{"id":1190,"date":"2015-04-08T20:14:07","date_gmt":"2015-04-09T03:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.giassa.net\/?page_id=1190"},"modified":"2025-08-24T08:03:52","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T15:03:52","slug":"mead","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.giassa.net\/?page_id=1190","title":{"rendered":"Mead"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having watched my grandfather making wine countless times as a youth, making mead was even more intuitive to me than brewing beer. Just take a sugar source, add it to clean\/treated water, some yeast and flavoring, and you’re off to the races.<\/p>\n

Having helped with a number of batches of wine, I figured I’d take a crack at making mead, as I had not yet tried it. So, we need a honey source. Luckily, there’s the Honeybee Center<\/a> just an hour’s drive away, with all the local honey I could need, available in bulk. It gets very expensive trying to do this with the small 500mL containers available at grocery stores.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

A lot of honey.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

So, I have to empty it into the boiling pot…<\/p>\n

\"Boiling<\/a>

Boiling pot.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

A large santoku or kitchen knife really helps get that stubborn last 10% of the honey out of the container:<\/p>\n

\"Gotta<\/a>

Gotta get it all.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Now, I add the water to the stockpot. After heating it up to the point where the honey is fully dissolved in the water, I gather some spices:<\/p>\n

\"Juniper<\/a>

Juniper berries, cinnamon, and star anise.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

And grind them up with my trusty mortar and pestle set:<\/p>\n

\"Mortar<\/a>

Mortar and pestle.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

And add the ground spices to a fine cheesecloth bag, and let it sit in the honey-water mixture for an hour as it cools. From there, it gets a rapid cooldown with an immersion cooler:<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>

An immersion cooler.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

And finally, the yeast is added, and the product is sealed up in carboys.<\/p>\n

\"Carboys<\/a>

Carboys containing mead.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

I later converted the spare bedroom to a nano brewery, upgrading capacity from 8L to a whopping 100L. Needless to say, my friends were treated to several bottles each, as there was only room to store a small number of bottles, ironically.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The brewing room.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Now for the tricky part: waiting. Most meads tend to be undrinkable until they are at least six months old, and a solid year is recommended at the least. So, the must (liquid before fermentation kicks in) is going to ferment for a year as it converts to mead. Finally, we syphon off the product into bottles (with a syphon starter, as starting it with your mouth is just disgusting and can cause the product to spoil):<\/p>\n

\"Syphoning<\/a>

Syphoning apparatus.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

And we have our final product. Skyrim fans rejoice! It actually tastes good too!<\/p>\n

\"Arrow<\/a>

Arrow in the Knee mead.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Amusingly enough, the most well received recipe was made with pineapple, juniper berries, cinnamon, cloves, star anise, orange peel, and black pepper. Who would’ve thought?<\/p>\n

\"Juniper<\/a>

Juniper pineapple spiced mead.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having watched my grandfather making wine countless times as a youth, making mead was even more intuitive to me than brewing beer. Just take a sugar source, add it to clean\/treated water, some yeast and flavoring, and you’re off to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":878,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1190","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t