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I need a recipe

I have about 10 years of homebrewine experience. I've made both wine and beer. I've used kits, concentrates, and I also enjoy doing full mash brewing. I guess I mention this to avoid the "keep everything clean and sanitized....." posts.

I've only maid one mead. It was a straight mead, with just a little bit of apple juice and some nutrients added to aid the fermentation. The stuff was like rocket fuel. The alcohol content worked out to be just above 12%, but the phenols where sky high. The stuff cleaned all the mucous from my mouth and throat. Sometimes, the first taste was ok, but the second wasn't pleasant at all. I would sample a bottle of this occasionally over the course of several years and it never mellowed out.

I'm not sure what was wrong with that first batch, it didn't taste infected, and was a very nice clear straw color. I used store bought honey that came in five pound containers.

Anyway, now I'm a beekeeper and I happen to have several pounds of honey that I can play with. It's a wonderful wildflower honey and I would love to make a mead that will show off the full flavor. I'd like a wine strength, still mead recipe that has a proven success record. I've browsed the net and I'm tired of the recipes that give a list of ingredients and then state "this is going to be great!" at the end. Know what I mean?

Anyone on this list have a proven recipe?

I'm going to cross post this to the meadmaking group too.

Thanks,

Wayne

Reply to
Wayne
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I'm sure you will get better responses out of the meadmaking newsgroup but it really is all relative. I make meads and I really can't say any of mine are dynamite but we like them.

My advice would be lean toward lower alcohols in the 10% range to avoid the heat if you like dry wines. Maybe consider around 10 pounds per 5 gallons but use the hydrometer as a guide. Ferment warm and use nutrient at close to maximum levels, my wildflower meads ferment much slower than wines. I would ferment no lower than 70 F personally. I used to add lemon juice to increase the acid but I'm probably going to either not do that or cut it back to 1 lemon per 2 pounds of honey or less. If you measure the pH of honey water must it will look ridiculously high in pH but that changes during fermentation toward the low 3's so is not a reason for concern.

If you like citrus consider using lemon peel but be very carelul not to get any pith in there; I made that mistake once and it's unrecoverable.

Joe

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Joe Sallustio

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Wayne

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