First, a little history. Beer is generally considered to be the oldest fermented beverage - the accidental product of stored grains that got rained on. Mead is slightly younger, but still decidedly ancient. To be reductionist, mead is simply fermented honey, however there is more to it than that. Most old world cultures have some form of mead product that can be made with or without flavorings such as herbs, spices, fruit, grains, or hops, dependent upon what was fashionable and available in the area.
Mead is made essentially of fermented, watered down honey. The honey must be watered down because it is far too heavy and sugary for the yeast to take hold. The alcohol content usually ranges from strong beer to fortified wine (high single digits to high teens), depending on the initial sugar content and type of yeast used. Beer yeasts tend to die off at around 10% ABV while wine yeasts last up to 15% ABV or higher. The combination of initial sugar content and yeast strain used will also determine how sweet the final beverage is.
The first time that I tried mead was in college. My roommate's brother was a (very) amateur brewer. He cooked up a batch of mead and left it sitting somewhere dark for a while. My roommate decided to crack open the bottle one evening and it was magnificent! By aging for a year and a half in the bottle, the mead had clarified and accidentally carbonated. It was truly like a honey-based Champagne. This is what I desire.
There's one trick to mead. It takes time. A whole lot of precious time. Meaders advise storing finished mead for at least SIX MONTHS before consumption, though a year is considered necessary for it to properly mature. This is considerably longer than the month needed to make a batch of drinkable beer. Thus, this project not only fosters patience but will also serve as a spectacular reward for completing what many consider to be the hardest single year of schooling that people can experience. On to it!
I recently made a driving trip to Asheville, NC. That little mountain town was selected as Beer City, USA for three years in a row due to their thriving microbrewery culture. So, it's a bit ironic that Asheville was the source of my honey - my one fermentational departure from grain-based drinks. Who knew that local farmer'd honey in Asheville would be so reasonably priced? It cost about 1/3 less than bulk honey in my urban paradise, and probably about 40% the cost of honey bears. As you can see, this is made from mountain wildflowers, which I hope will lend some depth to the flavor of the finished product. I also detest clover honey.
Calculation time!
Using my beverage calculator, I determined that, in order to reach my target 13% ABV (standard for Champagne) I would need to thin out 5 pounds of honey into two gallons of fermentable liquid.
The first step of meadery is actually a pretty quick process. When making beer, you need to mash the grain for about two hours, then strain, then boil for an hour, then chill. Honey just needs to be heated enough to incorporate it into the water, then chilled to about 70 degrees. It spent about a week and a half in the standard plastic keg fermenter before being transferred to the vessels pictured below. I was able to take a good whiff of the mead at this point. It smells like medicine. I hope that improves over time. It better!
These glass jugs are called carboys. They range in size from a gallon to about seven gallons for amateur usage. They are capped off by an airlock as seen below.
The airlock is a snakey tube of plastic that allows air to escape while preventing anything from entering the fermenter. It uses water and gravity. Simple yet cool. Fermenting beverages cannot carbonate more than a tiny tiny bit because the Carbon Dioxide is allowed to escape through the airlock. Pressure will be necessary to carbonate it very soon.
The mead will sit in here for another couple weeks until I feel compelled to bottle it. In this time it will continue to ferment, albeit very slowly. More on that coming soon...
0 Tipplers:
Post a Comment