My first Mead

mead (mēd) n.
An alcoholic beverage made from fermented honey and water.

After years of brewing beer and years of desiring to make mead after tasting it at a mystery dinner night, I have ventured out once again. Like the definition says above mead is basically honey, water, and yeast. You can add fruit and other items if you like but for now we're keeping simple.

Here are my fellow mead makers but not tasters since this will probably be about 10-12% alcohol by volume.

I began by boiling one gallon of water in a three gallon stock pot.

I then added 10 pounds of honey that was generously given to me. If this turns out decent I'll be looking more seriously into keeping bees.

I suppose I should come clean about the ingredients. There is also yeast nutrient and yeast energizer to help with the fermentation. But that is it, seriously!

After the gallon of water had boiled for 10 minutes I added 1.5 teaspoons of nutrient and 1.5 teaspoons of energizer and all of the honey. I then let it set for about 20 minutes. Much easier and faster than beer!

While this was sterilizing (setting in the pot) I re-hydrated my yeast as you can see here. Oh, where would we be without yeast. I think I shall compose a poem about the beauty of yeast. But I digress....

Finally, I added the cooled must to 3.5 gallons of cool water to bring the temperature to below 80. I added the re-hydrated yeast and stirred the mixture for about 5 minutes. I checked on it about 10 PM and it is fermenting away. Now, hopefully it will keep this up. I'll post more pictures when I transfer it into the glass secondary fermenter and hopefully around Christmas the finished or nearly finished product.