Online Mead Workshop

by Lord Athanor

The Intro

Mead is the most ancient and noble of alcoholic drinks. In its most basic state it consists of nothing more than honey and water to which a little dab of yeast is added. Many kinds of wild yeast can be found all around us in nature. The upshot of this is that ancient folks would stumble across some honey, determine it to be yummy, then gather and store it. If they let it get wet and sit for a few months it would turn into mead. This happy discovery was followed shortly by the discovery of the hangover.

Just about every early culture had a form of mead, with the notable exception of the Native American folks who had no decent honeybee until the Europeans brought them over. But apart from our native ancestors, the party was worldwide. In Australia, Africa, India, the Orient, and Europe mead was the first social lubricant. Now drinking leads to talking, and talking leads to New Ideas. Thus I credit the whole evolution of civilization to mead.

Mead remained the worldwide drink of choice for long centuries, until the invention of beer. This new-fangled interloper in the world of boozing became quite a popular fad, and lots of grain is easier to get than lots of honey. Thus the noble and superior mead was slowly ousted from the scene. I believe that it was the eventual global mead deficiency that gave rise to the taxes, war, and data loss that plague our modern world.

There are probably more types of mead than there are mead makers. For starters, different kinds of honey will give a different taste to the finished mead. Light colored simple honey, such as orange blossom, will give a light sweet mead. The darker honeys, such as heather or wildflower, will take a little longer to finish and will produce deep, complex tastes. The proportion of honey to water that you start with will help determine the sweetness of the brew. You can create meads as dry or as sweet as you wish. Also, there are many different strains of yeast and each has unique characteristics that will affect the final product.

There are also a lot of other ingredients you might add to mead. The Greeks added grapes and called it hipocras. The Celts added apples and called it cyser. Just about everybody has added all kinds of fruit to it, and that is called a melomel. Those crafty Celts would also add all manner of beneficial herbs to their mead, creating methaglin, from which we derive the word medicine. You can add just about anything you want to, and you can call it anything you like.

Those of you who are still awake are probably wondering when the poetry will end, and the instructions begin. Your patience will be rewarded shortly, after an 'Ode to the Mighty Yeast'.

Most of the Really Great Ideas happen early in the morning, and it was shortly after the Dawn of Creation that the Goddess thought up the yeast cell. This mind-boggling useful little critter seems to have been created for the sole purpose of improving the party. The yeast is a single-celled marvel of design and karmic purity. Its whole life is devoted to eating and reproducing. Yeast eats sugar, pees alcohol, and burps carbon dioxide. If left unharmed, the yeast will do this until all the sugar is gone or until there is enough alcohol to kill itself. Then its little yeasty bodies settle to the bottom of the vat. Not only does this paragon of selfless virtue make the alcohol, but if you don't let the gas escape it will also carbonate the beverage while doing so. Let's all just take a moment to ponder the loving grace and keen wit of such a Goddess as would create this kind gift for humankind.

In the course of this workshop we will talk about ingredients, equipment, and techniques for brewing several kinds of mead. Home brewing has become quite popular, and there are stores just about everywhere that can supply you the various bits you will need. If a local homebrew shop is not available, there are plenty of online sources as well. I will chase down some links for the next posting. Perhaps the only item that you really just have to get from a brew store is the yeast. Bread yeast is a different strain than the yeast you use for mead or wine. The yeast for beer is yet another type. Most everything else you really need can be found at a Kmart or kitchen shop. Of course, the homebrew shop will have scads of really nifty gizmos and scientific bits of clutter that can make the whole event seem more important and complex. I will detail the more useful bits later. But first, let's look at the simplest method for brewing mead.

This is the recipe and method that was given me by the maker of the very first mead I ever had, perhaps 21 years ago. It was a very sweet drink, almost like a desert wine, but warming to the heart. The fine Lady who made this mead had great patience and a simple approach to the winemaker's art. The equipment list is simple: One big jar (a 5 gallon glass water jug), One big pot (a giant metal stewpot that would make soup for an army), One balloon (just a balloon), honey, water, and yeast.

Take equal volumes of water and honey, put it in the pot, and bring it to a boil. Boil for about 15-20 minutes and skim off the goo that floats up to the top. Put a lid on the pot and let it cool way down, till it is just barely lukewarm, not even close to hot. Dump it in the (very clean) glass jar, add a packet of yeast, and stretch the neck of the balloon over the top of the jug. Put the jug in your basement, and wait. Every once in a while she would check the balloon and if it was getting kinda big, let the gas out. There you are, and in about 6 to 9 months you have some fine sweet mead. The basement in question was in Georgia, so it stayed reasonably warm in winter.

That was easy, huh? If you have 6 to 9 months to wait, and you want a really sweet mead, class is done. There are several aspects of this method that bring up various issues with most mead makers. The metal pot is one. Most folks will say not to use a plain metal pot, get one with a ceramic coating. The boiling debate has been going on forever. Some say you must boil the brew to kill off any wild yeasts and other beasties that might be in the honey and to cause the white foamy goo to rise so you can skim it off. Others say that boiling the brew will kill the subtle flavors of the honey, and you should just pasteurize the brew at 170 degrees for 40 minutes or so. The load of honey in this recipe is much more than most folks would use. I tend to use about 1½ gallons of honey for a 5 gallon batch. The balloon is a cute way of saving a buck you would otherwise spend on a fermentation lock, which is a little gizmo that lets gas out without letting air into the jug.

The time involved in this method is what most folks would object to. Honey and water by itself is not the best kind of food for yeast, and that is why the fermentation takes so long. There are several kinds of 'yeast nutrient' that you can add to the recipe, which will speed things up. There are also a few other goodies that you can add to make a more perfect climate for the yeasty beasties to enjoy. If you optimize the 'must' (the mead maker's word for the unfermented brew) and chose the right yeast, you can get a batch to finish up in about 60 days.

Well, I think that about does it for this time. Next posting, we will discuss the basic equipment which you should obtain and some of the more exotic tools which are worth having. I'll give you the basic recipe for straight mead and some technique for the brewing process. From there, we can go into melomels and methaglins and the techniques and tricks for them.

Basic Brewing and Equipment

Here is a quick summary of the basic mead making process. First we are going to clean everything till it is as close to sterile as we can get, then we are going to make up some thick honey water and make sure we kill every little beastie that might be in it. Next we will introduce the beastie we want to grow (yeast) into our must. We let the little beggars grow till they have filled the jug, and have converted a good portion of the sugar to alcohol. This is called the primary fermentation. Next, we siphon off the liquid from the first jug, leaving the little dead yeasty bodies, into a second jug. Then we wait, and this is the secondary fermentation. Then we bottle up the mead and unbottle it as we see fit.

So, you need some cleaning solution, which I will discuss later. You need something to brew up your must in. I suggest using a large ceramic lined cook pot. K mart has some for about 12 - 15 bucks, black speckley things that look like camp cookware. Bigger is better, but you don't have to have a 5 gallon pot to do a 5 gallon batch of mead. You need room for 1 1/2 gallons of honey, a gallon of water, and some room left over. I think K mart has some that are 11 or 12 quarts, which is fine. 16 quarts is even better.

You need something to ferment the must in. The 2 choices are glass jugs and plastic buckets, both available from the brew store. The bucket must be food-grade plastic! No empty paint buckets, please. It has a tight fitting lid, with a grommet-lined hole in it, and is usually 5 1/2 or 6 gallons. Some of them have markings on them to indicate 1 thru 5 gallons, and this is useful. If you recycle a bucket from pizza sauce or pickled herring, wash it and soak it about a billion times. The glass jugs are called carboys, and are available in many sizes. Again, 5 - 6 gallons is a good size, and yes - you can use your empty glass water cooler bottles. A jug will need to have a rubber stopper with a hole in it to fit the fermentation lock.

I like to use a 6 gallon bucket for the primary fermentation because it is easy to pour into and gives you room for the foamy goo to rise up, which it will, without shooting out of the container. I like to use a 5 to 6 gallon carboy for the secondary fermentation, because it lets you see what is happening, and you can easily tell when the mead clears up and is ready to bottle. There are also endless hours of fun to be had just watching the mead bubble and churn as it finishes up.

A fermentation lock is just a plastic gizmo that lets gas bubble out through water, and keeps air from getting in. There are several designs of them all at about a buck, and if one looks neater to you than the others, get it. You want some measuring spoons, and a big plastic spoon for stirring the brewpot.

You need something to siphon with. Your friendly homebrew shop, or fish store, has plastic tubing that is just right. If you are using a carboy for the primary fermentation, you might want a funnel to aid pouring the must from the brewpot into the carboy. There is a nifty gizmo called a j-tube that is just a stiff piece of plastic in a j shape, with a little cap over the straight end of the J. The straight end goes into the container you are siphoning from, and the little cap makes it easy to siphon the liquid without stirring up the settled yeast sediment. The plastic hose should fit over the curved end of the j tube.

You might want a cooking thermometer with a range including 50 to 220 degrees or so, especially if you are not going to boil the must. Apart from ingredients and additives, the only other bit you might want is a thing called a hydrometer, which is a floating glass tube thingy whose purpose I will discuss later. Some home brew shops will have a starter kit with a bucket, fermentation lock, j tube, siphon hose, and maybe some cleaning solution or a thermometer for about 20 bucks. Carboys cost about 12 to 15 bucks.

OK, on to the ingredient and additive list. You want 1 1/2 gallons of honey. Some good basic honey to start with would be orange blossom, clover, tupelo, or any other light clear honey with a nice sweet taste. Heath food stores are a good source for bulk honey which is not overly processed. A gallon of honey weighs about 12 pounds, and a pound of honey cost about 2 dollars. So you will invest about 35 bucks for a five gallon batch of mead. From the home brew shop, you want to get yeast nutrient ('Fermax' is good and you can experiment with others later), something called 'Irish moss' (actually seaweed), and if you see it, something called 'acid blend' (you can use 1000 mg of vitamin C instead), and some yeast (more on that later). You will also want just a small amount of strong black tea brewed up (2 tbsp).

So, if you buy everything, expect to spend about 70 to 90 dollars for your first 5 gallon batch of mead and about 35 to 40 dollars for subsequent batches, unless you find a source for really cheap honey. Well now, on to the brewing itself. I will try to cover the 'why' of each step, as well as various options.

First, a word about cleaning. Remember in science class when you had those little petri dishes full of some jelly like stuff they called agar-agar? And then you took a little swab from your face or whatever and put it in the dish, and then some funky blue and green and orange moldy gook grew? Well, the honey water we are making is pretty much the same thing as the agar-agar and is as perfect as we can get it for little beasties to grow in. If you scratch your nose and dip for finger in the must, you could easily grow funky blue and green and orange moldy gook. I have never tasted that gook, but I think it's not good. We only want our yeasty beasties to grow in our must, thus the cleaning. Once the yeast has gotten a good start and your bucket is bubbling away, things relax a little because the yeast will just keep reproducing until they have filled the whole jug, and they pretty much squeeze out any competition.

So, you wash everything. Use a good anti-bacterial soap. Wash the bucket or jug, fermentation lock, rubber stopper, spoons, funnel, everything. Rinse rinse rinse. Then you want to soak it all in something to kill any left over bugs and beasties. There is a product called b-brite which is good. It is an oxygenating bleach. The instructions are on the tub, but you basically add about 1 tbsp to each gallon of water and soak stuff for 15 minutes or so. There are lots of other products that use other bleaches, iodine, etc. If you are using a bucket, the easiest thing is to put about 3 gallons of b-brite solution in the bucket, drop all your other goodies in there, slap the lid on and let it sit, shaking it up every 5 minutes or so. Rinse rinse rinse. The rinsing part is important because after you kill all the little guys, you want your other little guys (the yeast) to live, so you have to rinse off all the soap, bleach, iodine, whatever.

OK folks, it's late and I'm going to stop here. I will try to finish this section tomorrow and post it quickly. If any of you have questions yet (apart from the obvious 'What is taking you so long?'), please ask and I will try to answer quickly.

BB Athanor