Once the bubbling has slowed down significantly, it's time to get rid of the lees (that's the sediment that has settled at the bottom of your carboy) and prep your mead to be enjoyed! If it still tastes too sweet, let it keep fermenting for several more days until it tastes more dry. When in doubt, taste-test your mead for sweetness, and then go onto the next step when your mead tastes dry enough for your liking. The fermentation usually takes about 7 days, but your mead might bubble as long as two weeks! That’s totally fine - the longer your mead ferments, the more sugar your yeast are eating - and the dryer and more alcoholic your mead will become. You'll know it's done when the bubbling has slowed down significantly (fermentation creates carbon dioxide, which causes bubbling in the airlock). Your mead will start to ferment within 24 to 48 hours, and will continue doing so for about a week (sometimes longer). Then, fermentation begins! Put your mead in a warm, dark place. Insert the stopper into the top of the gallon’s bottleneck, and fill the airlock with water. Pour the mixture into your clean glass gallon carboy, and attach the airlock. Then, shake it all up! You'll want to shake it up for about 30 seconds - it's a good workout, too. Once the honey and water mixture has cooled, add your wine yeast or brewsy bag. Make sure it's not too hot - when it's time to add the yeast, you don't want to kill it! Yeast is a living organism, and can only survive at temperatures below 110☏. Stir the honey and water mixture well, and let it cool to about 90☏. Okay, now let's get started! Step 1: Preparationįirst, heat up the honey and water in a pot on the stove until the honey is completely dissolved. We'll go over it in further detail later, but we recommend using between two and three pounds of honey per gallon of mead - 2 pounds if you want it on the dryer side, and 3 pounds if you'd like it to be sweeter. In this recipe, you can choose exactly how sweet you'd like your wine to be. It's the only way to ensure that you have a reliably strong and successful fermentation. In this recipe, we use the brewsy bag, which is a combination of an industry-exclusive wine yeast, nutrients for healthy yeast, energizer for a quick and hearty fermentation, potassium bicarbonate (to reduce strong, acidic flavors), malolactic culture (to make your wine smoother) and bentonite (a clarifier for sparkling clear wine). In order to start the fermentation process, you’ll need a wine yeast. Not all of us have apiaries near us, but if you can use local honey, that's awesome, too. Feel free to use a flavorful honey, like clover or orange blossom - you'll be able to taste the delicate flavors of the honey in your wine. You can grab all of this in a meadmaking starter kit.īesides water and (optionally) a bit of your tea of choice for flavor, you'll also need honey! The type of honey you use will partially determine the flavor of your mead. You’ll also need an airlock and rubber stopper, which will make sure that carbonation can escape from your mead while it is fermenting, but also prevent anything bad from getting into your mead. If you don't have a glass carboy, any food-grade, sanitized gallon container will work. All the Equipment You’ll Needįirst, you’ll need a glass gallon carboy - this is where you'll store your mead while it ferments. You can also infuse your mead with fresh fruit, herbs, and spices (lavender-infused mead is pretty lovely) - so the possibilities are really up to you. It can be made with different types of honey, depending on the flavor you want to achieve. Plus, all you need is honey, water, and yeast to make it (and you can make your own customizable viking drinking horn later).Īfter a few weeks, you'll have a deliciously alcoholic (usually 10% to 12% ABV) honey wine on your hands! It's been around since viking times, but it's as good today as it was way back then. But it can be as sweet or as dry as you'd like! If you can imagine the floral hints of honey without all the sweetness - that's a bit what mead tastes like. Mead is wine made out of honey and water. Once you've mastered the basic recipe, you can start adding fruits and spices - or you can make a cyser (apple mead) or pyment (grape mead). Luckily, it's super easy - and delicious! - to make your own mead at home. Still, mead is hard to find at the store - and even harder to find exactly the kind of mead you'd like to try at the store (and there are a LOT of different varieties). When you make mead, you're joining a tradition that's been around for centuries - it was the drink of choice for vikings, and the honey wine is gaining in massive popularity today.
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