What I learnt from my first mead.

I still don’t consider my first mead experiment to be entirely finished. I think I am still going to age it out a bit and I might even try mixing in some fruit juice since I haven’t bottle the entire batch yet.

This is my recipe:

1. 6kg Generic Honey from Carrefour
2. 1 package of Lalvin D47 Yeast
3. 1 tsp Wyeast Beer Nutrient Blend
4. 20 liters water

I used the generic honey because I didn’t want to throw out expensive honey if this went bad. Before I pitched the yeast I took a gravity reading and I had a starting gravity of 1070. I know this is low for a mead but I wasn’t going for something that would knock anyone out, I just wanted something that would make a nice alternative to beer. I started this process in August and here we sit in January, about 5 months later. The fermentation got stuck a couple of times and the fermentation didn’t actually complete until about mid December.

I believe that my first mistake was that I only used one package of yeast. I did this because I followed the package instructions for wine, however, I think that due to the complexity of the honey I should have used a bit more yeast. I think another critical mistake I made was that I filtered my water which took out all of the minerals as well. I later added calcium carbonate to correct for this. Next time I think I will use mineral water from a bottled water supplier. Of course, I am speculating here but I think if I were to make these two changes I would have avoided a stuck fermentation.

Overall, it tastes okay. I have been told that there is a slight “yeast” taste to it. This could be because the mead has sat on the yeast little too long, because of the stuck fermentation. I have to say that this was a good learning experience and I will happily continue experimenting with mead.

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