There are several beekeepers in my locale who sell unprocessed honey at the local Farmer’s Market. I always stock up when I go. When I came across a recipe for making mead (one of my favorite drinks), I catapulted myself into the world of wine and mead brewing in my kitchen. The process is simple and takes few supplies to instigate.
What is Mead?
Mead is an ancient drink. Wikipedia notes this Roman recipe from 60 AD which apparently relied on the wild yeast in the atmosphere for fermentation just as sourdough bread uses wild yeast to activate flour and water to make the bread rise.
Take rainwater kept for several years, and mix a sextarius of this water with a [Roman] pound of honey. For a weaker mead, mix a sextarius of water with nine ounces of honey. The whole is exposed to the sun for 40 days, and then left on a shelf near the fire. If you have no rain water, then boil spring water
Necessary Equipment
The modern recipe I used is an improvement over this centuries’ old recipe. Brewing requires two gallon jugs, wine bottles, champagne yeast, a racking cane with four feet of plastic tubing, a funnel, and a heavy-duty balloon as well as honey, raisins, champagne yeast, and distilled or filtered water. I gathered supplies from flea markets and Amazon.
I found the gallon containers for $4.49 at a flea market. You need at least two containers for transferring your mixture when you rack (siphon off the brew from the fruit and dregs) the mead.
The hardest item to find was the balloon. I finally found heavy duty balloons at my local grocery store in the floral department for 20 cents apiece and bought two.
The champagne yeast and racking cane with tubing came from Amazon, I recycled my empty wine bottles for bottling the mead. One note of importance in making mead or wine is that all the utensils and containers are clean and sterilized before use to ensure success.
The recipe I used required the following
Ingredients:
- 1 gallon filtered water (Chlorine will kill the yeast needed for fermentation.)
- 1 quart (4 cups) honey
- 1 cup any fruit juice or 1-2 Tablespoons any jelly dissolved in 1 cup of non-chlorinated water. (I used my homemade apple jelly.)
- 1 package champagne yeast or white wine yeast½ cup raisins (not golden)
- Directions:·
- Bring gallon of water to boil.
- Warm honey in bowl or pan of warm water (Do not microwave,)
- Pour the honey into a sterilized gallon jug.
- Fill the gallon jar half way with boiled water and swirl to dissolve the honey.· Add the raisins.
- Fill the gallon jar to the shoulders with the remaining boiled water leaving enough space to add the yeast mixture.
- Wait till the mead mixture has cooled to 100-105 degrees F to proof the yeast. (If the sweetened liquid is too hot, the yeast will die.)
- Heat the fruit juice or jelly and water to lukewarm (100-105 degrees F).
- Sprinkle champagne yeast into mixture to proof –which means that it will foam and bubble showing that the yeast is active. Let it foam for five minutes or so to activate.
- When the liquid in the gallon jar has cooled to lukewarm (100-105 degrees F), add the yeast mixture.
- Stopper the jug and watch for bubbling that signals the beginning of fermentation. If the mixture does not bubble within a day, proof another packet of yeast and add to mead. Also check the expiration date on the champagne yeast to make sure it has not expired.
- Many recipes call for a stoppered airlock to seal the gallon jar. Not satisfied with the seal of the stoppered airlock, I came across an article about someone making wine in Cuba who did not have access to a stoppered airlock. Necessity is the mother of invention and our Cuban friend used condoms to seal the fermenting bottles. I reasoned that a rubber balloon would work in the same manner and so experimented with a heavy duty 11-inch balloon. It was fun to watch the balloon expand with the ensuing fermentation process.
- Store your fermenting mead in a warm, dark environment of about 70 degrees. I wrap my gallon jar with a tea towel to keep out the light and set it on my kitchen counter. When the yeast has settled in a layer on the bottom of the gallon container, rack the wine for the first time.
- Ten days after making the mead, I awoke to a burst balloon.
The yeast had formed a sediment on the bottom of the gallon jug. It was my cue to rack the mead for the first time and replace the balloon airlock. - Racking the mead requires that you siphon the mead into a clean, sterilized glass container leaving the residue fruit and sediment in the original jar. I do this by placing the receiving jug in my kitchen sink with a two-fold purpose. Anything that spills is contained, and the receiving gallon jar is lower than the raised mead jar in order to let gravity do its work. Then I set my full gallon of mead on an upended soup kettle to elevate it above the counter thus creating a gravity powered siphon. The racking cane I purchased from Amazon with its attendant plastic tubing works excellently for this process and would be hard to improve upon.
The replacement balloon shows that the mead is continuing to ferment and produce carbon dioxide. This is the resultant mead-in-process.
Fermentation can take from two weeks to several months. The mead may darken over the course of time. Racking allows the mead to clear by removing spent yeast each time it’s racked. While there are no hard and fast rules about how often or when to rack the mead, over-racking (more than four times) may cause the mead to break down. However, allowing the yeast to remain in the mead may cause it to have a strong yeasty taste. The racking process may take several weeks to several months before the mead is ready to be bottled.
When you’re ready to bottle the mead, sterilize the wine bottles that you have collected. I use my dishwasher with the heat cycle to accomplish this feat. The racking cane works well to fill each of the mead bottles. Cork the bottle and store at 65-70 degrees in a dark cupboard or corner for six months to a year to finish the aging process of your mead.
I found a compact wine rack that keeps my mead in a cool corner in my basement. Be sure to label and date your mead to remember when it’s time to uncork and celebrate the honey harvest.
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