I'm making mead again

[Luftmensch]

Late this past summer I bought a gallon of honey from a local apiary, and I believe the time has come to finally get around to making mead. Last year I made six gallons of the stuff which turned out to be a pretty decent success, but altogether barely three gallons of the stuff was consumed, and the rest just turned sour and got dumped in the compost heap (also, I learned that water cooler jugs don't make very good fermentation vessels). It was a simple melomel, which was nice enough but did get tedious to drink, and I didn't have the foresight to bottle it and give it out.

So anyway, this year I'm going to make several different varieties. I figure since I can make a gallon at a time easily, I'll do six different varieties, which will leave me just enough to make five standard wine bottles of each. I'll even make custom labels for the helluvit.

So anyway, I thought I'd ask you guys for your opinions, because there's a lot of ways to make mead, and maybe some of you have tried some interesting recipes, or have some informed opinions. Here's a few things I've been thinking about:

Hopped mead: Mead is naturally pretty sweet, but I've heard that hops are pretty good for balancing the flavor. I hear you get a nice beer-like flavor that's pretty approachable. A Braggot is a traditional mead that uses malt as well. Not sure whether to go with the malt or stick with a simpler and purer hop mead.

Hard tea: I've read from some mead brewers that if you use spices, tea leaves are also a very good bitterant for mead. I'm not a huge fan of using lots of fancy spices, but I've had some fine teas and it makes a lot of sense to me to use tea as a base for my mead. Not sure what kind of tea to go with, but my local tea shop is very well stocked.

Burnt mead (also called Bochet): If you caramelize the mead before you boil it, many of the sugars will become unfermentable, and you end up with a dark caramel colored sweet wine. (Here's a video of a couple making some: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=LoPbfJ3BwwM). I've heard it can taste burned, or, if done more lightly, more caramely.

Melomel: This is what I made before. You use just enough honey for fermentation, and add lots of fruit for flavor and sweetness. When I did it, I mostly used citrus, and ended up with a sort of hard lemonade. Good stuff, chicks love it.

Milk and Honey: Milk isn't a very common brewing ingredient, and folks seem to strongly advise against it, but folks who have report excellent results. Honey-sweetened milk is a popular cafe sort of drink with the neo-hippie type. I'm thinking about using about a quart of whole milk, just enough honey to ferment, and using a chai base. Any suggestions?

Licorice: I like licorice. Nobody else does. Fuck everyone else. Licorice has a good sweetness and a great aftertaste, and I'd like to use it as a major ingredient, but hopefully I can make something a little more elaborate and nuanced. Maybe I can make a menthol mead with licorice notes? Or I could use licorice to flavor the burnt mead. Making a black licorice mead might be pretty rad, truth be told. Also considering using marmite for a salty note, but that might not be a great idea.

"Traditional": If you don't use any ingredients besides honey, water, and yeast (plus yeast nutrients as necessary), you get a so-called traditional mead. Historically there's no good reason to think this is any more traditional than any other approach, but what're you gonna do. Might be worthwhile, especially as a sort of baseline. If I do this, I'll probably make five different concentrations.

and finally:

Mead of Poetry: If any of you are familiar with Norse mythology, you may know that the dwarves slaughtered Kvasir, and mixed his blood with honey to make a mead that grants special wisdom to those who drink. That is exactly what I plan to do. Since I don't have any great wise men to slaughter, I was going to use beef blood instead, which might not grant wisdom but will grant badassery. I have no idea how this will turn out, but I know I'm definitely going to try it out.

Anyway, that's what I'm considering. Any thoughts? Refinements? Additional suggestions? Anybody want a bottle when I'm done? I'll have 30 full wine bottles, if all goes according to plan. I also plan on making several wines, and I already have a gallon of cider all fermented and ready to drink in the fridge that I just finished a couple days ago, which might result in even more wine bottles. So yeah, if anybody wants to exchange some homebrew, let me know. None of my meads will really be left to age properly, since this is entirely experimental, but I will be making custom labels because I'm cool like that. I'll definitely be needing to get rid of the blood wine. Maybe I'll make the label extra nice and let four lucky saps have real blood wine to put on their shelves.

[brkl]

I have nothing to say about mead, though I'd love to try some if I had the opportunity.

But I have this theory related to home-made alcohol. We don't have any traditional aged hard liquor such as whisky or brandy in Finland, but we've sure made a whole lot of moonshine over the years. Whisky and brandy producers like to talk a lot about how the process has to be carefully controlled etc. but I think a lot of that is just branding. I bet if you made some moonshine using good ingredients, maybe distilled it again like whisky if that's possible and just stuck it in a wooden barrel somewhere for 10 years, it'd taste pretty interesting. I know my grandpa has the equipment, but I'm not crazy enough to try it yet. Also, it's illegal.

[Nachimir]

I'm probably too far away to make getting a bottle of your mead economical, but thanks for writing such an informative post.

A few people at the hackspace here are making beer and cider already; I'm partial to mead and might give it a go next year.

[Luftmensch]

Quick tip for all: If you want to start making your own wine, hard cider is probably the easiest.

All you need is to buy a gallon jug of cider, a packet of yeast, and a balloon. Having some vodka around helps.

Easy peasy: poke a small hole or two in the balloon (a needle is ideal for this). Pour a little vodka in the balloon (this is just to disinfect. Everclear works too). Open the cider, pour in the packet of yeast (regular fleishman's is fine), and put the balloon over the neck. Store the jug in a dark place. Voila. The balloon will inflate by the next morning (if the cider wasn't cold, it might just take an hour or less). When the balloon deflates again, it's probably ready. It'll take between a week and a month, depending on the yeast you use and how warm the cider is.

A friend of mine had a problem where her's fermented too fast and leaked, so if you're storing it in a warm place, leave a tray under it. This recipe might result in a strange banana-like off-flavor. This comes from the yeast, and is normal, but can be avoided if you take extra steps. Brewing and winemaking is only as complicated as you want it to be.

[Joewintergreen]

Man, this all sounds amazing, I would love to try every one of those meads (though I've never tried mead in my life). I would never expect you to ship a bottle all the way to the Australias though.

The extent of my experience with homebrew is my brother and his mates spent a long time collecting bottles and preparing to make their own beer, spent a weekend, fucked it up somehow and left an absurd number of empty bottles under my house.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Mead sounds cool. I want mead.

[Roderick]

Time to MEAD your maker!!

[subbes]

i do not homebrew but I once left a bottle of apple juice in the fridge for 4-5 months and oh boy

[Nachimir]

I have five litres of scrumpy that I had no real chance to drink in the six weeks of work from Eurogamer to GameCity. It now smells like piss and is fearsomely alcoholic; I'm scared to open it.

[Luftmensch]

I just realized today that my cider is still fermenting in the fridge. Maybe it'll be pretty good by the time Christmas rolls along. I had a sip when I moved it to the fridge and it tasted mildly alcoholic, and slightly drier, but not otherwise very different from the original stuff.