Tofi's Recipes: Dark Sweet Mead

(brewed August 18th, 1995)

Ingredients (for one gallon):

24 oz, Buckwheat honey
8 oz, Clover honey
32 oz, light honey
1 tsp, light dried malt extract (for starting yeast)
1 vial, Yeast Labs brand Dry Mead yeast (no. M61)
1/2 oz, light Oak chips
1 packet, Red Star Champagne yeast

Boil 1/2 C. water with the dried malt extract. Cool and start the yeast in this. Boil the honey in about 1/2 gal. water, skimming until no more scum riseth. Cool must, put in a clean 1 Gal. fermenter, and pitch in the yeast.

At first racking, boil the oak chips in water. Discard the water, and add the chips to the secondary along with the mead.

Discard oak chips on second racking. Hydrate and add Champagne yeast.

After fermentation is complete, bottle and age well.

This batch had a starting gravity of 1.133, seemed to get stuck around 1.090 (when the Champagne yeast was added), was at 1.076 three months after, and finally got down to 1.048 when it was bottled a year after starting.

Despite the stuck fermentation problems, this batch turned out nice, if quite sweet. I prefer my plain meads semi-dry, so next time I'll use less honey and probably a different yeast. And almost certainly a proper yeast starter.

Reference

[Digbie]: Digbie, K, The Closet of the eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Digbie, kt., Opened..., 1669, in Miscellany from D. Friedman & E. Cook

Tofi Kerthjalfadsson, pwp+ (AT) cs dot cmu dot edu