boils, then skim off all scum until the
scum stops looking dark. Alternatively, just heat it enough to
pasteurize it and ignore scum.
7 Let mixture cool in an ice bath, then dump in a mess of Prise de Mousse "Ole
Rocket Fuel" yeast. Start it in a bit of sugar water beforehand, if
you're a stickler.
8 Add vitamins, if you've got 'em.
9 Put the whole mess in the cider bottle (sterilize it with chlorox first, if
you're picky) with an airlock on it, and store it under your bathroom
sink for a couple of months. Maybe three, if you're really pushing
quality.
Waiting:
10 Try not to kick the mead when you brush your teeth. Brag to your friends
about how much faster yours is bubbling than theirs.
Final:
11 Whenever the mead clears until you can see your hand clearly through the
bottle, siphon the liquid off the dregs into another cider bottle.
12 If the mead still tastes yeasty, let it sit for a couple of weeks.
13 When the mead no longer tastes yeasty, or if it does, but you have ceased to
care, add honey to the finished product until it is palatable.
14 Drink microwave-warmed (on those cold Houston nights) from lidded containers.
15 When you serve it to friends, always remember to warn them to
NEVER INHALE THE FUMES!
Variations on the above recipie include measuring the specific gravity of the
wort, writing it on a piece of paper and then throwing it away, or recording
exact proportions on each batch for future brews, then losing them.
Mead is an excellent aperitif before the infamous Wiess Viking Tables as well
as an excellent carpet cleaner.
Share and Enjoy,
-ben
I'm a rambler, I'm a gambler, I'm a long way from home/And them that don't like
me can leave me alone/I'll eat when I'm hungry, and I'll drink when I'm dry,/
And if moonshine don't kill me, I'll live till I die./benw...@rice.edu
These opinions are shared by all right-thinking people, which may not include
members of the Republican party, basset-hound haters, or Rice University.
Joel Stave
|> 15 When you serve it to friends, always remember to warn them to
|> NEVER INHALE THE FUMES!
What happens if they inhale the fumes?
--
Joel Stave
st...@ch.hp.com
Ben William Brumfield
>In article <CDsow...@rice.edu>, benw...@owlnet.rice.edu (Ben William Brumfield) writes:
>|> 15 When you serve it to friends, always remember to warn them to
>|> NEVER INHALE THE FUMES!
>
>What happens if they inhale the fumes?
While the mead has a wonderful flavor, heating it raises a gas akin to kerosine
fumes. No harm will be done, but your sampler is not very likely to drink any
of the stuff. The best solution for this is to serve it in a covered container
, like a lidded automobile mug, or one of those plastic straw-and-lidded-cup
thingies that convenience stores are so fond of giving out. Alternatively, one
can just try to always exhale when raising a glass to the lips. Iced mead
forms no such odors.
Share and Enjoy,
-ben
--
Dale E. Higgs
>
>If you add honey and fruit together, you get a melomel. If you add spices and
>mead together you get a methygin.
>
>Derek
>
Melomel is correct. The spice thing is called Metheglin (from the Welsh
Meddyglyn). I have made both. A Mead spiced with Ginger which was suprisingly
crisp, and a Huckleberry Melomel which was also very nice. I preferred the
Melomel. Both were best served very cold. Very sparkly, and crystal
clear. The biggest problem was that neither of them reached their peak
until after a year of aging. I imagine that if they could have survived
the bottle opener longer, they would have continued to improve. If I can
ever work up the patience again (I have a hard enough time letting my
cider age 6 months), I will go with more melomel, and perhaps try a
cinnamon or some such metheglin. The biggest thing to watch for with
Melomel is to not boil the hell out of the pectins in the fruit, you will
get a hazy product. Steep the crushed fruit for about 10-20 minutes at
the end of the boil (off of the heat) to kill as many nasties as you can,
then promptly cool to pitching temp and introduce the yeast. Also, NEVER
add honey after the boil, as you will nullify any sterilizing effects the
boil had. (Honey is, after all, full of bee bits) Charlie Papazian's book
('The complete joy of homebrewing' or somesuch, I can never remember) has
some very good pointers on making mead. I recommend it.
Bis Spater
Dale
--
____________________________________________________________________________
| Dale E. Higgs d...@rocket.com |
| "When he sneezes, he looks like a party favor." !uupsi!rrc!deh |
Frank Crary
>Cider and honey is indeed called Cyser. Fruit juices and honey are
>called melomels, and if the fruit is grape (ie grape wine made with
>honey as extra sugar) then it's called pyment. Spices or herbs with
>honey give you an hippocris and adding herbs or spices to a melomel
>results in a methaglen.
Does this include adding lemon juice? I had thought that honey and
a little lemon was a more common sort of mead than honey alone. (In
fact, I'm not even sure pure honey will ferment. Isn't _something_
extra required to give the necessary nutrients for yeast?)
Frank Crary
CU Boulder
Frank Crary
>-> 1) What is the process of making mead (ie. ingredients, time)
>The recipe that I have for mead is as follows:
> 2 quarts honey
> 12 oz boiling water
> Disolve the hone with the water in a crock pot, allow to ferment
> before bottling and sealing. [note: this is out of a drink book,
> see below]
Err... I use ~2 lbs of honey per gallon for a dry mead and ~2.5 for a
sweet one. Your recipe seems to be around 7 lbs per gallon. I'd think
that would be almost undrinkably sweet.
Frank Crary
CU Boulder
Frank Crary
>and pils) but have yet to try mead. Two things that i would like to
>know.
> 1) What is the process of making mead (ie. ingredients, time)
That depends on how pure you want your mead to be. Without any
chemical additives, mead might take six months to make. On the
other hand, I've made drinkable mead in two weeks by adding
yeast nutrients.
> 2) Does anyone have any wonderful recipes that they would
> care to share with me or with the group?
Well, I won't claim that's it's wonderfull, but I generally
use (for a 1-gallon batch):
2 to 2.5 lbs honey (Mostly clover, with ~ 0.5 lbs of some
other flower added for taste)
The juice of 2 or 3 lemons
1 tsp yeast nutrients
1 tsp Irish moss
water to 5 gallons
Heat to ~180 deg F, and hold at that temperature for ~15 minutes
Champaign yeast.
After about two weeks, I rack it into a secondary fermentor. When it's
clear, I bottle it.
Frank Crary
CU Boulder
Coz
>
Stuff Deleted
>Err... I use ~2 lbs of honey per gallon for a dry mead and ~2.5 for a
>sweet one. Your recipe seems to be around 7 lbs per gallon. I'd think
>that would be almost undrinkably sweet.
>
> Frank Crary
> CU Boulder
Believe it or not, when using a high-atenuation yeast like Prisse de Mouse,
an O.G. of 1.14 or so will yeild a medium or semi-sweet mead.
If you like it sweeter (and thicker), get your O.G. up to 1.16 or more, i.e.,
7-10 lbs of honey per gallon of water.
~r .sig
Don Wegeng
>Does this include adding lemon juice? I had thought that honey and
>a little lemon was a more common sort of mead than honey alone. (In
>fact, I'm not even sure pure honey will ferment. Isn't _something_
>extra required to give the necessary nutrients for yeast?)
Assuming that you're talking about a small quantity of lemon juice
(ie. the juice from one lemon), then it's purpose is to enhance the
flavor by making the mead a bit more acidic. Pure honey will
ferment ok without it.
It's true that adding some yeast nutrient will help when using wine yeast
to ferment mead (remember that wine yeast was cultured to work in
a grape juice environment, not a honey/water environment), but it's
not absolutely necessary. I doubt if a small amount of lemon juice provides
much in the way of nutrients. If I'm making a straight mead then
I usually add some yeast nutrient powder.