Starting a mead production line

[mrbretmaye]

Moved back to Ireland a year ago.

I had dabbled in a bit of brewing. Tried some cider, elderflower wine, mead and a few others I don't remember or want to.
Some of the ciders were ok, the elderflower wine was good but the mead was TERRIBLE. I am an impatient man and didn't really know what I was doing so although some brews were good, about 60% were crap so I never got into the brewing.

So I am at a lose end at the moment and decided to give it another try. Now some of my stuff was so good that I thought why would I pay someone £20 for a bottle of wine when I did it for about 50p for a better product.

And so I decided to try the mead again for some reason. My worst brew. I took a chance and bought 60L fermenters.

Mead is supposed to be aged 1 year plus. But I am impatient. So what I am drinking now is only about 3 months old. Got 80 bottles out of it and I have to say..........very pleasant. And I can taste it change as it ages, even from week to week. The honey is coming out now.

So today I put on another 60L batch and once I put that into secondary I'll put on another 60L batch.

I have another 27L of elderflower wine on the ferment and I plan to do some other 27L batches of nettle wine, gorse wine. I will be very drunk.

[mrbretmaye]

BTW is there any honey/beekeepers in the east cork area? I'm getting the musgraves stuff and making an orange/spice blend but would like some nice honey for a batch to see if it makes a difference.

[molc]

Good mead really does need a lot of time. I have one on at the moment for about 1.5 years and I still haven't started into it. The trick is to get a pipeline so you can drink AND brew

[mrbretmaye]

I'm trying to get a production line going. My first batch was 60L and I have another 60L on. Once that goes into secondary I'll put on another one and so on. I am going to keep a few bottles from each batch to sample in a few years.

I hope in 2 or 3 years to be able to age for a year or two as standard. If I don't drink it all first. 

[cruiscinlan]

Any of you have luck getting local raw honey?

[nigel_c]

With good oxigination, proper pith rates and a staggered neuterient additions you can turn a mead around in about 6 months. My silver medal mead in the nationals was about 6 months old. It does get better with age but this year and a half till drinkable myth just isn't true.

[Yenren]

For the impatient mazer!
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/current-mead-making-techniques.html

[bigvalen]

I've had good luck with old-school mead recipes that were drinkable after 4 months. Though, they include whipping an egg, dunking it into the mead, to help clarify it a little, then softly boiling it with the crushed up eggshell. It should give a decent amount of FAN and the shell may soften some of the gluconic acid in it.

If you get your pitch rates wrong, if you use the wrong yeast, if you forget yeast nutrient of some sort, you will end up with rocket fuel that takes years to age out.