beerkiss wrote:I put this on at the weekend - wanted to do a mead for a while and been looking for honey but ended up playing it safe with this bog standard supermarket brand.
3 * 454g/1lb jars of Gales Honey (On offer for £2 in asda the other week)
1 tsp citric acid
1/2 tsp of youngs wine tannin
1 tsp youngs yeast nutrient
White Wine Yeast
It's bubbling away nicely. Started with an OG of approx 1.090 so i think this ones gonna be fine. If it tastes remotely like the honey that's gone in, I think it could be a winner.
One day I'll get the time to make some ale, but until then this stuff is keeping the brewing itch scratched (well, almost).
You'll find that it'll make a mead, but there's a probability that it will be a little mediocre (actually it'll be bloody horrible when it's first finished).
The issue is about the "quality" of the honey. Gales etc, is processed to hell and back, plus it's processed to give a consistent flavour when eaten. Hence if there's anything in there that wouldn't make a good mead (Eucalyptus honey for example) then that taste is often brought out in the finished mead. Worst case scenario (and most expensive), is to use the Rowse range of honey. At least some of them are varietal, allowing for different tastes in the finished product. Though if you can find a local dealer, they often keep varietal, or at least regionally produced honies.
Citric acid ? Well I avoid that as I don't usually want any lemony notes in the taste. I use the recommendation from Ashton & Duncans Book (out of print but available through the amazon markets), which is 2 parts malic to 1 part tartaric.
I don't bother adding it before or during the ferment. You'll find that if you monitor the pH, it can swing around quite wildly during a mead ferment and as you can end up with a stuckie if it drops below about 3.0 pH, then there's little point in adding acid before it might (or not) be necessary. Honey musts tend to be acidic enough already.
As for the nutrient, I still have some tronozymol, but have moved away from using "combined" nutrient. I rehydrate my yeasts (mainly Lalvin D21 or K1V-1116) with GoFerm, pitch it into the must, then once there's signs of the ferment starting, I add half of the other nutrient (irrespective of whether I'm using a mix of DAP and FermaidK, or a combined one like the tronozymol). The ferment is then aerated at least once a day, until it hits the 1/3rd sugar break, then it's stirred one last time so that when I add the other half of the nutrient, it doesn't foam like hell all over the place. I take a little must, which goes into a sanitised liquidiser with the other half of the nutrient and whiz the lot. Then it's gently added to the ferment.
I usually transfer it to secondary ferment (DJ/Carboy) at about 1.015-1.010 and let it do it's thing.
It's entirely fine to use blended honey like Gales etc, but I only use them when making JAO, or another melomel/metheglyn/cyser/pyment, when the resulting taste of the honey isn't so important.
Oh, and don't forget, you're gonna have to age it. 6 months plus. While green/immature meads often taste hideous, once they've been aged some, you'll be amazed at the transformation......
regards
fatbloke
