Oct
21stMaking Mead in NYC
Rosehips in water
Most people only drink mead at Renaissance Faires. Unless they’re Ethiopian, in which case they drink their honey wine with delicious food.
APK had never had mead, and I’d just come from the Maryland Renaissance Faire where the Bee Folks sell delicious honey and also, MEAD MAKING KITS!
Things you need:
- Gallon of spring water
- 2 jars of honey (~2 pounds/3 cups)
- spices and things like yeast (could be from a kit)
- Simmering pot with lid, 2 quarts+
- Funnel & tiny strainer & cup measure
- Bottles or somewhere else exciting to put your finished mead
Making mead is not all that dissimilar from making beer. It just involves yeast, honey, and flavorings. Because the items that bees collect influences the flavor of honey so much, making mead gives you the opportunity to mix and match flavors of spices with the flavor of honey you choose.
Here were the herbs and spices in our mead! Rosehips, Woodruff Herb, Meadowsweet Herb, Hawthorn Herb & Flower, and Red Clover Flower.
To complement this flowery mix, I picked Wildflower honey. Wildflower honey probably has the sweetest, floweriest taste so I hoped that the mead would be extra sweet!
You start off with a gallon of spring water. It makes your life easier to just “shell out” the money for a gallon, because it then gives you a place for your mead to ferment.
While you’re reading this, fill your sink with warm water and put your honey into it while still in the jar. It’ll warm up the honey and make your life a lot easier.
Remove 4 cups of water from the gallon. Just throw them away. I’m sorry they were wasted, but you need room in your jug so it doesn’t become a big honey bomb.
Yes, that’s a bad thing.
Take 3 MORE cups from the jug and put them in your simmering pan. Add your flavors to the simmering pan and simmer it, and once it’s bubbling, turn it onto LOW and set your smartphone clock timer for 10 minutes.
DURING THIS TEN MINUTES, your kitchen is going to smell amazing. You’re welcome.
I used an old soda bottle as a makeshift funnel.
Pour your warm honey into your half empty jug. If your honey is nice and warm, you shouldn’t need to use the funnel, and it should pour easily. You can pour some honey water into the jars to get the last little bits if you want, or you can just stick your fingers in and eat honey. I won’t tell anyone.
Once your timer goes off, turn off your burner and move it to a cool spot. Leave the lid ON until it stops bubbling.
It was at this point that I paused for the night.
Why? Because heat kills yeast. And sure, I can impatiently wait for my simmering goodness to cool down just enough to be okay, or I can come back to my jug-o’-honey-water and stovetop spicy wonderland the next day when I KNOW it’s cool enough not to murder my yeast and continue THEN.
Day 2:
Shake up that jug-o’-honey! Mix the honey around. Oh, and um, make sure you put the lid on first.
Pour your stovetop simmered spice into the jug-o’-honey, even all of the lumpy gunky bits. Using a fake soda bottle funnel makes it easier because the opening is bigger, but none of the spices should be THAT big.
Now! It’s YEAST TIME! Where the magic happens. Yeast eats honey. Yeast poops happy mead.
No, that’s not what really happens obviously.
Add the yeast to your soon-to-be-mead and close the jug with muslin and a rubber band. Your kit should have muslin, and if it doesn’t, your honey probably had some. You just want air to be able to pass through the top
DO NOT PUT THE SPRINGWATER JUG CAP ON.
Yeast needs air to LIVE! Or else it’ll blow up in your face. Or at least that’s what my resident chemist Laszlo told me.
DO NOT SHAKE THE JUG ONCE YOU PUT THE YEAST IN.
Mead not bombs. Mead not bombs.
Put the jug with the muslin on top someplace dark and room temperature. It should make fizzy noises and bubbles and make pond scum on the top. It’ll look AWFUL.
Depending on your recipe, check in on your mead after 5 days. Some mead takes a week. Some mead takes a month. Consult your local MEADY.
You get to decide how sweet or alcoholic your mead becomes, just by tasting it and deciding what day is the pouring day
DAY ??: The Pouring Day
You pour the mead slowly into whatever receptable you’ve chosen.
Here is what our mead looked like after about a week. It was sourer than it had been previously but a little more alcoholic too.
Now, as exciting as all of these spices were in flavoring the mead, I don’t drink things with weird globs in them, so here’s where your strainer and funnel come in handy. Pour out the mead into your receptacle (we used a plastic jug) until there’s about an inch of yucky mead sludge at the bottom of your original jug.
Now you have mead! Drink it within 3-6 weeks and drink responsibly!
Beware of tavern wenches; antibiotics haven’t been invented yet.
Huzzah!
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