Greetings, makers!

[TheSeed]

Hello everyone. My name is Gavin. Aside from my first name I am very withholding of personal details online, so I apologize if you were expecting to hear/ask about my age, location, etc. I'll just say I live in the central United States with my brother, and I'm old enough to kind of remember the 1980's a little

Like many recently, my brother and I got into home wine (specifically mead, for us) making during the 2020 lockdown. We started with one of those all-in-one home mead making kits from Amazon. The process ended up being so much fun for us, that we got a bit fervent about it and started creating several small batches every month. Mead making has dominated our fermentations, but our archive includes about 3 dozen various wines. They have all been fruit (sometimes with added sugar) wines, specifically fruits other than grapes. Our experience has not involved grapes with the exception of four pyments, so the traditional concept of winemaking is really not where our experience lies at all. We are greatly interested by it, and hope to experiment with making wine with actual wine grapes before long.

We are going to be moving sometime this summer, so we stopped creating new batches and will only resume after we are settled in our new location. During these months, I am going to be focusing on learning as much as I can from literary sources and community members at places such as this.
I am happy to make your acquaintance, and hope I can be as helpful as I am helped. Feel free to ask me mead questions! I am not a master mead maker by any means, but I have learned a lot these past years and anything I don't know - I almost certainly know someone who knows.

 

[vinny]

Welcome to WMT!

Many of us here make wines from random ingredients and kits. A lot of the inspiration is due to what is growing outside. I haven't done wine from grapes either. It is less predictable than kits as they are balanced by the makers. With grapes you get what you get. I intend to try, but likely when things quiet down around here. Finer Wine Kits in the US are spoken of often here. They are not shelf stable which ups the quality level. They arrive frozen, and many here are very happy with them. You can also get juiced grape buckets from you Local Home Brew Store (LHBS) to skip the mess and time of pressing. There is no shortage of entertainment, you just have to pick a goal and run with it.

I have been considering a mead for a while, just 'cause. I've done a little reading, but that was a while ago now. If I remember, mead needs a lot of aging? Best after a year+?

Other than honey VS sugar are there big differences between mead VS wine. Would you know, that is a mead, on a single sip?

I have 2 lbs of raw strawberry honey. It was a gift and it is local. I will never eat it, so I was considering making a mead with it. Any thoughts? The strawberry infusion is very mild, adds a pink hue and berry is notable, but not strong.

 

[sour_grapes]

Welcome aboard (again)!

 

[BernardSmith]

Welcome aboard, TheSeed. Gotta tell you that wines made from fruits and vegetables (and even honey) have a very, very long history and while country wines were often made at home by women and not by professional wine makers, (and so in a gendered society, country wines may not always have had the same status as Cab Sauv or Merlot or Zin etc, making wines from summer fruits was one very important way of preserving the harvest (as with all indigenous methods of preservation we tended to allow fruits and vegetables to spoil in very controlled ways using very specific organisms (lactobacteria for pickling, yeast for wine making for example) so don't let anyone make you think that country wines are second rate compared to grape wines. Their flavor profiles are different but they can be every bit as pleasurable as grape wines.

 

[BigDaveK]

Welcome to WMT!

 

[David Violante]

Welcome to WMT!

 

[Rice_Guy]

Howdy from a fellow mead and fruit maker.

 

[NorCal]

Welcome, glad you found the site.

 

[TheSeed]

I have been considering a mead for a while, just 'cause. I've done a little reading, but that was a while ago now. If I remember, mead needs a lot of aging? Best after a year+?

Other than honey VS sugar are there big differences between mead VS wine. Would you know, that is a mead, on a single sip?

I have 2 lbs of raw strawberry honey. It was a gift and it is local. I will never eat it, so I was considering making a mead with it. Any thoughts? The strawberry infusion is very mild, adds a pink hue and berry is notable, but not strong.

Honey is much different than using sugar. Each varietal (e.g. wildflower, clover, sourwood, etc.) will convey different subtle flavors, and the same honey can taste different when fermented by different yeasts. The fermented taste is different than just alcohol and honey, same as when you ferment fruit vs adding fruit after fermentation. A 12% ABV sugar wash back sweetened with honey will taste much different than a 12% mead made/back sweetened using the same honey.

Wildflower is the most common type of honey, but it's impossible to know ahead of time what it's going to taste like. That's because 'wildflower' honey just means the beekeeper just let their bees freely roam without giving them a specific nectar source. Because of that, you are going to get different flavors not just from one apiary to the next, but from one season to the next. For instance I like Desert Creek's wildflower honey flavor profile, and I like it even better in late summer 'cause the summer flowers + extra heat make it a bit smoother and richer (at least, to me).

I haven't worked with strawberry honey, but it sounds like a fun one to try. Any time I get a new honey, I always make at least one or two traditional meads with it so I can get a clear understanding of how it tastes fermented. This is also something you will want to do, to get an idea of how to detect fermented honey behind other flavors (e.g. fruit). This is referred to in the mead community as 'honey character'.
The reason I'll often make more than one is because as I mentioned, the type of yeast is a big determining factor in how it's going to taste after fermentation, so I'll try multiple yeasts. Mead also needs added nutrients to ferment properly because honey is very low in yeast assimilable nitrogen (YAN), and it's best to use Fermaid/Fermax type nutrients and avoid using DAP by itself (especially if it has urea in it, full stop there).

Since you only have 2lbs, I would recommend trying 1.5lbs in a half-gallon must, and saving the rest for back sweetening. For yeast, I'd recommend starting with 71B which is popular for preserving honey character, and it's easy to come by for the home mead maker. 1.5lbs in a half gallon should give you a starting gravity of about 1.108 which would ferment dry to about 14% ABV, given proper nutrients. Once dry, it should be stabilized (preferably with a combination of k-meta and k-sorbate), then back sweetened to your tastes. I usually stabilize, wait 24-48 hours, back sweeten, wait a month, acid/tannin balance, wait 2-3 months then bottle. Don't let people tell you mead isn't good unless it's aged a long time. Most of the things we bottle are very enjoyable right at bottling, and most things get bottled within 4-6 months of the start of fermentation. Aging a full year or more either bulk or in the bottle often improves things, but that goes for every mead/wine I've had.

Sorry this is so long. I'm trying to give basic answers but there is a lot of ground to cover. In my mead making communities there are hundreds discussions on each individual topic of yeast, honey, equipment, aging, balancing, etc. My suggestion for how to handle that 2lbs of honey is just one of numerous things that can be done to use it in a mead.

I hope this helps. I'll try to answer specific questions one at a time going forward so I don't end up typing a novel.

 

[vinny]

Sorry this is so long.

I'll try to answer specific questions one at a time going forward so I don't end up typing a novel.

It was a test to see if you take this seriously or not...

You passed!

I have a 3 gallon pail of honey I can use to do a full gallon along with the strawberry, I just won't ever use the strawberry for anything else so that's why I am wanting to use that up first. The strawberry should be subtle if it as only enough for a 1/2 gallon.

I just bought some used bottles and the guy was so happy I bought them all he gave me 3 meads to try. I have never had it, so I that is pretty exciting.

I think I might try making one today. I'm unsupervised, so it seems like the logical decision.

I don't think anyone here is offended by long replies. If you are willing to type it, we are willing to read it. Thanks for all the info.

 

[vinny]

Alright. I dove in head first.

I went bare bones. No acid, just honey water and yeast. I can amend that later if needed. It has a slight berry tinge to it, but predominantly honey. I proves to be interesting!

 

[TheSeed]

Don't forget your nutrients! For most things I make, I rehydrate my yeast in GoFerm Protect Evolution, and then feed the must Fermaid O split over 3 days, 24, 48 and 72 hours after pitching yeast. If it's difficult to access yeast nutrients beyond just generic stuff (which is DAP + urea and in my opinion should never be used) then you can also boil some bread/bakers yeast and toss that in - the typical recommended dose being 2-3x the recommended Fermaid O dosage.

GoFerm PE for yeast rehydration: https://www.amazon.com/Go-Ferm-Protect-Evolution-100-g/dp/B074DBMKVD
Fermaid O for feeding: https://www.amazon.com/CellarScience-AD332B-Fermaid-O-120/dp/B074D9HQJD

 

[vinny]

Don't forget your nutrients! For most things I make, I rehydrate my yeast in GoFerm Protect Evolution, and then feed the must Fermaid O split over 3 days, 24, 48 and 72 hours after pitching yeast. If it's difficult to access yeast nutrients beyond just generic stuff (which is DAP + urea and in my opinion should never be used) then you can also boil some bread/bakers yeast and toss that in - the typical recommended dose being 2-3x the recommended Fermaid O dosage.

GoFerm PE for yeast rehydration: https://www.amazon.com/Go-Ferm-Protect-Evolution-100-g/dp/B074DBMKVD
Fermaid O for feeding: https://www.amazon.com/CellarScience-AD332B-Fermaid-O-120/dp/B074D9HQJD

Yes. I forgot to mention that. I use boiled bakers yeast for all my ferments. I am very generous with it, I figure if it is more than required, it will fall out of suspension and get racked off with the gross lees.

 

[winemaker81]

Good post -- very informative with good detail.

Once dry, it should be stabilized (preferably with a combination of k-meta and k-sorbate), then back sweetened to your tastes.

Try bulk aging 9+ months so the yeast is dead. You can skip the sorbate.

I'm currently conducting a test with an Elderberry from concentrate. Most of the batch was bottled with sorbate, but I reserved 4 liters that I recently bottled w/o sorbate at 13 months. At bottling time my son & I compared the w/sorbate to the wo/sorbate, and the wo/sorbate was brighter & fresher tasting. The real test will be this fall, when we'll compare the 2 wines at about 1.5 years old.

Don't let people tell you mead isn't good unless it's aged a long time. Most of the things we bottle are very enjoyable right at bottling, and most things get bottled within 4-6 months of the start of fermentation. Aging a full year or more either bulk or in the bottle often improves things, but that goes for every mead/wine I've had.

I sort of agree with you. I'm a sporadic mead maker (every decade or two), and my experience is it's good after a year, but it just gets better with time. The longest I've aged a mead is 10 years, and I wish I had reserved more of that batch!

I recommend you put away half a dozen bottles and don't touch them until year 5, and open one/year. Record your impressions.

I went bare bones. No acid, just honey water and yeast. I can amend that later if needed. It has a slight berry tinge to it, but predominantly honey.

You're going to want to add acid. On it's own, mead is bland. My last batch I added the juice and rind from lemons. Next time I'm going to zest the lemons and then juice them, and add that to the mead.

 

[vinny]

You're going to want to add acid. On it's own, mead is bland. My last batch I added the juice and rind from lemons. Next time I'm going to zest the lemons and then juice them, and add that to the mead.

The recipe I was going to follow called for 3 tsp of malic acid and 1.5 of tartaric. That set off alarms and I started looking around. I think your suggestion on this forum for 1 tsp of acid blend was one of the higher doses, and I saw a lot that had none. I figured It's my first mead, lets get a base level and work from there.

I can always add it after, but I want to see what I get.

Remember when I started making wine and had to see why we did things a certain way and what happens when you do this... Ya. Still that guy.

 

[winemaker81]

I can always add it after, but I want to see what I get.

What is the current pH? If it's above 4, you need to add acid.

 

[vinny]

What is the current pH? If it's above 4, you need to add acid.

my current PH is 3.5 after I added acid blend and lemons. It tastes delicious already, so I can't fault your insistence.

 

[Julie]

Hello everyone. My name is Gavin. Aside from my first name I am very withholding of personal details online, so I apologize if you were expecting to hear/ask about my age, location, etc. I'll just say I live in the central United States with my brother, and I'm old enough to kind of remember the 1980's a little

Like many recently, my brother and I got into home wine (specifically mead, for us) making during the 2020 lockdown. We started with one of those all-in-one home mead making kits from Amazon. The process ended up being so much fun for us, that we got a bit fervent about it and started creating several small batches every month. Mead making has dominated our fermentations, but our archive includes about 3 dozen various wines. They have all been fruit (sometimes with added sugar) wines, specifically fruits other than grapes. Our experience has not involved grapes with the exception of four pyments, so the traditional concept of winemaking is really not where our experience lies at all. We are greatly interested by it, and hope to experiment with making wine with actual wine grapes before long.

We are going to be moving sometime this summer, so we stopped creating new batches and will only resume after we are settled in our new location. During these months, I am going to be focusing on learning as much as I can from literary sources and community members at places such as this.
I am happy to make your acquaintance, and hope I can be as helpful as I am helped. Feel free to ask me mead questions! I am not a master mead maker by any means, but I have learned a lot these past years and anything I don't know - I almost certainly know someone who knows.

Welcome to winemakingtalk

 

[TheSeed]

Many, if not most of the mead makers I am acquainted with will front load acids and tannins. I prefer to wait a while after stabilizing for my acids so the bulk of the yeast and particulates can fall out and I can balance to taste more accurately. I never make assumptions about how much of anything a new honey varietal will need, and wait until aging to consider adjuncts of any kind.

 

[BernardSmith]

I may be the contrarian but front -loading acids in any wine seems to me to foolish and when you make a mead front loading is nuts! Re mead - honey has no chemical buffers so the pH can be all over the map and if you add acids at the beginning, the pH can scrape the floor. But in any event, yeast has no problem with high pH musts (low acidity). They have a problem with low pH (high acidity)... but neither you nor I can "taste" the strength of acids. We taste the AMOUNT of acid in solution - AKA , TA - and you are not going to get a good reading of TA until you have removed all the CO2. The strength of the acidity is critical for shelf life but when you have just pitched the yeast, shelf life is the least important issue. I gotta say, any "recipe" I read where the "author" front loads acids , tells me a great deal more about the expertise of the recipe maker than about the quality of the recipe.