If ya have too much headspace like that, can use some sanitized marbles to raise the liquid level safely. Minor pain to get them back out and cleaned later, but really minor. That is a very tasty looking mead. Might be better than Skeeter Pee, even.
I just made this.... December is Lemon season in Palm Springs, where my mother-in-law has the most magnificent lemon tree. Thanks for the help! I really appreciate the work you put into these videos.
UPDATE: I opened a bottle and poured a glass and was all, OMG! So I poured another glass. And another. It totally exceeded my expectations. Making another one today. So everyone... make this bad girl!
Today I am making a 5-gallon batch of this lemon mead. It was so good when I did the 1-gallon. This time I'm adding my mint from the garden. While I steep the black tea in a one-gallon jar I'm also steeping the mint leaves in a one-gallon jar. Just so it's not overpowered in the fermenting stage. A little experiment... I make my homemade iced tea with steeped mint tea, fresh lemon juice, and honey and it's so delicious! I wanted to try this combination to make lemon/mint mead! Away I go!
I am stoked on your channel! Thanks for sharing your passion. For future recipes, I recommend not being as prescriptive with the volumes as this ingredient list would have made more than 1 gallon. For example state 'per 1 gallon of mead 'spring water - quantity sufficient to fill carboy'. I am definitely going to try this recipe!
Currently I brew this mead. Just in a few weeks the mead will be finish but the taste now after 8 week is awesome. Thank you for the recipe and best regards from germany.
It sounded like he was going to say "lets talk about that". Like in good mythical morning. This channel has the same feel to it. I love your videos man! Keep up the good work!
So cool. I knew that there had to be mead somewhere in the show, I didn't pay enough attention. I had George RR Martin's wife's mead at a GØT event at his theater in Santa Fe. It was wonderful, not at all tart, even with the thin slice of lemon added on top. Tea is a great idea ♥
@@ManMadeMead I'll be trying in my next round. Rtm I have ingredients for my about to be open primary containers. But I'm going to either order more secondary containers or wait till my next rotation. Unfortunately when you originally posted this I had just bought enough ingredients to fill half my carboys. This post just dropped up on my feed and had me all excited all over again!
A rose mead for House Tyrell. A Dragons Blod capsumel for House Targaryen, a session mead for Tyrion because you can consume a lot of it “I drink and I know things”, a very strong traditional mead for the Hound perhaps 18%, and how about a strong mead that is sweet enough that it is dangerous because you can’t sense it’s strength -maybe a butterscotch - for Arya Stark.
I'm so excited I made my first mead using your recipe!! I did it! I think the ABV is between 13.18 or 15.54. I wasn't sure of the SG if it was 1.100 or 1.120. Finished at 1.000. I got 4 bottles from it. It's still young but I opened a bottle and I think it's good. A little strong for alcohol but not extreme. My question is this... Could I make this mead into a carbonated drink? If I followed the recipe again, but this time I back-sweetened it with nonfermentable sugar, then added honey as the priming sugar (calculated). I want to make 5 gallons this time. Could I even make the tea brew by adding some fresh mint leaves as well to add with the tea? I like that iced tea with mint kinda taste. This recipe carbonated would be awesome! I'm going to do a 5-gallon of your blueberry carbonated too. This is a little scary... hope I don't get an explosion. I'll follow the calculator. If I use a little less honey for the priming sugar would I be safer, for it not to explode? Just to be on the safe side, would that be ok?
It can be carbonated! Just don’t stabilize and add priming sugar and non fermentable sugar to backsweeten. Teas work well! You can use honey as priming sugar, but you need to make sure and use a priming sugar calculator!
Sweet and sour combination sounds interesting in a mead. I will probably try this in the future! Awesome dude. I am wondering if I should maybe a jalapeno (or habanero) mead. The question I have is: will a jalapeno bochet work or would that be too weird? Just plain jalapeno mead maybe?
Hey! My opinion (and experience with jalapeños) is that the flavor is really hard to impart into a mead. It normally turns more into a vegetable taste than a heat. It sounds crazy, but I've heard people had more success using habaneros and serranos in their meads to get a better heat. I think a bochet with some peppers in it could be incredible!
@@ManMadeMead Thanks so much for reply. Interesting. I just watched some videos by "CS Mead and More" and they used jalapeno. I will probably research a bit more what to use as ingredients. In the worst case I will just make a mead and split it into 2 batches (one jalapeno and one habanero). So much exciting stuff to try!
I have tried making a lemon mead before using QA23 and it turned out horrible. The mead tasted like vinegar. It turned out that the lemons that I had were very acidic and the yeast converted the citric acid into acetic acid. I found that leaving the lemon juice until after fermentation works for me.
I question your idea that by backsweetening with a 1/4cup of honey, you reduced the alcohol content from 11.8% to 10.5%. Fermentation is over because of the pasteurization, so it seems to me that the Final Gravity (of the fermentation) would still be 1.00, indicating 11.8%. At that point, isn't adding 1/4cup of honey no different than adding 1/4cup of anything else that mixes with the mead, for example even just water? Adding 1/4cup to approximately one gallon should only dilute the mead from 11.8% to around 11.6%. At least, that's the way it seems to me, but then I'm a total amateur who keeps watching your videos but still haven't tried making any myself.
I think you're probably correct. You can't go solely by gravity readings after backsweetening. You work out the amount of dilution by volume. Granted, it's probably not a full gallon in the carboy, so the dilution rate is probably a bit higher, but doing the math : ((volume x ABV) + (volume x ABV)) / total volume = abv :: ((1 x 11.8) + (.0158 x 0)) / 1.0158 = 11.616% ABV Edit: Expressing 1/4 of a cup in terms of gallons. Though you could express gallons in 1/4 cups and get the same result (obviously).
You’re totally right! However, I don’t normally put too much concern into that small of a percent ABV loss. If I was a commercial meadery and I had to put my exact ABV on everything I would definitely be more weary of those things. However, with it being such a small change it doesn’t matter. Now, if I had diluted it down way more with honey and some juice or something, I would have probably taken that into consideration.
@@ManMadeMead AND, if you calculate the grams of alcohol per ounce, it's only about a .2 gram change between 11.6%, and 10.5%. (fl oz x ABV) x .23 = Grams of alcohol. I only know this from reading a paper regarding the medicinal benefit of alcohol in males. The maximum effective dose is 30 grams per day, as it so happens (so about 12.5 fl oz at 10.5%, or 11.25 fl oz at 11.6%). So it really is negligible in the amounts that most people would drink at a time.
The final gravity after stabilizing and back sweetening tells you how sweet the wine or meed is. In other words, knowing that a mead is NOW at 1.010 I have a sense of its objective sweetness (objective because the perceived sweetness will depend on the ABV and the acidity of the mead) and I would know that it is significantly more sweet than a mead that is being bottled at 1.000 and significantly less sweet than one being bottled at 1.020 . That said, IF - IF 4 oz of honey increased the gravity from 1.000 to 1.010 then that suggests that 1 lb of honey will increase the gravity of water making one one gallon TOTAL by 40 points - (1.040) so this suggests either the final SG was below 1.000 or that less than 4 oz were added OR that the total volume was greater than 1 US gallon... given that typically, 1 lb of honey dissolved in water to make 1 US gallon raises the gravity of the water to 1.035.
On a technicality your raising the FG. However I agree with you that it is done fermenting. Similar to if your Sp.Gr. Drops below 1.00 and say start at 1.05 with FG .996. (1.05 - .996)*131.25 = 7.08% by formula, however if using hydrometer estimated ABV. You would take starting gravity minus FG. If bellow 1.00 gravity it’s now negative. Essentially SG - -FG making result positive. I don’t have my chart otherwise I’d illustrate it by numbers. Not sure if formula method accounts due this. Now if you add honey you effectively dilute your brew as the volume that was calculated current ABV is different. I’d argue your right in a normal sense. Add a cup of water to a brew after taking a result. It dramatically changes. I’d be curious if lab testing can show this phenomenon true or false.
I just made this but I used K1-V1116 yeast since I had no QA23 yeast. The reading I got was 1.120 or 1.100. This is my very first mead. I used a calculator for mead and it shows that I can have 12-14.7% alcohol if the fermentation stops between 1.030 - 1.010. If I want it to stop there would I have to stop the fermentation if it's still fermenting? Would I have to put it in the fridge or the oven to stop it?
Well you can attempt to stop it by cold crashing it (putting it in your fridge) and then racking off the stuff at the bottom at the end. You might have to do that multiple times though. If there are any yeast left in it when it gets back to room temp they will wake back up and get back to work!
Have you tried reusing ur lees? When you were saying what you would get rid of, I was kinda thinking how i could have gotten like 3 new gallons started with what you called trash (raisins would have gone in my compost). I have been pretty successful reusing mine
@@ManMadeMead good to know! Video showing people how to....just a suggestion. I got lucky doing mine w no instruction, then saw a video w a fail and remembered the differences so I wouldn't have a fail.
I have never thought to put it in the oven to pasteurize. Ever had any issues with the glass breaking? And how are you stoppers going it to keep the alcohol from boiling off?
So while it didn’t boil, there is a likelihood that some ethanol was evaporated out of the mead. It’s hard to say exactly how much is/was lost, but because I did not press the limits closer to the boiling temp - I am assuming that I only lost a small fraction of ethanol (alcohol). I haven’t had any issues with the glass breaking! Most of the time the glass is very safe up to hundreds of degrees!
@@ManMadeMead this is getting made today will be number 2 mead I’m making. First is a green apple cinnamon mead that is in secondary now. And now this one. You and doing the most really inspire mead making y’all are awesome
@@ManMadeMead "The Red Bucket of Sanitization" CS mead and more youtube channel has one that they announce in every video. You had one in this video too.
Funny this video came up today. Just 3 days ago zested lemons with intent to make a lemon mead. Thought tartness of lemon would balance the sweetness of a mead I tried to read the series but stopped where Bran was killed for seeing something he shouldn’t have seen. Never got into the TV show
@@ManMadeMead Just watched your other video! Hadn't watched it yet. Thanks. Might try this with 6 gallons of mead I have going right now in a pot instead of stabilizers. I've pasturized small bottles before to bottle carb before I had a keg
Oh i meant how long did u keep the mead in secondary before bottling. And i guess i just ment in general how long do you leave your fruit in secondary since i see thats what you usually do
So this was in the secondary for 25 days for bottling but I generally try to get 2 months in normally. The amount of time the fruit is in the secondary also really depends on the fruit. Some fruits impart flavor more quickly to say, so I don’t have a general number for that!
Do you stabilize it before racking to secondary when you add ur fruit or even in this case where ur just putting it into secondary or for backsweetinging sorry for all the questions just currently recreating this
Old video, so this might not be seen, but how do you feel about the lemon load for scaling up to 5 gallons? Recipe on AleHorn calls for zest and juice of 6-8 lemons, but for some reason 30-48 lemons seems excessive. Then again, it's lemonaid mead. I'd rather use bottled juice honestly 😅
Be aware that touching your hair, face, nose, etc. without then sanitizing your hands can lead to contamination. In this video, you also used your hands to touch ingredient(s) and tools.
