Making Mead -- the easy, quick way.[edit source]
- in two to three quarts of drinking water, dissolve 3 pounds of your favorite honey
- gently boil for 10 minutes to kill bacteria, mold, fungi and other living critters; cover, let cool to room temperature; pour into a gallon jug (Watch the boil closely, turn down the heat if foaming starts!!)
- while waiting for batch to cool (put the gallon jug in sink full of cold water), in ½ pint of 100˚F water (warm, not hot, to touch) dissolve ½ tsp yeast nutrient (from your local friendly homebrew shop, or ’net)
- add one package of Red Star Champagne Yeast; shake and open top, repeatedly, to dissolve oxygen into yeast suspension
- let ‘reconstitute’ ~20 minutes, until 1/4” foam mat forms on the surface (yeast generates exhaust gas of CO2, just like us)
- pour now active yeast culture into cool (room temp) honey solution
- cap gallon jug with ‘bubbler’ from homebrew shop; this keeps bacteria and other living critters out of the batch
- listen attentively as bubble frequency increases to a peak and then subsides; about a week at room temp
- As bubble frequency slows to ~ 1 or 2/minute, (surface foam should clear by now), rack off (ask brew shop for a “racking cane”) into Grolsch bottles with a spring closure. Put filled (1 1/2” head space), capped bottles in SHOWER OR BATHTUB. If you capped too early, the fermentation continues too far, and the bottles explode! The post-capping fermentation will produce some ‘sparkle’ as the CO2 dissolves into the batch under the produced pressure. If you do not want the sparkle, let ferment until bubbles stop.
- A week should fully ferment the batch. The claim that mead gets better over several years is nothing but mead snobbery.
- Red Star Champaign Yeast will top off at ~ 10-12 vol% alcohol, -three times- that of beer; do NOT operate heavy machinery, this stuff has knocked down a confirmed alcoholic!
- for unique flavors, add a 12 fl. oz. bottle of Smuckers fruit syrup of your choice to the boil. This will produce a sweeter mead; if you prefer a ‘dryer’ batch, use less honey/syrup so less sugar will be in the final product.
- keep in fridge.
- Sip, don’t guzzle, and enjoy the flavor changes.
- Give away as unique presents.
Laurie
-- Scientifically-credible info on plant-based human diets: http://ecologos.org/ttdd.html news:alt.food.vegan.science