Mead Recipe – Basic Sweet Mead
Mead is the oldest alcoholic concoction stemming back to archealogical findings from 7000 BC. In my book that’s pretty cool… although modern meads are a little more refined (given our access to chemicals & equipment). Anyway, here is the recipe I used to create my first ever 5 litres of mead three weeks ago.
Ingredients to Make 5 Litres
- 1.8KG local bush honey
- 15g citric acid
- 1 teaspoon tannic acid
- 2 Campden tablets
- 5g Port/Sherry yeast NDA21
- 1 teaspoon yeast nutrient
Equipment in my Kit
- 2 large pots
- 5 litre fermentation bottle
- 1 airlock
- 1 rubber bung with hole for airlock
- 1 funnel
- 1 measuring cup for scooping
- spoons & stirrer etcetera
- 1 bottle scourer that bends
- digital thermometer
- hydrometer to measure specific gravity
Method – Stage 1
The first and most crucial step is the need to sanitise your equipment… don’t use bleach for this… use sodium metabisulphite powder at 1 tablespoon per litre of water. You need to wash any pots or plastic buckets you intend to use, the airlock, and anything that will come into contact with your mead. This is because you are producing a food and if you’re not hygeinic then wild yeasts will contaminate and make it all taste like crap.
It’s a good idea to let the containers of honey sit in a sink of warm water for a while to make this part easier. Put your 1.8KG of honey into one of your large pots / containers you intend for mixing your mead. Boil around 4.5 litres of water and pour over the top of the honey. Stir until all the honey is dissolved in the water.
When the liquid is lukewarm add the 2 Campden tablets (for killing wild yeasts and preventing infection), put in 15 grams of citric acid and 1 teaspoon of tannic acid.
Put some boiled water into a small bowl. When the water has cooled to between 26 and 32 Celcius (or thereabouts)… which is between 80 and 90 Farenheit… empty a 5g Port/Sherry yeast NDA21 into the bowl and a teaspoon of yeast energiser. Give it a little gentle stir and leave for 15 minutes.
While the yeast is starting to activate in it’s bowl the must (honey mix) can be put into the 5 litre fermentation bottle… leaving enough room for your yeast mix and about 3 centimetres extra of air. You can use this opportunity to take a hydrometer reading of your must… it tells you how much sugar you have in there and indicates the potential alcohol content it will produce.
When the yeast is ready and the must is at room temperature pour the yeast mix into the must.
I have a long knife that I have sanitised to poke through the top of the bottle and gently agitate the must inside the bottle for a few minutes. This introduces air which helps the yeast along.
Sanitised bung in the top. Put some pre-boiled and cooled water into the airlock and insert that fully into the bung’s hole. Sit it on a bench in your office wrapped in a towel or an old jumper to keep it nice and warm and dark.
It should start bubbling within 3 – 4 days. If that doesn’t work then mix up another yeast mix and put that into the bottle. It’s maybe a good idea to leave it in a warm room wrapped up.
Method – Stage 2
Months later when the mead ceases bubbling use a sanitized hydrometer to take a reading. The reading should be 0 (zero) or just below… if it isn’t then leave it be because it will blow your bottle tops off in storage. If it is at zero then it’s time to rack the mead.
Racking means to siphon off the good stuff into another sterilised bottle leaving that crap sediment behind. If you have more sediment in the new bottle you can repeat the racking into yet another sanitised bottle. Then drop a well-crushed Campden tablet into the mead.
Leave the racked mead on a dark shelf somewhere until it’s been at least 6 months since you first made that must. Then bottle it and leave for at least another 3 months. Don’t laugh but in historic times meads were left anywhere from 1 year to 100 years because it will only improve with age.
Acknowledgement & Comment
Although this isn’t exactly the word-for-word execution of the basic mead recipe my friend Eileen sent through, it’s now kicking along in it’s third week and has about 1 bubble through the airlock every second. The smell has a citrus quality (as I may have put in a little extra citric acid, for better or worse).
Something to note… be sure to use sodium metabisulphite (not bleach)… and be careful because if you’re one of those people like me with a skin allergy to it then you get nasty excema and burning cracked skin… wear chemical gloves. And don’t breath in those fumes in the sink – invest in some kind of mask.
The mead can be drunk at the bottling stage but try not to be tempted. It’s only going to get better. It should come in at around 13 per cent.
Oh and go to YouTube and search for mead making… there are lots of video tutorials.
