Any Mead brewers in the house?

[jkane]

I have 22 different meads fermenting in sizes from 1 to 6 gallons right now. :-) Most are about 4 gallons.

The general rule is 3 lbs of honey per gallon. Or ... a ratio of 1 part honey to 3 parts water. That will make a semi dry mead with about 15% ABV. If you go up to 4 lbs, it will be about 18% if the yeast can tolerate that much. Any more than that and you end up with a very sweet mead.

There is no reason to heat honey and it is bad for aroma and flavor if you boil it. Honey is quite sterile to begin with. It has a low PH and is high is sugar. If you are really concerned, think about the processing of the honey. If it is not fresh, chances are the bee keeper heated it to get it to flow before shipping it! So, you have already started to set the aroma free. :-(

Just mix well with fresh water and aerate very well. Honey lacks the nutrients found in grains. The yeast need them to ferment well. That is why so many people think mead takes a year to drink. If you feed the yeast, it will ferment in a month instead of 6 months. Then you can drink it in a couple of months instead of a year. Use about 7 grams of yeast nutrient and 7 grams of a source for free ammino nitrates like diammonium phosphate for 5 gallons. Add 2/3rds of that on day one and aerate and stir well. 24 hours later, add 2/3rds of what is left and aerate well again. This is NOT beer. Adding oxygen is important and won't hurt it like it does in beer. After another 24 hours, add the last of the nutrient and DAP. Aerate well one more time. At this point, the specific gravity should be about half. This is an indicator that everything is going well. Now you can stop adding oxygen. The yeast will have stopped reproducing and will be busy just making alcohol. During that reproduction phase, they crave nutrients and oxygen. That is why it is both good to add nutrients and O2 during the first 3 days and why it won't hurt. The yeast will take in the O2 so it won't oxidize the must.

Let it finish fermenting like normal and rack after a couple of weeks. Then let it sit on the sediment for a month or two more. This is because the yeast will work on the mead to add body (glycerin) to it.

It should be clearing nicely at this point, so rack again and drink when you are thirsty. :-P

As for rum ... that is a tricky thing. Traditionally you need to keep a dunder pit. That means taking what is left in the still and store it somewhere. Then when you make your next batch, 30% of the liquid should be from the pit. When done, add the left overs (aka dunder) to the pit. On the next batch, do the same. Use dunder from the pit as 30% of the mash. Keep doing this for about 5-6 batches. It will be at that time that the traditional rum flavors will start to come through.

I guess I am saying don't be too disappointed if the one time molasses wash does not give you the rum flavors you are hoping for if you make just one batch at a time.

[AKScott]

I will defer to jkane about suing molasses in meads.

In beer I have found molasses really needs a 90 minute boil. I have been fooiling around on a recipe for what an export stout from Charleston, South Carolina would have been like if South Carolina had still been a British colony around 1840.

So molasses and rice to fill out the grain bill, and the whole world available for spices.

Modern molasses is processed with some pretty harsh chemicals, I can cut six months easy off bulk aging by adding 30 minutes to the front of the boil.

Without a 90 minute boil beer yeast will _eventually_ clean up molasses processing chemicals, but I am finding it takes months and months to do it.

Good luck, if it has an off flavor just cellar it for another six months before you try another one.

[AKScott]

There is no reason to heat honey and it is bad for aroma and flavor if you boil it. Honey is quite sterile to begin with. It has a low PH and is high is sugar. If you are really concerned, think about the processing of the honey. If it is not fresh, chances are the bee keeper heated it to get it to flow before shipping it! So, you have already started to set the aroma free. :-(

I haven't kept bees either. However, some honey some of the time might/ can/ could be contaminated with bacterial endospores. Sort of like an egg is to a chicken, a bacterial endospore is not a living bacteria, just the genetic code and a tiny bit of stored food.

Under the right conditions of temperature and moisture bacteria endospores will take up some water, build themselves into a living bacteria and commence metabolism and reproduction.

While endospores are in the very low water environment of pure honey, they stay dormant. Any time honey is diluted with water there is -some- risk of bacterial activity, from whatever spores were in there waiting around for some water.

Pitching a good sized population of healthy yeast can help to outcompete whatever bacterial spores are trying to regenerate.

Low temperature Pasteurization removes this variable from the fermenter and ensures only the pitched yeast are working on the honey.

I don't know what the risk of bacterial contamination is from making mead without Pasteurizing the honey. However low the number is, it is preventable.

wiki article on bacterial endospores here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endospo...rming_bacteria