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Thursday, March 28, 2024

A beginner’s guide to making mead

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For many, the word mead brings to mind images of vikings causing a ruckus after a long journey or medieval knights getting tipsy at the tavern. But according to historians, mead’s origins can be traced back to South Africa, where the earliest San people used honey-water mixtures they found in tree hollows to produce the elixir thousands of years ago.

Mead is a fermented alcoholic beverage made with honey, water and fruit, and it is quite simple to make. While starter mead kits can cost as much as $50 online, the beginning brewer can make a gallon of mead for only about $16 by following these simple instructions. Brewers can find everything for this recipe at a local grocery store.

 

All you need is:

1 gallon jug of spring water 

1 balloon and safety pin (to serve as a fermentation lock)

1 package of Fleischman’s yeast 

3-5 pounds of regular honey

Two dozen raisins

1 pitcher that can hold 3-plus cups of water 

 

In a traditional setup, the brewer would use either a specially made sanitizer or one tablespoon of bleach per gallon of water to sanitize all equipment to be used. Since mostly everything in this kit is disposable, it is only necessary to clean the pitcher. To get started, pour roughly 3 cups of water from the jug into the pitcher and set the pitcher aside; you’re doing this to make room in the jug. Add the honey to the jug, put the cap on tightly and shake the jug vigorously. The honey should dissolve into the water almost completely.

Next, add the raisins and yeast into the honey-water mixture. When using bread yeast, which creates a lower alcohol content than traditional brewing yeast, the level of alcohol should remain under 12 percent.

Pour the water from the pitcher back into the jug until the jug is completely filled; discard the remaining water in the pitcher. Stretch a balloon over the neck of the jug, and use a needle or pin to poke a hole in the balloon. This allows the CO2 gasses formed by the yeast fermentation to escape without letting any air or bacteria into the jug.

The last step is the hardest: wait. In less than 24 hours, the yeast will turn the honey and raisin sugars into CO2 and alcohol, with the CO2 filling the balloon and escaping out of the pinhole.

In the following weeks, the yeast will die off from consuming all of the sugars or from the alcohol content being too high for the yeast to survive. In months, the yeast and raisins will settle to the bottom of the jug, leaving only clear amber mead and a bottom layer of yeast. The mead can then be poured into another container slowly to remove the expended yeast, or it can be served as is. 

 

So what’s next? Mead can be modified in an infinite number of ways. More honey, mint leaves, cinnamon sticks, fruits or other flavorings can be added. Simply wait until the ingredients settle to the bottom, sample whenever you have an urge and remove the settled ingredients when the mead achieves the desired flavor. To remove the settled ingredients, tilt the container slowly, allowing all of the mead to flow from the old bottle into a new one, leaving the lees, or expended yeast, behind in the first container. From here, the mead can either be sipped as is or left to age further in a dark room; at this point, there are no wrong answers!

 

mead
mead

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