Because When Homebrew and Honey Meet, Everyone Gets Good
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General Questions:I’ve heard that honey doesn’t ferment. Is that true? What makes mead different from honey wine or honey beer? How many different styles of mead are there? Brewing Questions:Do I boil the honey for mead like I would malt for beer? What other ingredients do have to add to the honey to
make mead? How long do I leave my mead in the fermenter? Is there a secondary fermentation for mead? Brewing Problems:
My yeast didn’t start when I pitched it. I let the whole fruit sit in the primary too long, and it appears to
have rotted. After 3 weeks of fermenting, I’ve got what looks like
soapsuds on top of my mead. The mead is done ferment, but it’s really cloudy. My mead burns my mouth when I drink it. Other Stuff:
Does mead have to age before it’s drinkable? Can I serve mead through a jockey box? Are there any mead brewing competitions? Q: How hard is mead to make?A: Actually, mead is not at all difficult to make. If you have ever brewed beer or wine, the process for mead is simpler than both. There are not a lot of adjunct ingredients, and boiling is a preference rather than a necessity. If you’ve never brewed anything before, mead is an excellent “first project”, primarily due to its simplicity. Q: I’ve heard that honey doesn’t ferment. Is that true?A: No, it’s not. Two things ARE true: honey doesn’t spoil (the only food with the feature), and honey is difficult to ferment – not impossible. Basically, honey is to yeast what fiber is to humans – hard to digest. Since the process of fermentation is yeast eating sugar and producing alcohol and carbon dioxide, the ability of the yeast to digest the sugar is paramount. Since the sugars in honey are very difficult for the yeast, many brewers will add an energizer or a yeast nutrient to help it along. Q: What makes mead different from honey wine or honey beer?A: Hmmm… an interesting philosophical question. My initial answer would be “nothing”, but that’s not entirely true. What most people call “honey wine” is in fact a traditional hydromel, or thin, light-bodied mead with no additional flavorings. There are other types of honey wine that don’t fit that description though. Also, while wines require a certain amount of acid balancing, that practice is almost anathema in mething (mead brewing.) There is also a difference between a “honey beer” and a “braggot” (malt mead) that is a thin line to tread. If I had to make a blanket statement, I would say this: It’s a mead if the primary fermentable ingredient is honey, and the fruits and/or malts are added for flavor. It’s a honey wine or honey beer if the fruits and/or malts are the primary fermentable ingredients, and the honey is added for flavor. In either case, the “flavoring” agent will still have some fermentability. It’s just not the primary fermentable in the batch. Q: How many different styles of mead are there?A: How many different kinds of flavor are there? Seriously, there are five basic categories of mead, with several different “subcategories” that are recognized by most people. The five styles are Traditional or Antipodal (honey with no other flavorings), Metheglin (spiced or herbed), Melomel (fruit flavored), Braggot (malt flavored), and Ypocras (a blend of metheglin and melomel which is not accepted as a mead style by many purists.) Among the most common subcategories of melomel are pyment (grape), cyser (apple), and perry (pear.) There are also some obscure subcategories of both melomel and metheglin such as morat (mulberry), black mead (currant), and white mead (vanilla.) Among the options for metheglins are just about any herb or spice. I’ve used ginger, nutmeg, tea, mint, cinnamon (real good with apple), and clove. I’ve also had friends who used nuts, maple syrup, and pickle juice as mead flavorings. The possibilities are endless. Q: Do I boil the honey for mead like I would malt for beer?A: The answer to this probably creates more controversy than any other single technique. The bottom line is that it comes down to personal preference. The advantage of boiling is that it allows you to skim off the proteins and impurities (bee parts, honeycomb, pollen, etc.) that will rise to the surface during boiling. This contributes to the clarity of the finished mead, but also strips it of a great deal of body and boils off a lot of the honey ‘character’ that many purists value. By not boiling, you will have a cloudy finished mead; but you will also have a full-bodied product with a strong honey flavor and aroma. My personal compromise is to steep the honey at about 170 degrees for 30 minutes. This pasteurizes the honey and allows me to skim some proteins, but I retain a lot of the character of the honey in my finished product. Q: What other ingredients do have to add to the honey to make mead?A: For simple flavoring, any fruit, spice, herb, or vegetable will flavor the mead. However, if you are talking specifically about the brewing process, the answer is “nothing”. All the additional stuff that brewers add is simply technique. However, if you choose to go with just honey, water, and yeast, you are in for a very long fermentation period. Typical “helper” ingredients include a little acid blend or lemon juice (to provide a healthy environment for the yeast to flourish), yeast nutrient (vitamin pills for the yeast), energizer (removes some harmful factors from the must to allow the yeast to flourish), and grape tannin (to provide a little ‘bite’ to the finished product.) Again – none of these are required, but I recommend using some or all of them depending on the recipe in order to speed up fermentation. Q: How long do I leave my mead in the fermenter?A: This is a recipe specific question. However, a good rule of thumb is to rack the mead when the fluid in the airlock is bubbling less than once every three minutes, or at the 30-day point, whichever comes first. Q: Is there a secondary fermentation for mead?A: Again, this is a recipe specific question. There are two cases where you might want a primary and secondary stage: if you are using whole chunks of fruit or berries, or if you have built up a thick yeast bed in the fermenter. In the first case, the primary stage will last from 5 to 8 days depending on the fruit, and the secondary ferment will run 3 to 6 weeks. In the second case, the yeast bed will have built up over a 2 to 3 week period, and the secondary fermentation will only last about another 2 to 3 weeks before moving to the first rack. Q: My yeast didn’t start when I pitched it.A: This could be the result of a number of different problems. Maybe the yeast was old. Maybe the temperature of the liquid was too high. Maybe the honey overwhelmed the yeast and it went dormant. Maybe there was some residual sanitizer inside the fermenter or preservative in the juices. All of them have a different fix. However, my first trouble-shooting step would be to re-pitch a fresh yeast packet with a yeast slurry. To make a slurry, boil a pint of water with a tablespoon of table sugar and a teaspoon of yeast nutrient. Allow the water to cool to room temperature, and then pour it into a clean and sanitized mason jar. Sprinkle the dry yeast on top of the water and allow it to become completely wet. Gently shake or swirl the water around the inside of the jar to get the yeast completely into solution. Cover with a piece of plastic food wrap and set aside out of the light. After about an hour or two, you should notice some foaming. Allow the slurry to build up a good froth before pitching it into the fermenter. Q: I let the whole fruit sit in the primary too long, and it appears to have rotted.A: This could be bad. Go ahead and rack the mead off of the fruits into a clean and sterile secondary. I would let the mead ferment out to completion from that point and see what it tastes like when it’s done. If it’s not too bad, a tea made with a few whole cloves boiled in water can be used to mask the off-flavor. Some fruits also taste better when some vanilla extract is added before bottling. If the taste is REALLY nasty, it might be a total loss. You can also try blending a small amount of the skunky stuff with a small amount of good mead to see if you can cut the nasty flavor enough to make the batch salvageable. Q: After 3 weeks of ferment, I’ve got what looks like soapsuds on top of my mead.A: This is perfectly normal. Since yeast has a hard time getting started in honey, you won’t necessarily get the ‘surge’ of head like you will on a beer or wine. The head will build up more slowly and will sometimes come and go throughout the fermentation cycle. As the sugar is eaten up, the activity will lessen, and the head will get thinner and less pronounced. Q: The mead is done fermenting, but it’s really cloudy.A: This could be because you decided not to boil your honey, in which case it will always be cloudy. It could also be that the yeast particles just haven’t settled out yet. Rack it into a clean and sterile glass carboy, and allow it to sit a couple of weeks. If you notice it clearing up, or see sediment forming on the bottom, continue to rack about once every 4 weeks. If it still doesn’t clear, try shaking it 4 or 5 times a day, or set it on top of your clothes dryer or refrigerator. The vibrations will sometimes assist the sediment in falling out of solution. You can also use a clarifying agent such as egg white, isinglass, gelatin, wine finings, or bentonite, but you will strip some of the body of the mead. Don’t try to filter it at this stage, or you will succeed only in clogging your filter and creating a mess. Q: My mead tastes funny.A: Define ‘funny’. Seriously, this could be anything, depending on what the funny flavor is. See the question above about rotted fruit. Q: My mead burns my mouth when I drink it.A: You either have a kick-butt alcohol content, or you are way out of balance on acid. Some meadhers add a touch of acid blend or lemon juice to the fermenter to help out the yeast. If you did this, you may have added too much – especially if you made a melomel with a high acid fruit. See your local home brew supply store about acid reducing solution – a glycerin-based product that will offset the acid somewhat. Aging will also reduce the acid level somewhat, but not enough to keep it from burning. Q: Does mead have to age before it’s drinkable?A: It’s drinkable right out of the fermenter. However, like most alcoholic beverages, it only gets better with age. I rack mine 2 or 3 times after ferment – about 3 to 4 weeks in each rack. Then I age it in the bottle another 3 to 6 months before drinking. Q: Can I serve mead in a keg?A: Sure. Just remember that mead is the same as beer or wine in that case. If you wanted it carbonated, keg it with CO2. Otherwise, keg it with Nitrogen. Q: Can I serve mead through a jockey box?A: Sure. However, I will add a caveat. Make sure the jockey box uses either stainless steel (preferred) or plastic tubing. Mead is high enough in acid to cause toxic reactions if run through copper tubing – especially in the heat. Q: Are there any mead brewing competitions?A: Yup. In addition to a variety of local competitions all around the country, the American Homebrewers Association includes several categories of mead in their list of “brewing styles”. Those categories are represented in the National Brewing Competition every Spring. |
