Balloon Mead (Light)

This is my favorite of my mead recipes, now in an easy balloon wine version! It involves one more step than the other recipes, which is boiling.
Click here to see all balloon wine recipes!

Recipe:

2.2 lbs. Honey
water to 1 gallon
yeast

Put honey and water in a stock pot. Bring to a boil. Let simmer for five minutes. Let it cool. Place the mixture in your container. Making sure everything is at room temperature, add your yeast. Put a balloon with some pinholes in it over the container. Ferment.

Fermentation might take up to 30 days, but the balloon mead should clear very fast.

Bottle. Enjoy!



Tips:
1.) Try using pasteur champagne yeast for great results.
2.) During the boil you can throw in a sachet of black tea to add tannins for more body, but not necessary.

Sweet Mead

Ramble: This mead recipe is similar to the others that i have posted, but it is probably the only one that will give you a sweet mead. It's simple, quick, and delicious every time. It produces a darker mead, and a very strong mead, so watch out!



Recipe:
5lbs honey
water to one gallon
1/4 tsp. tannins
1 tsp. yeast nutrient
wine yeast (I recommend pasteur champagne)

Combine honey and water in a large pot. Stir to dissolve the honey, and bring to a boil. When it begins to boil, a foam will come to the top of the liquid, skim this off and discard it. (This saves having to do very frequent racking, as without this step your mead will naturally produce sediment over time). This step also kills wild yeasts in your honey, so that no sulfur compounds are needed to kill them off! Allow the liquid to cool to at least 80 degrees Fahrenheit while covered, then add in the tannins, yeast nutrient, and yeast. Place in fermentor, fit with a cover and an airlock, and you're on your way to a dark, strong, sweet mead!


Tips: For an easy way to get your tannins into the must (the juice you're fermenting) see Tannin Tip , and for more information on mead, some helpful tips, and some fun variations, visit my medium mead page: Mead Tips.

Related Recipes: meddyglyn, light mead, medium mead, apple cider, pear cider

Meddyglyn

Meddyglyn or metheglin is a type of mead of Welsh origin. It takes your basic mead and adds any number of various herbs and spices to produce a cheery drink that goes down smooth. It can definitely be enjoyed any time of the year, but makes an especially nice holiday drink. The amount of honey in the recipe can be 2.2 lbs per gallon; 3 lbs per gallon, or 5 lbs per gallon for a sweeter meddyglyn. This corresponds to the "light mead" and "medium mead" recipes on the site already, and the 5 lb corresponds to a strong, sweet mead.





Honey
Water to one gallon
1 tsp. yeast nutrient
1/4 Tsp. tannins
orange peel
1 cinnamon stick
1/4 tsp. whole or course ground nutmeg
2 cloves
1/4 vanilla bean





Add honey and water to a pot. Heat over low heat until the honey is dissolved. Then bring to a swift boil. Foam will come to the top. Scoop off as much of the foam as possible (this keeps sediment out of the bottles later on). Cool the mixture to about 70 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Add in nutrient and tannins. Place the mixture into the primary fermenter, add the yeast.

After about two weeks or when the fermentation seems to stop, rack to secondary fermenter if you're using one, if not go the the next step.

Boil a small saucepan of water. Cut the orange peel up into slices, and boil for five minutes. This gets rid of bitterness. If you have any concerns about bacteria on the vanilla bean or cinnamon stick, you can also boil these for a few minutes with the orange peel. Remove from water with tongs, and add directly to the fermenter. Also add in the other spices. Allow to steep in the mead, which is now becoming meddyglyn. I let mine sit for ten days to two weeks before removing the cinnamon and orange peel, but you can play with this. The longer it sits, the more pronounced the flavor of the spices.

Bottle and enjoy!

Note: Any of the spices can be optional, but I would NOT skip the orange peel, the cinnamon stick, or the nutmeg, but that's my personal taste. This is an awesome recipe to play around with.

Related Recipes: light mead, medium mead, sweet mead, apple cider, pear cider

Light Mead

Ramble: This incredibly simple recipe is for a very nice, light, dry mead. I've recently made a batch, and it came out wonderfully! It is truly spectacular, I like it much better than the medium mead, which I also like a lot! It has a very refreshing taste that would make it a perfect summer drink, and the one that i made has a nutty finish and a bit of warming quality that simultaneously make it an ideal fall or winter drink, a quality I often find that adding the tannins brings out. Here goes:



Recipe:

about 2.2 lbs. wildflower honey
1/4 tsp. tannins
1 tsp. yeast nutrient
wine yeast (recommending red star pasteur champagne or lalvin K1-V1116, or red star côtes des blancs)



Add honey to a stockpot, bring to 1 gallon with water. Warm over low heat until all honey is dissolved. Bring to a swift boil. This will bring a foam to the top of the mixture, scoop off as much of this foam as possible. This step helps your mead to clear very nicely, but also to ensure that sediment doesn't form over time on the bottom of your bottled mead, as happens without this step. If you would rather skip the boiling step, that's an option, and no harm is done.

Allow the mixture to come down to 80 degrees Fahrenheit (about 26 degrees Celsius), but not below sixty degrees. Add in your yeast nutrient (I wouldn't recommend skipping this step if you can avoid it, because honey does not supply a lot of the nutrients that the yeast require, and as we all know, happy yeast make happy wine). Add in your tannins (for a nifty trick to get your tannins into the must better, check out the post "Tannin Tip"). Rack to primary fermenter, then add your yeast. Personally, i used pasteur champagne, which is not actually a champagne base yeast, and it was wonderful. Though it is not a champagne yeast, I like some carbonation in my mead, and this did the trick beautifully. Apply airlock and allow to ferment.

Tips:
Fermentation will likely last at least ten days, but give plenty of time, especially if fermenting below 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Bottle and cork for a flat mead!

For a sparkling mead (which I prefer), add about one and a half teaspoons of sugar to each 750mL bottle before filling, then fill and cork! I would store these in a bucket or bin with a lid on top until certain that all carbonation has ceased. Though I only ever had a problem once with corks popping (when i first started making wine and added way too much sugar to some apple cider), it is better to be safe than sorry and a bucket or bin makes for easy clean up! With this amount of sugar (1.5 tsp.) I have never had a problem! Enjoy!

Related Recipes: meddyglyn, medium mead, sweet mead, apple cider, pear cider

Medium Mead

For those unfamiliar with mead, it is a honey wine that likely predates all other fermented drinks. It is such an ancient and widely made drink that it's origins are hard to pin down, but in the west it is most popularly associated with medieval life. I love the idea of mead as an aspect of medieval Europe-- the mead hall where men would gather to boast... but this isn't a lesson on Beowulf, so here's my basic mead recipe, which I've had very good results with:





3 lbs honey
6 oranges squeezed
water to one gallon
1 tsp yeast nutrients
1 campden tablet
1 packet wine yeast








Combine honey, orange juice, water, and campden tablet in sanitized primary fermentor. This is necessary to kill the dormant, wild yeasts living in the honey. Let sit overnight. Add in yeast nutrients and yeast (Lalvin K1-V1116 makes a fantastic mead). Allow fermentation 14 to 18 days. Rack. Rack every three months until very clear. Fine sediment will likely appear on the bottom of the bottle, this is the nature of the honey.

Hint: One way to get beautifully clear mead and to avoid sediment in your bottles is to bring the honey and water to a boil before beginning. Once boiling reduce to simmer. During boiling and simmering a foam will come to the top of the liquid. Skim this off. If you do this for an hour, your mead will clear very well, and you'll see no sediment at the bottom of your bottles over time. This is also very effective at killing the natural yeasts so that no campden tablet is required. It is my preferred method.

Hint two: The better the honey, the better the mead. The local guy that makes honey likely cares about his product a lot more than the supermarket chain, and chances are his price is either lower or competitive.

Hint number three: Mead can be slightly astringent, almost herbal, but not at all unpleasant. This can also be complimented by paying close attention to the type of honey you're using. If you're using raspberry blossom honey, you might try throwing in a handful of raspberries into the fermentor. Wildflower honey might take on a summery twist by chopping a peach into the fermentor.


Related Recipes: meddyglyn, light mead, sweet mead, apple cider, pear cider