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Mead Lovers Digest #1294
Subject: Mead Lover's Digest #1294, 24 December 2006
From: mead-request@talisman.com
Mead Lover's Digest #1294 24 December 2006
Forum for Discussion of Mead Making and Consuming
Dick Dunn, Digest Janitor
Contents:
Re: Very simple mead (Marc Shapiro)
Re: Very simple mead (Dick Adams)
Re: Boiling grains (Jim Johnston)
Diluting Mead (Dick Adams)
To splah or not to splash ("Mitchell Omichinski")
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Subject: Re: Very simple mead
From: Marc Shapiro <mshapiro_42@yahoo.com>
Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2006 19:08:48 -0800
> From: "Randall Reese" <randall.reese@gmail.com>
> Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2006 12:18:19 +0300
>
> Hi:
> I am in the middle east or better known as " The valley of no alcohol"! Ha
> ha ha
> I want to make a very simple mead as its hard to buy much of anything to
> make mead with or anything to do with making beer.
> I can get honey,water, Cinnamon, fresh lemons but no citric acid, cream of
> tartar,etc.Really just normal stuff one would use for cooking. I have been
> able to obtain some pilsner beer yeast-is this suitable?
> What is the simplest recipe that makes a reasonable mead.No fancy additives
> please.
>
This recipe looks fairly similar to one that I used about 25 years ago
and that many people had success with at the time. It calls for an ale
yeast, so your pilsner yeast should be just fine. As far as the spices
go, use whatever you can get. I am partial to cinnamon, cloves and
ginger, myself, but that is a matter of taste and availability. There
is no mention of lemon juice in this recipe, but I know that I used
about an ounce or two per gallon when I made my quick mead.
Source: Kevin Karplus (karplus@ararat.ucsc.edu), Issue #538, 11/16/90
Ingredients:
* 3 gallons water
* 5 pounds honey
* 1/3 cup jasmine tea
* 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
* 2 teaspoons cinnamon
* 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
* 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
* 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
* ale yeast
Procedure:
Boil water, adding tea and spices. Remove from heat and stir in honey.
(Some mead makers boil the honey, skimming the scum as it forms). Cover
boiled water, and set aside to cool (this usually takes a long time, so
start on the next step). Make a yeast starter solution by boiling a cup
of water and a tablespoon or two of honey. Add starter to cooled liquid.
Cover and ferment using blow tube or fermentation lock. Rack two or
three times to get rid of sediment.
The less honey, the lighter the drink, and the quicker it can be made.
1 pound per gallon is the minimum, 5 pounds per gallon is about the
maximum for a sweet dessert wine. This mead is a metheglin because of
the tea. The yeast is pitched one day after starting the batch, the crud
skimmed about 10 days later, then wait 3 days and rack to second- ary.
Wait 2 more weeks and bottle---about 4 weeks from start to finish.
Comments:
Yield is 3.1 gallons. Excellent clarity, fairly sweet flavor, slight
sediment, light gold color. An excellent batch.* *
- --
Marc Shapiro
mshapiro_42@yahoo.com
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Very simple mead
From: rdadams@smart.net (Dick Adams)
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2006 11:01:28 -0500 (EST)
Randall Reese wrote:
> I am in the middle east or better known as " The valley of no alcohol"!
> Ha ha ha
Just one of several reasons I would not go there regardless of
how much it paid. Well maybe, but the salary would have to
be staggering.
Before you do anything, you might want to ask your co-workers
how they are surviving without alcohol. Someone might be
operating a still. I've often thought of some middle east
coutries as a bootleggers paradise if it were not for swift
harshness of their justice system.
> I want to make a very simple mead as it's hard to buy much of
> anything to make mead with or anything to do with making beer.
You have come to the right place.
> I can get honey, water, Cinnamon, fresh lemons but no citric
> acid, cream of tartar, etc. Really just normal stuff one
> would use for cooking. I have been able to obtain some
> pilsner beer yeast-is this suitable?
I would not use a beer yeast!
> What is the simplest recipe that makes a reasonable mead.
> No fancy additives please.
All you need is water, honey, yeast, and, if you want, herbs
or fruit. Did you bring any equipment with you or are you
planning on gallon batches? If it is the latter, I suggest
you find a few 4 liter jugs - 6 and 8 liters would be better?
Do you have bungs and airlocks?
Your problem is going to be the yeast. You want Lalvin dry
yeast because it ships safer. You do not want the yeast in
5 mg packets because Customs will know what it is when they
see it. You want 250 or 500 grams repackaged and marked
"Cooking Yeast". I have no ideas where to purchase such
quantities or how to repackage it to get it through Customs.
You might consider taking a holiday to somewhere close where
you can buy what you need.
I suspect you have hot days and cold nights so you want a
yeast with a large temperature range. Some suggestions of
Lalvin yeasts are DV10, EC-1118, and K1V-1116 which will
all ferment into the 90's Fahrenheit.
Be very careful because what you want to do is illegal
where you are.
Dick
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Boiling grains
From: Jim Johnston <jim@tervolk.com>
Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2006 11:06:16 -0600
>> From: Arthur Torrey <arthur_torrey@comcast.net>
> [snipped]
>> I stand mildly corrected... I made my earlier post from memory,
>> but now that
>> you mention it, I just checked the instructions for a couple of my
>> kits.
>> Both said crush the grains and put them in a brewpot w/ 2 gallons
>> of cold
>> water, bring to a boil, then let steep. So the grains only got
>> boiled for a
>> minute or two at most, and mostly weren't on the bottom of the pot
>> to get
>> burned.
>>
>> After steeping for the specified time, the grain bag comes out,
>> the malt syrup
>> gets added and then the long boil begins...
>>
>> Whether this is the "right" way to do it or not, it works. Seems
>> to me like
>> one of those "religious argument" topics like the use of sulfites
>> and how
>> much / if one should heat honey...
>>
>> ART
>
> ART,
>
> It looks to me more like a beginners kit instruction than a position in
> a "religious argument" topic. A lot of beginners kits try to make
> things as easy as is possible for the neophyte brewer, to avoid
> frustrating him/her and driving off a potential revenue stream.
> Steeping instructions that tell the beginner to bring the grains to a
> boil avoid that whole fussy "have to have a thermometer, and *gasp* know
> how to read one" issue that comes with a more prudent instruction to
> bring the water to a certain temperature and hold it there for some
> number of minutes. After all, even the most under equipped kitchen has
> one tool for determining when water is boiling. ;-P.
>
> Cheers and Happy Holidays,
> Ken
>
As the former owner of a homebrew shop with 10 years experience as an
all-grain brewer, I can offer this bit of advice. When doing a grain
extract (steeping grains) the advice is indeed not to boil. A couple
of minutes are not a big deal, longer boil times will extract out
some harsh tannins from the husks that lead to very coarse flavors.
The optimum temperature is 168 F at the upper end. Starting with the
crushed grains in a bag in the cold water and heating to somewhere in
that range is a good method, if you can hold the temperature in the
150-160 F range for 20-30 minutes or so will extract out the sugars
nicely. Remember that this should be the specialty grains only, the
ones that add color, body and specific flavors. The malt extract
syrup has had conversion of the starches to fermentable sugars and is
the fermentable portion. The enzymes in the syrup are inactivated by
the boil process used to concentrate it, so there is nothing left to
convert the starches in the specialty grains. This is why I
formulated recipes with fairly small amounts of specialty grains.
The homebrew shop gives these instructions because they see things
like people adding a lot of specialty grains and leaving them in for
a full boil, resulting in an awful taste and an unhappy customer. I
had a customer add the yeast to the boil once, and had to add that to
my instruction sheet after that. If the lawyers got ahold of the
process, there would be warning labels and disclaimers everywhere.
A Blessed Holiday Season to All
Eat, Laugh, Celebrate, Drink Mead !
Jim
------------------------------
Subject: Diluting Mead
From: rdadams@smart.net (Dick Adams)
Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2006 18:44:57 -0500 (EST)
The Mead was made on 11/17/06 at 1.122 and racked on 12/16/06
at 1.03. There is 5 gallons in the carboy and I added a gallon
of water to top it off.
My calculations say:
(5 * (1.122 - 1) / 6) + 1 = 1.1017 adjusted original gravity
(5 * (1.030 - 1) / 6) + 1 = 1.025 adjusted specific gravity
Is this the right way to do it?
Dick
------------------------------
Subject: To splah or not to splash
From: "Mitchell Omichinski" <mitchell2@hugs.com>
Date: Sun, 24 Dec 2006 09:27:05 -0600
Hello
I come to mead making from wine making, where the practice of splashing
the fermented must to the bottom of the carboy on first racking is a
common practice. The beneficial effects of aerating the forming wine in
this manner are accepted as common knowledge. However, this practice of
splashing on first racking seems to be taboo for mead, or is it? I came
across this link for a recipe of dry mead that splashed not once but
thrice in the process. =20
http://www.makewine.com/makewine/drymead.html
I would like to hear your comments on whether splashing would be
beneficial or not.
Mitchell
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End of Mead Lover's Digest #1294
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