VERY SWEET Lemon Mead

[Garry]

I've been meaning to make a mead with a while. I had some success with Joe's Ancient Orange Mead a year ago and I wanted to try a more traditional recipe this time. I wanted it to be sweet too. I found a nice recipe on the River Cottage website and some good tips on stormcastle.com and Radical Brewing.

I've been picking up jars of honey over the last few months. Every time I'd go shopping I'd stick one into the trolley. In hindsight I think I used too much honey, but it's going to be sweet anyway!

Recipe for 5 litre batch:

2600g of honey
Zest and juice from 1 lemon
30(ish) raisins
1 pack of Youngs champagne yeast

So here we have a fine selection of "EU and non EU" honey with didildy-i oirish branding!



I started by putting the jars of honey into the oven (at it's lowest setting) for 15 mins or so. I heated them up to 50°C to make the honey runny funny bunny!



I heated up 3 litres of water to 70°C. Then took the pot off the hob and slowly added all the honey. Continuously stirring (slowly) to ensure the honey is dissolved in the water. I had to hire a model for the next pic, I only have two hands 



I put the pot back on the hob and tried to maintain the temperature at 65°C for 20 minutes. Some say this step is detrimental to the honey? Some say it needs to be pasteurised? I'm sure it will work out fine.



Next, rehydrate the yeast. I sprinkled the yeast onto about 150ml of water at 35°C and left it sit for 20 minutes. Then give it a stir and let it sit again for a few minutes.



I also prepared the lemon zest, juice and the raisins.



I put the pot into a sink of cold water to cool it down below 25°C. I had to change the water a couple of times in the sink to get the temperature down.



I then transferred the water/honey into a sanitised bottlejohn. I also added some of the water/honey solution into the bowl of yeast to help equalise the temperature between the wort (or is it must?) and the yeast.

I added the lemon and raisins and gave the bottlejohn a good shake to aerate the wort.





I topped up the bottlejohn with cooled boiled water to about 2 inches below the cap. Then pitched the yeast.



Stuck in the air lock and put it away in a warm dark place. I'll probably leave it in the bottlejohn for 4 weeks. Then transfer it into a glass demijohn and forget about it for a year or so.

I definitely used too much honey. The OG was off the scale  I guesstimate it's around 1.150!! I don't know when the yeast will crap out but the mead is going to be very sweet!

[nigel_c]

That'll be a strong mead. 

I stuck on a batch of mead a week or so ago myself. Love the stuff and always like to have a batch on the go.
I tried something different this time though.
I go with the 2x900g of boyne valley honey in a 5 L batch as i usually do but this time i pitched a starter of Orval dregs I was building and it took off pretty quick. Really looking forward to it. In a year or so 

[Greg2013]

Looks great Garry, one trick i know a fella in UK uses is when he is doing a strong mead like that he does staggered honey additions over a week or two, the continuous CO2 production keeps the nasties out. He says that way the yeast does not get stressed as much.that said most of his meads have OG of at least 1100.Cheers. 

[Eoin]

A plastic bottle is not good enough for the amount of time that a mead should sit for. Transfer to glass under airlock as soon as you can.

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[Eoin]

Also HFW is a shite brewer as much as I admire his cookery.

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[Will_D]

Unless you use a turbo ha yeast to frment out to about 20% abv you will just end up with a very sweet mead.

Suggest you dilute  it down to about 1.5 to 1.8 kgs per gallon (4.5)

That way it will ferment out just right.

ANd get it into glass after the vigourous fermentation has died down.
Mead can take years to drop clear and age properly.

So OK guess what the next project is?

Yep: 22% Mead!

Am already doing a 22% cider (Calvados) by the "Fire Cider" process

[Eoin]

Unless you use a turbo ha yeast to frment out to about 20% abv you will just end up with a very sweet mead.

Suggest you dilute  it down to about 1.5 to 1.8 kgs per gallon (4.5)

That way it will ferment out just right.

ANd get it into glass after the vigourous fermentation has died down.
Mead can take years to drop clear and age properly.

So OK guess what the next project is?

Yep: 22% Mead!

Am already doing a 22% cider (Calvados) by the "Fire Cider" process

You'll be stepping that up for a while.

Sent from my HTC One

[Garry]

Cheers fellas. It's going into glass in a couple of weeks. I only have one demijohn so I did the primary fermentation in plastic.

I don't intend this to ferment out fully. That would be a miracle  If it goes to 12-13% I'll be happy, that would leave plenty of sweetness too.

@nigel, what OG do you get with 1800g? Does it finish dry our sweet?

[nigel_c]

OG is about 1.100 and ferments to about 10.20 normally. No idea what the Brett batch will do.

[CB_Phil]

looks quite interesting, look forward to hearing the result. been toying w.the idea of making a mead long before i started brewing

[donnchadhc]

I just put on a mead, 1.5 kg of straight honey and water, came in at 1.070. I've never seen a fermentation like it, like a rocket. Can I put video up dies anyone know? Gonna put two more on when I get home, a cyser and a melomel I think.

[Garry]

Racked this into a glass demijohn tonight. Gravity is down to 1.090. That gives me approx 8% at the moment. That gravity is probably more like a normal original gravity

It tastes like honey!

[LordEoin]

it tastes like honey? Who would have thunk it?!!

[Garry]

I got a few new demijohns (thanks mr happy) during the week. This brew had a fair bit of sediment at the bottom so I racked it into one of the new demis.

The gravity has dropped to 1.050. I can't see it going any lower. I'd say its around 13% now. That's accounting for the extra water I added to top up the demijohns.

Would you believe, it still tastes like honey! You can get the lemon now though. It actually tastes quite nice at this stage. Fúcking dangerous actually, at that ABV.

[LordEoin]

it's getting a nice light colour now

(ps, the first picture on this thread always gives me a giggle)