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Mead Lovers Digest #0736
Subject: Mead Lover's Digest #736, 21 April 1999
From: mead-request@talisman.com
Mead Lover's Digest #736 21 April 1999
Forum for Discussion of Mead Making and Consuming
Dick Dunn, Digest Janitor
Contents:
RE: Looking for Braggot info (m_shapiro@bigfoot.com)
Re: Bread yeast (Scott Murman)
Re: Mead Lover's Digest #735, 16 April 1999 (Bill)
Re: Mead Lover's Digest #735, 16 April 1999 (Tom Hogland)
Braggot info (Peter Bertone)
Bread Yeast for Fermenting (Jeffrey Wright)
Re:Smoke flavor ("Don Van Valkenburg")
Honey in Florida (Nathan Kanous)
Re: Smoky flavor ("Bill Shirley")
bread yeast (Pete Spinney)
Re: 1. Braggot; 2. Bread yeast (Mark Taratoot)
NOTE: Digest only appears when there is enough material to send one.
Send ONLY articles for the digest to mead@talisman.com.
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: RE: Looking for Braggot info
From: m_shapiro@bigfoot.com
Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 22:00:00 -0400 (EDT)
On 16-Apr-99 Robert J Hain <bjhaines@juno.com> asked about braggot, its
proportions of fermentables and its color. I have made braggot on several
occaisions and I aim for about 50% fermentables due to honey and 50% due to
grain (as he suggested). A little variation either way is not a problem,
however. I've never made a 5 gallon batch, but scaling up my usual recipe would
result in about 5 lbs of pale ale malt and 1 to 2 lb of crystal malt with about
3 lbs of honey.
HTH
Wassail!
Marc Shapiro m_shapiro@bigfoot.com
Visit 'The Meadery' at:
http://www.bigfoot.com/~m_shapiro/
"If you drink melomel every day, you will live to be 150 years old,
unless your wife shoots you."
- -- Dr. Ferenc Androczi, Winemaker of the Little Hungary Farm Winery
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Bread yeast
From: Scott Murman <smurman@best.com>
Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 18:11:00 -0700 (PDT)
> I was toying with the idea of making a 1gal batch
> of traditional mead using bread yeast.
I did this in college <ahem> a few years ago. I wouldn't do it now,
knowing what I do. I've always felt I was able to get away with it
because I added about 50% cafeteria pie filling (corn syrup + fruit),
which masked any other flavor. I also fermented in 2 liter plastic
soda bottles without an airlock. These would build up pressure until
they were like steel bars. I'm sure that high pressure inhibited some
of the yeast activity and left a honey/sugar/fruit sweet flavor. This
stuff actually wasn't bad, and did the trick, but I see no reason not
to use readily-available brewers yeast now, unless you're practicing
to impress the boys in prison. Wine or beer yeast will always produce
a better tasting-end product. Dried bakers yeast is little more than
small gas balls that go off to rise bread.
- -SM-
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Mead Lover's Digest #735, 16 April 1999
From: Bill <perimage@ripco.com>
Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 23:57:48 -0500
Yeah, I made a one gallon batch of mead with bread yeast - didn't know
any better at the time. Used a recipe from a book called West Country
Wicca. As I recall, it called for seven pounds of honey, boiled with
citrus and spices, cooled and allowed to ferment with _yeast_, type not
specified. It was drinkable, but not really very good.
It should be remembered that some of the best beers are made with _wild_
yeasts. I believe that is in Belgium; and Orthodox Jews make wine
without culturing their yeasts, since yeasts were not recognized in the
dietary code. I read somewhere that a zymurgist suggested to a winery
that produced Kosher wine, that thye use the lees from the previous
(good) batch as a beginning for the next batch.
Bill
> Subject: Bread yeast
> From: "Jake Hester" <jake_hester@hotmail.com>
> Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 11:31:07 PDT
>
> It's about time to start a few new batches, and
> I was toying with the idea of making a 1gal batch
> of traditional mead using bread yeast. I know that
> in the past some of us have contributed that they've
> heard it works, or they knew someone who had a brother
> whose boss met this guy at the airport who made mead,
> using bread yeast, that won him a chest full of blue
> ribbons, but I don't think I ever heard from anyone
> on this list who did it themselves. Then again, I've
> only been subscribed for a little while.... anyway-
>
> Before I start this, for my peace of mind, has any
> of you actually used bread yeast with any measure
> of success?
>
> Thanks in advance-
>
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Mead Lover's Digest #735, 16 April 1999
From: Tom Hogland <thogland@servcom.com>
Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 21:48:25 -0800
>Subject: Bread yeast
>From: "Jake Hester" <jake_hester@hotmail.com>
>Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 11:31:07 PDT
>
>It's about time to start a few new batches, and
>I was toying with the idea of making a 1gal batch
>of traditional mead using bread yeast. I know that
>in the past some of us have contributed that they've
>heard it works, or they knew someone who had a brother
>whose boss met this guy at the airport who made mead,
>using bread yeast, that won him a chest full of blue
>ribbons, but I don't think I ever heard from anyone
>on this list who did it themselves. Then again, I've
>only been subscribed for a little while.... anyway-
>
>Before I start this, for my peace of mind, has any
>of you actually used bread yeast with any measure
>of success?
I felt the same way a few months back, so I actually did it. 1 gal batch,
mostly out of leftovers. 1-1/2c raw honey of some type (given to me), 2c
fireweed honey. Boiled water, added honey off the heat, kept on low heat
for 25 mins. Cooled to 90 degrees or so in a glass jug, added a packet of
'rapid-rise' yeast. Was almost finished bubbling out the airlock in 2 or 3
weeks, so I racked it. Kept at the "1 bubble every 30 seconds" rate from
3/7 to about 3/24. I had about 1t of Lalvin D47 from another batch that I
pitched in there 3/24 - it foamed like crazy for about 5 mins, then I
re-airlocked. Was going to bottle last weekend, but I'm out of bottles, so
I racked it again. Nice and clear, doesn't taste too bad, but tastes like
it needs a bit of aging... I think 2 or 2-1/2 cups of honey would have been
plenty in this recipe...
------------------------------
Subject: Braggot info
From: Peter Bertone <bertone@physics.unc.edu>
Date: Sun, 18 Apr 1999 13:05:57 -0400 (EDT)
> Robert J Haines <bjhaines@juno.com> on
> Sun, 11 Apr 1999 20:14:39 -0400 wrote:
>
> [...] I realize that I'm not totally certain of what a
> braggot really is or can be!
>
> [...] Where would YOU draw the line between merely a beer with
> honey added versus a real braggot?
>
>From _Making Mead_ by Acton & Duncan:
Braggot-
"To make it, take 450g (1 lb) malt extract, 450g heather honey and 4 liter
of water and boil them together for 15 minutes, skimming the surface
meanwhile. Add 10g (1/4 oz) citric acid and yeast nutrients, and when cool
ferment with an ale yeast. When fermentation has finished, rack and mature
for three months as though it were a wine."
If this recipe can be believed to adhere to some kind of
definition of 14th century English Braggot (as the authors imply), then it
would seem to me that a Braggot should have aprroximately 50% of its
fermentables from honey, the rest from malted barley, an OG of roughly
1.070, and a conditioning phase like that of a still wine or mead. It
would also seem that the myriad of different choices for sources of
fermentables derived from grain would be within "style" and would be very
interesting to pursue.
I hope this helps.
Peter Bertone
Chapel Hill, NC
------------------------------
Subject: Bread Yeast for Fermenting
From: Jeffrey Wright <jwright@telogy.com>
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 10:51:46 -0400
Hi there,
I was reading the latest copy of Mead Lover's Digest (MLD#735), and someone
was asking about using regular bread yeast for fermenting their beverages.
I just finished drinking the last of my "Simha" that I made according to the
directions in the Mead Made Easy webpages
(http://www.best.com/~davep/mme/recipes/simha.html). I'd like to say that,
yea, the beverage was tasty, but the combination of using regular bread
yeast with brown and white sugars resulted in a beverage that threatened to
blow the roof off of my apartment. This stuff was WAY overcarbonated! I
brewed according to the directions, letting the initial mixture ferment for
about 60 hours at room temperature, and then bottled. This was on a
Wednesday evening. When I came back into town after the weekend (Sunday
night), I popped one of the bottles in the fridge for a couple of hours, and
then opened her up. WOW! The contents literally spurted up out of the
bottle about 2 feet in the air (good thing that I was over the sink...;-]).
Not wanting to risk any bottle grenades, I immediately put the other bottles
into the refrigerator to halt the yeast's activity. Now, I did end up
drinking the rest over the period of the last week or so, but in order to do
so, I would have to open the bottles up in the sink and let them sit there
for 10 minutes until the carbonation subsided a bit.
I think that my mistake might have been in using dextrose (corn sugar)
rather than regular white sugar in priming before bottling. This reminded
me of my very first batch of beer, which was grossly undercarbonated,
because I primed with malt sugar rather than corn sugar. Now, I'm not sure
about the relative differences in carbonation that regular white sugar and
corn sugar will produce, but it seems that this might have been the cause.
If I make this again in the future, I think that I'll either let the primary
fermentation go on for a couple more days (although at the risk of
contamination), or else cut the priming sugar amount in half.
One thought that struck me as I was initially preparing the recipe was How
did they get the name for this beverage? According to the web page, it's a
Finnish drink, prepared for May Day (whatever that is). Hmmm...."Simha"...a
lightly alcoholic lemony carbonated beverage...could this be where Zima came
from?
Jeffrey Wright
Test Engineer - Golden Gateway System Test
Telogy Networks, Inc.
------------------------------
Subject: Re:Smoke flavor
From: "Don Van Valkenburg" <ferment@flash.net>
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 10:06:40 -0700
I have played around with smoke flavors in beer and I don't know why they
would not work with mead. There are a couple smoked malts that might be
useful. One called peated is smoked over peat and is made primarily for the
scotch industry. It is made by Hugh Baird maltsters (Eng)
(part of Great Western Co.). It is quite strong and less than 1/2 lb for 5
gallons of beer is usually sufficient. Another is a German malt and it is
smoked over a wood fire. Sorry, but I don't know what type of wood.
I have also heard of brewers using a product called liquid smoke. Never
tried this myself.
Don Van Valkenburg
Stein Fillers Brewing Supply
www.steinfillers.com
------------------------------
Subject: Honey in Florida
From: Nathan Kanous <nlkanous@pharmacy.wisc.edu>
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 15:14:26 -0500
Hi Everybody. I was just in Florida and like a putz, I forgot to ask my
wife's grandparents to bring me some orange blossom honey. Does anybody
know where they could get a gallon of orange blossom honey in the Punta
Gorda area? It's about an hour North and a touch east of Ft. Meyer's
Beach. Thanks.
nathan in madison, wi
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Smoky flavor
From: "Bill Shirley" <bshirley@shirl.com>
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 14:34:35 -0500
>any thoughts or suggestions?
>
>Jake
another posibility is using a smoked malt, a specialty barley
malt that is smoked over peat. you could stepe 0.5-1 lbs in the
water, but don't boil it, or you could mash it (with some other
unsmoked malted barley) to get some fermentables out of it,
and perhaps make it braggotish.
i've never done this with mead,
fwiw,
-bill
------------------------------
Subject: bread yeast
From: Peter.Spinney@analog.com (Pete Spinney)
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 11:41:37 -0400 (EDT)
Jake Hester wrote:
> Before I start this, for my peace of mind, has any
> of you actually used bread yeast with any measure
> of success?
My father used to make Dandelion wine with bread yeast and it seemed to work
pretty well. It always clarified well and I seem to remember it being fairly
strong. I don't remember the name of the brand, but I think it came in red
and yellow envelopes. I hope this helps.
Wassail,
Pete
------------------------------
Subject: Re: 1. Braggot; 2. Bread yeast
From: Mark Taratoot <taratoot@peak.org>
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 13:35:27 -0700 (PDT)
Bob Haines asked about braggot:
- --> First, "a mead made with malted barley or wheat" seems to indicate
- --> (to me, anyway) that honey should be at least half of the fermentables.
To me it does. However, mead is often a different experience to
different people. We could also discuss whether or not hops
belong in a braggot :) I suggest that each of us should make
whatever pleases us. I usually make a braggot at least every
year or two, and it typically has about 6-7 pounds of light malt
extract boiled with spices and/or hops, depending what I am
after. After boiling is complete, I get the kettle away from the
heat and add 7-8 pounds of raw honey. I almost always use
K1V-1116, but will sometimes use Edme ale yeast, depending what
I'm after.
CAUTION: I have found that K1V-1116 seems to react with malt to
form particularly high levels of bubblegum esters, at least for
me. Not all the time, but more often than I'd expect. Anyone
else find this to be true?
- --> Second, I kind of assume that most braggots would tend to be
- --> amber or darker in color ...
I use light extract. I probably won't make another braggot
without doing a mash, most likely pure pale ale malt.
- ------------------------------
Jake Hester asked about using bread yeast:
- --> It's about time to start a few new batches, and I was toying
- --> with the idea of making a 1gal batch of traditional mead
- --> using bread yeast. ...<snip>...I don't think I ever heard
- --> from anyone on this list who did it themselves.
Please let us know how it turns out. I have a friend (Let's just
call her Sara T) who uses bread yeast in her mead. She makes
fabulous mead. Or at least I think so. I like (and make) very
dry mead. Her mead is consistently dry, has no off flavors, and
has a (in my opinion) nice, bready feel to it. I use K1V-1116
almost exclusively. It is also clean, healthy, and attenuative
in my honey musts, and I trust that contaminant levels are
considered more carefully than in bread yeast packaging plants.
I've never tasted any sign of contamination in Sara's mead, so
perhaps this notion is wrong. I find that K1V-1116 doesn't as
often produce that nice bready flavor.
- --
Mark Taratoot
taratoot@peak.org
------------------------------
End of Mead Lover's Digest #736
*******************************
