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Homemade Mead (Read 1597 times)
vetryan15
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Homemade Mead
Oct 5th, 2020 at 4:25pm
 
Here is my homemade mead, i just bottled it up earlier in the week. I made 4 gallons,  4 different flavors.  I got raspberry,  strawberry,  blackberry, and blueberry.  I am not much of a wine drinker, just for the alcohol lol. Each one only has 4 ingredients. Yeast, fruit, water, and honey. These were also my very 1st attempts at making it. These are 6 months old. Unfortunately i did notice that some bottles after it settled, still has some of the lees in the bottom of a couple bottles.  My terminology might be wrong as well.but. i dont think its gonna affect the taste too much. The few people who have tasted it. Loved it. So i did something right

This was for you Joe, hopefully the pics turned out ok.
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vetryan15
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Re: Homemade Mead
Reply #1 - Oct 5th, 2020 at 4:30pm
 
Various stages of the mead when i fist started it.
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joe_meadmaker
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Re: Homemade Mead
Reply #2 - Oct 5th, 2020 at 7:12pm
 
Awesome man!  I'm glad things came out well.  At 6 months you've still got a pretty young mead there.  Don't be surprised if you have some flavor development yet.  Assuming it doesn't all get drank up right away. Wink

Your terminology is good.  "Lees", or just "sediment".  You're correct, for the most part it's nothing you need to worry about.  If you want to get things cleared up more, you have three options.  One, wait a really long time until the sediment settles out.  Two, refrigeration.  If you can get your main storage vessel chilled, sediment drops out much faster and more completely.  I usually refrigerate a keg of mead for about 2 months before bottling it.  And three, you can add a chemical to get the mead to clear.  If your ever online and want to check things out, what you're looking for is a 'fining agent'.

Enjoy your mead!  I love seeing others get into it. Thumbs Up
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Mersa
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Re: Homemade Mead
Reply #3 - Oct 6th, 2020 at 3:51am
 
The only plus to living so far from you both is I haven’t drunk all your booze , my friend has dabbled in mead making , the last stuff tasted like lolly water but had the potency of rocket fuel
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vetryan15
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Re: Homemade Mead
Reply #4 - Oct 7th, 2020 at 7:21am
 
Thanks Joe. I vaguely remember the terminology.  But didnt want to be saying the weong thing. I was super tired trying to get this posted, my brain was hurting.  When i bottled it, i did take a few swigs,of the leftover with the 'lees' it didnt kill me, but i have drank alot in my life.  But i have the 'make mead like a viking ' book. I read that awhile ago.  Thats where most of my knowledge comes from. I like to try it naturally.  It was bad enough i had to use packaged yeast. I wanted to collect wild yeast, this year. But that didnt happen.
Plus we dont have refrigerator,  we live out of a cooler.  I would get in alot of trouble if i used that space for mead


@mersa, if u were stateside, i would send u a bottle.  But i understand.  From what i tasted. It was good
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Bill Skinner
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Re: Homemade Mead
Reply #5 - Oct 7th, 2020 at 10:27am
 
What did you have to do to the honey to make it ferment?
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vetryan15
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Re: Homemade Mead
Reply #6 - Oct 7th, 2020 at 12:28pm
 
Bill Skinner wrote on Oct 7th, 2020 at 10:27am:
What did you have to do to the honey to make it ferment?

Just added yeast.  Warmed up the water to about 80°, then poured it onto the honey, added yeast last. Was supposed to mix it together,  but found out online, if u let the yeast do its magic, without mixing the must. It actually turns out tto be sweeter. Plus i was too lazy to  do that kind of mixing, each gallon i made used 2.5lbs of honey.

Every couple of days i would check on it, and take a pic. You could tell that the honey slowly being used up, until it disappeared.  They sat on my table for 6 months, cuz that was all the room i got
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Bill Skinner
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Re: Homemade Mead
Reply #7 - Oct 8th, 2020 at 9:47pm
 
I had a friend that made what he caller "Ciser" which was cider with other fruits in it. 

The one that I sampled was actually very good, and this is from someone that doesn't like most wines and ciders I have tried.

One half of a small orange juice glass was enough to make me feel it, too.  So, it was pretty potent.
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vetryan15
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Re: Homemade Mead
Reply #8 - Oct 9th, 2020 at 9:31am
 
I was interested in making a Ciser, but we had a very dry year, so the wild apple harvest was almost non existent. Technically i did make  a Melomel, which is mead with fruits. I have had a few people try it, and they loved it. I am actually hosting a small wine tasting tonight to show it off, with a few neighbors. 

Next year  i will be making more. But i plan on starting beekeeping because i love honey. I also want to attempt to collect wild yeast as well. To see how deep my viking ancestry flows though my blood. Wink
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Bill Skinner
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Re: Homemade Mead
Reply #9 - Oct 9th, 2020 at 10:44am
 
Around here, which is deep in the South, our most of our wild grapes already have wild yeast on them.  Is that true up where you are?
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Rat Man
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Re: Homemade Mead
Reply #10 - Oct 9th, 2020 at 4:46pm
 
   One day while I was working for Cable TV one of my customers told me he had something interesting to show me.  He took me into his basement.  There he had booze made from just about everything you could possible make it from.  Every kind of fruit, anything that would ferment, he made booze from it.  The whole basement was full. Shelf after shelf of big jars of booze.  Plums, apples, peaches, you name it.  I was still drinking back then and I was quite impressed.  I sampled a few and they were pretty good. 
   Prohibition was a stupid idea because one can easily make booze.  Some kind of fruit or anything else that will ferment, yeast, bottles, a balloon to top the bottles, cheese cloth to strain it with, and you have booze.  I've made wine and it came out really good. 
     When Dad was in the navy during WWII they didn't always have access to alcohol so they improvised.  They took the raisins from their rations, pooled them altogether, and made raisin jack.  It probably tasted like crap but as Dad would say, any port in a storm.
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vetryan15
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Re: Homemade Mead
Reply #11 - Oct 10th, 2020 at 6:39am
 
Bill Skinner wrote on Oct 9th, 2020 at 10:44am:
Around here, which is deep in the South, our most of our wild grapes already have wild yeast on them.  Is that true up where you are?


We dont have wild grapes up here, at least i havent come across any. But we are about to go into winter.  The hardwood trees have already lost thier leaves. Up here winter starts almost a month before  everyone. Last year by Nov 3rd, we had 4 snowfalls that had accumulated on the ground. We had harvest almost a month ago, due to weather. Harvest is usually about now. But the weather has been crazy to say the least here.

Ratman, he must have been making it for. A few years. Eventually i want to have tgat kind of setup. But raisins are used in alot of mead making from what i have read. Add it for the tannins,  to givr the mead a kick.
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