Honey Mead

Need a good easy recipe. Have a wine kit and all the gears

I have several good recipes but they involve a huge amount of typing. I have also just googled and all you need to know is out there in the ether. Just have a look.

yum. I once drunk a whole bottle of ginger honey mead one night. I kept thinking someone else musta drunk it!

http://www.stormthecastle.com/mead/honey.htm this website has everything you need to know.Bit late finding this thread, but I've just brewed my first batch....mmm....can't wait - for a whole year or two!?!?

Had an old family friend that used to make this. Not sure of the amount of honey but bottle of whiskey. He used to leave it lying on its side for a few weeks before drinking. This enabled the mixture to ferment.

wow - a few weeks - there are some 'quick' recipies. The more honey, the longer you have to leave it

Mead
Tried and tested, this is adapted from an old Jacobite recipe for a 23 litre homebrew keg using an airlock stopper

4 ½ kilos of honey
Good clean fresh water...preferably not chlorinated tap water
2 teaspoons of ground kelp
Juice of 2 dozen grapefruit
Grated peel of 2 grapefruit
1000mg vitamin C...to give the yeast a good start
1 sachet ...about 1 ½ teaspoons of beer brewing yeast

Dissolve the warmed honey in about 4 litres of the water...do not heat too much, just warm it to dissolve the honey. Funnel this mixture along with the grapefruit juice, kelp and peel into the keg. Add enough tepid water to fill the keg, leaving a gap at the top so the peel doesn’t block the spout of the airlock...the temperature should be around 20C. Add the vitamin C and the yeast at the end. Install the airlock stopper filled with water.

The brew will start up over night and take between 2 and 5 weeks to brew out depending on the room temperature...our keg sits on top of a little shelf unit that I use for bread making...it has a low watt light bulb in it...the mead usually sits around 24C...when the stopper has stopped bubbling the mead is ready to bottle...my favourite is to settle it in another keg for 5 months then bottle for a wine style mead...although we always do a few ‘quart’ bottles of bubbly mead...you just add a teaspoon of sugar to each quart bottle then cap them...you need to make sure you’ve brewed out the honey well or the bottles will explode with the extra sugar you add...they take a couple of weeks to get a bubble in them...you can bottle it without adding anything and this will give you a slightly sparkling mead that will last for about 6 months after bottled and then go flat...it’s still ok to drink though...

...ok forgot to add...i use a hydrometer to measure whether the honey has brewed out enough...dh uses it for the home brew beer too...it measures the density of the liquid...ie the mead...if it is too dense then you will get exploding bottles...the yeast breaks down the honey into alcohol...if the honey is not broken down enough BANG BANG BANG!!!

damn, didn't know that about the hydrometer!Might have a mead bomb going on lol.Got a bucket of brewing gear from my late grandad - but I better google what this 'hydrometer' is, and how to use it (I'm sure it's one of the many gadgets in the bucket!)

My dad used to make a version of mead.We children were allowed to put a raisin or two in each bottle...I suspect that had something to do with the fermentation process.

Need a good easy recipe.Have a wine kit and all the gears

I have several good recipes but they involve a huge amount of typing. I have also just googled and all you need to know is out there in the ether. Just have a look.

yum. I once drunk a whole bottle of ginger honey mead one night. I kept thinking someone else musta drunk it!