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Mead Lovers Digest #0867
Subject: Mead Lover's Digest #867, 9 September 2001
From: mead-request@talisman.com
Mead Lover's Digest #867 9 September 2001
Forum for Discussion of Mead Making and Consuming
Dick Dunn, Digest Janitor
Contents:
Re: My fifteen gallon batch (Phil) (Jay Swartzfeger)
Re: Price of local honey (Jay Swartzfeger)
Metheglins, also heartburn ("Lane Gray, Czar Castic")
honey's natural preservative (Eric C Brown)
Herb/spice flavors and honey prices ("Kemp, Alson")
using spices ("Alan McKay")
Albuquerque, NM Meadery (Ddweyr@aol.com)
Chocolate Mead (Ddweyr@aol.com)
Re: Metheglins and Campden tabs (Marc Shapiro)
Price of local honey ("Patrick M. Hennessey")
elderberries (Joyce Hersh)
NOTE: Digest appears when there is enough material to send one.
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Digest archives and FAQ are available at www.talisman.com/mead. There is
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: My fifteen gallon batch (Phil)
From: Jay Swartzfeger <jswartzfeger@home.com>
Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2001 22:52:14 -0700
On Wednesday, September 5, 2001, at 07:37 PM, mead-request@talisman.com
wrote:
> When I rack to teriary, I'll probably add the last
> half gallon of syrup.
Phil,
Please keep us updated on the progress of your batch! I always swear
that my next batch will be a maple mead, but I never get around to it.
I'm really curious to hear how your batch turns out...
- --
Jay Swartzfeger
Scottsdale, AZ
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Price of local honey
From: Jay Swartzfeger <jswartzfeger@home.com>
Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2001 23:14:32 -0700
On Wednesday, September 5, 2001, at 07:37 PM, mead-request@talisman.com
wrote:
> Subject: Price of local honey
> From: "Jones, Steve (I/T)" <stjones@eastman.com>
> Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2001 15:39:09 -0400
>
> Greetings, all.
> I'm a longtime brewer who is about to get into mead. I've found a local
> source for honey, and what I'd like to know is what variety's are good for
> mead. Those available are clover, wildflower, and sourwood. Also, is $75 for
> a 5 gallon bucket a good price?
>
> Steve
Virtually any variety of honey is good for mead (except for Eucalyptus
honey, which is virtually considered to be a horrible honey for mead).
Your results will probably be more palatable with a lighter honey; many
people avoid using darker honeys. I've used a few different dark honeys
and have been pleased with the results. Taste the honey up front and try
to think how the characteristics of the honey can be used to make an
interesting mead. Overall, you may want to use lighter honeys,
especially in melomels, until you have experience with a wide variety of
honeys.
My math may be off, but $75 for 5 gallons doesn't sound like a deal. A
company here in Arizona sells local honey in 5 gal buckets for $45.
Unless the variety they're selling is extremely rare ( I dunno, like
that Christmas honey from Hawaii), I'd say you can probably find a
better deal.
Good luck on your first mead!
- --
Jay Swartzfeger
Scottsdale, AZ
------------------------------
Subject: Metheglins, also heartburn
From: "Lane Gray, Czar Castic" <cgray2@kc.rr.com>
Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2001 02:06:58 -0500
I am in the camp of making a fairly strong tea of the herbs and spices for a
metheglin, and then you add the honey to it as it cools. It seems to
provide ample flavor. Thus far my metheglins are consumed long before they
are 6 or 7 months old, so I can't speak for how the spices age.
I am noticing that all my meads are now giving me terrible heartburn almost
immediately upon drinking them. Any ideas what would be the cause? I am
suspecting the yeast, and am wondering whether filtration would do the
trick, or would Polyclar (thus far I have yet to use anything like that) be
more suited for the job?
I also seem to have busted the legendary mead headache, or I am just lucky.
After following a bit of advice over on rcb which claimed that a hangover is
just a dehydrated brain, I have begun drinking copious amounts of water
along with my mead. Thus far, no headaches, just the heartburn
- --
Lane Gray, dobroist(http://members.aol.com/e9c6zum/shesgone.wav), mead
maker, steel picker, Dagorhirim, husband, soon-to-be-ex-procrastinator.
I want my jetpack! see www.solotrek.com convert number to a numeral 2 reply
Funny, I don't remember being absent-minded . .
------------------------------
Subject: honey's natural preservative
From: Eric C Brown <abejero@juno.com>
Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2001 10:49:43 -0400
Dany Ghozali mentioned in the last digest that honey has a natural
preservative in it. That's true, but that doesn't mean much of anything
for the meadmaker. The main preservative in honey is the sugar.
Bacteria can't grow when so much of the water content is bound up with
sugars and unavailable for the metabolic activities of bacteria. Once we
dilute the honey to make mead, however, honey's main preservative
property is done away with, which is a good thing because we couldn't
otherwise get the yeast to grow. Raw, fresh honey also has trace amounts
of hydrogen peroxide, but it's very unstable. I believe even mild
heating would break down the hydrogen peroxide, and I can't imagine any
hydrogen peroxide would remain in a mead so as to help preserve it,
especially after it's made even more dilute.
------------------------------
Subject: Herb/spice flavors and honey prices
From: "Kemp, Alson" <alson@corp.cirrus.com>
Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2001 10:37:32 -0700
All,
Herb/spice flavors: Well not really about that
actually... Apparently alcohol is pretty good at extracting
flavor compounds (whatever the hell those are). I've been
interested in tasting what oak aging would do to my meads.
Yesterday I bought some French Oak chips (they're quite snobby,
but they smell nice). Put some chips in a glass of water (heard
from a wine maker that the water soluble compounds aren't so
yummy) and let them sit over night. The water was brown in the
morning. This morning, I put the soaked oak chips in a small
bottle and poured enough Smirnoff vodka over them to cover them.
I'll let that sit for a week or two and then I'll pour a drop or
two into a glass of mead.
Perhaps someone could try the same thing with cinnamon?
Skip the soaking in water part. Just crumble up some cinnamon
sticks and soak them in vodka (smallest amount possible).
Someone asked about honey prices: Ed Brinkman in
Campbell, California (effectively San Jose) sells alfalfa honey
for $16/12#, Starthistle for $18/12#, Blackberry or Raspberry for
$26/12# and Fireweed for $26/12#.
Ed also sells other kinds of honey. If you're local to
the area and would like his number, please send me a direct
e-mail (alson@corp.cirrus.com). I'm not comfortable sending his
phone # out to thousands of people on a mailing list.
- Alson
------------------------------
Subject: using spices
From: "Alan McKay" <amckay@ottawa.com>
Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2001 13:50:42 -0400 (EDT)
Hey folks,
Though I have not yet used them in my meads, I have used spices in my beers
and my favorite way of doing it was always to make a potion with vodka.
You can find details on my web page at :
http://www.bodensatz.com/homebrew/mead/#ingredients
cheers,
- -Alan
- --
"Brewers make wort. Yeast makes beer."
- Dave Miller
http://www.bodensatz.com/
What's a Bodensatz? http://www.bodensatz.com/bodensatz.html
------------------------------
Subject: Albuquerque, NM Meadery
From: Ddweyr@aol.com
Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2001 15:59:47 EDT
I am pleased to report that Albuquerque now has a genuine meadery named Bee's
Brothers. They had a booth at the annual Wine Festival that the town of
Bernalillo hosts every Labor Day.
They offered four varieties: spiced (five spices), apple, sweet and
raspberry. All have a very good taste and the honey character is nicely
present.
They can be reached at 505-452-3191 (answering machine), 505-452-3192 (fax),
505-350-8550 (Bill's cellphone) and 505-463-7986 (Rick's cellphone). Bottles
are available in Albuquerque at The Quarters Wine Stores at Montgomery and
Wyoming and Yale Blvd. SE, John Brooks Foodtown at 12th and Candelaria,
Jubilation Fine Wines and Spirits at 3512 Lomas NE and Kelly Liquors.
Available also in Santa Fe, NM at De Arcos on Cerrillos Road and the Eldorado
Supermart in the Eldorado Shopping Center and in Bernalillo at The Country
Store and in Placitas at The Merc.
They will take Mastercard and Visa and will ship. They are the first
commercial meadery in the state of New Mexico, USA.
May You Never Thirst,
Dione Greywolfe
------------------------------
Subject: Chocolate Mead
From: Ddweyr@aol.com
Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2001 17:12:54 EDT
An Update:
The mandarin orange chocolate mead I discussed in an earlier post is now in
the bottle. It tastes a bit on the bland side, so I've started a new batch.
Using a vegetable peeler, I peeled an orange being careful not to get any of
the white inner layer and put it in the pot while pasteurizing a gallon of
honey. After sitting over night, it was poured into the primary which was
topped up to 4 1/2 gallons leaving room to add more honey later. I pitched a
champaign yeast started the previous day and it is fermenting nicely a week
later.
After fermenting to completion and feeding the must until the yeast's alcohol
tolerance is reached, I will add three 25 ml bottles of Noirot Cacao-Coccoa
natural essence to the mead before bottling. I have used an orange peel as
described here in previous batches resulting in a good orange flavor. I used
two bottles of the essence in the last batch so I'm using three bottles this
time to see if the flavor improves. I will post the results in a few months
at bottling time.
Never Thirst,
Dione Greywolfe
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Metheglins and Campden tabs
From: Marc Shapiro <m_shapiro@bigfoot.com>
Date: Thu, 06 Sep 2001 22:10:09 -0400
Shawn wrote:
> Put your spices and flavoring agents in after fermentation is finished. Many
> of the spices and herbs commonly used as mead gruits, including cinnamon and
> cloves, derive most if not all of their aromatic and taste characteristics
> from volatile oils. If you put them in during the primary you tend to lose a
> fair amount of them as vapor in the carbon dioxide coming out your airlock.
> You know that wonderful smell of spice that emanated from your carboy? Yup,
> that would be them and unfortunately they would have been better used to
> flavor the mead. When you put them in after fermentation is complete there's
> nothing to remove those precious vapors. The alcohol present also greatly
> improves the extraction of flavor from most spices. The same holds true if
> you wanted to accentuate the fruit flavor in a melomel.
While alcohol may, indeed, draw more flavorings and aromatics from
spices than water does, it may not be the ones that you want. What
alcohol draws out of spices may not be the same as what water draws
out. Some spices, cloves being one, can impart a bitter flavor to the
mead if steeped in alcohol, rather than water. This is not necessarily
a problem with all spices, but it is something to keep in mind when
thinking about steeping your spices after fermentation. I always steep
mine prior to fermentation as I responded previously. If you feel the
need to add spices afterward, it might work to make a *REALLY* strong
tea from the spices in water and add a small amount of this (a few cups
to a quart, maybe) to a five gallon batch.
- --
Marc Shapiro "If you drink melomel every day,
m_shapiro@bigfoot.com you will live to be 150 years old,
Please visit "The Meadery" at: unless your wife shoots you."
http://www.bigfoot.com/~m_shapiro/ -- Dr. Ferenc Androczi, winemaker,
Little Hungary Farm Winery
------------------------------
Subject: Price of local honey
From: "Patrick M. Hennessey" <phennessey@ncweb.com>
Date: Fri, 7 Sep 2001 19:33:31 -0400
I can only speak for myself when I say that the price is good. I am a
beekeeper and I sell most of my honey in much smaller quantities so I charge
quiet a bit more. Right now I get about $8.00 for a quart. With four
quarts to the gallon I will get about $160 for what you are getting for $75.
The beekeeper is selling you his honey for not that much more than he sells
it to the honey packers, who then double or triple the price. Go out to the
local grocery store and find a pound of honey for under $2.50. Five gallons
of honey is considered to be 60 pounds. If I were you I would buy the
honey.
> Subject: Price of local honey
> From: "Jones, Steve (I/T)" <stjones@eastman.com>
> Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2001 15:39:09 -0400
Those available are clover, wildflower, and sourwood. Also,
> is $75 for
> a 5 gallon bucket a good price?
>
> Steve
>
------------------------------
Subject: elderberries
From: Joyce Hersh <msmead@doctorbeer.com>
Date: Wed, 05 Sep 2001 20:10:17 -0400
I know I've asked this question once before, but I can't find the info.
Elderberries are ripe here, but how many pounds should I use per
gallon? Has anybody had results that they enjoyed?
- -- Joyce
------------------------------
End of Mead Lover's Digest #867
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