I recently came upon the opportunity to try some high-quality mead. Needless to say, I loved it. The mead I had was from Denmark, and was flavored with caraway seeds. Mead, if you aren’t aware, is a drink make from fermented honey. It is stronger in alcohol content then wine is (the one I had was almost 22%) and taste like honey and herbs. Mead is the oldest know fermented beverage, out dating both beer and wine. So it seems pretty easy, so I’m giving it a shot.
I read up a few quick things online, and there are a few guidelines I followed. First, I stated with a ratio of 1 part honey to 4 parts water. I heated the mixture on the stove for about a half hour, careful not to boil as supposedly this lets flavors and aromas escape from the honey. This seemed a little diluted, so I also made a batch of 1 part honey to 2 parts water. We’ll see what the difference is like. Now, I didn’t have any mead yeast, or even any wine making yeast, so I just used regular yeast from the store – this might and probably will give the mead a less pleasant flavor. I also don’t have any of my wine making equipment with me, so I sterilized with bleach and water and instead of a bubbler air lock I am going for the ballooning method. I had a bunch of wine bottles sitting around, so I’m using those instead of a cardboy. The first batch (1:4) I also seasoned with a little allspice and Linden Leaves, some sort of tea (I don’t know, it seemed like a good idea at the time). The second batch (1:2) is pure honey, water, and yeast.
If this turns out halfway decent, I plan on doing more experimenting. There’s a store down the street that sells something like 15 different types of honey – each one from a different plant (clover, alfalfa, buckwheat, etc) and I would really like to get a bunch and make identical batches, and see if one honey is better than another (for that I will make sure to get mead yeast).
