Mead Making!

[SaintOfVirtue]

Recently, I picked up the hobby of zymurgy; specifically with regards to fermenting mead.  [For the uninitiated, mead is a wine made using honey as the primary source of fermentable sugar vice grape juice.]  I've been quite taken with the science and craft of brewing mead and was wondering if anyone here is also a home-brewer or appreciates mead?  

As for my own exploits I currently have three batches of mead in the works: a traditional desert mead, a blueberry mead, and an experiment that I'm trying to add hints of toffee, maple, and toasted marshmallow to.  Once they're done fermenting I'll bottle them up and let them age for a year to smoothen out any sharpness.  I also have two batches already bottled and coming up on their 13 and 8 month old points.

[Luigi]

I tried mead once - in Ireland. They billed it as a traditional native Irish liquor. I concluded that's the reason so many Irishman emigrated...

[Tab'le De'Bah-Rye]

I think I've had mead beer. Dont be a fool like me and ruin your life by getting drunk, I'm hella blessed to have just damaged my ego mainly but have heard stories of people coming to after black outs with limbs missing, jail, seizures, car crashes, all kinds of nasty stuff. Drink responsibly, drink don't drunk. Glorious when used responsibly, satanic when abused.

St Benedict pray for us.

St Alfonsos Liguiri pray for us.

Edited February 22, 2018 by Tab'le De'Bah-Rye

[CatherineM]

Mead is my favourite. There’s a great meadery just south of calgary that we hit every time we go that way. 

[SaintOfVirtue]

What style of mead do perfer (sweet, dry, melomel, bochet, braggot, etc.)?

[PadrePioOfPietrelcino]

I'm a brewer and fermented of many batches of beverages. Technically speaking however mead is NOT a wine. Wine is fermented fruits and vegetables, beer is fermented nuts and grains, while mead, o glorious mead, is other fermented sugars like honey, molasses, and maple syrup. Mead is the oldest fermented beverage in the world predating the earliest records of beer and wines. Most cultures throughout the world have had some form of mead, The great mead hall is found in Beowulf and the Greeks called it the "Nectar of the Gods". My favorite recipe is a spiced orange mead, JOAM, which I can ferment to a nice drinkable state in just a couple of months, and with added patience can continue to mature like other meads. It usually comes out at about 12%, so it drinks a lot like a typical wine. When I went off to seminary I gave away most of my brewing and bottling equipment, but kept enough to do a single batch at a time. It's a great hobby that the KoC, Priest friends and Seminarian Brothers have all found pleasure in helping me enjoy.

[SaintOfVirtue]

I've gotten pretty good at parking my final ABV at about 10%. I find they are more rounded and reach maturity faster.  One of the first meads I made I had no idea what I was doing and ended up at 15%. But now I'm confortable enough to expriment and make-up my own recipes.

Edited February 23, 2018 by SaintOfVirtue

[PadrePioOfPietrelcino]

I previously built a forced carbonation and dispensing station which I gave away when I left for seminary. I don't currently have the resources, but I would eventually like to build another one. I kept my blichmann beer gun, and I'd like to make some sparkling meads.

[SaintOfVirtue]

I haven't tried forced carbonation, but I did make one sparkling mead by accident a while back. I bottled without sorbate/sulfite treatment so it started fermenting again after bottling. Luckily there wasn't enough residual sugar to make bottle bombs or blow the crowns. That mead turned out to be a happy accident.