Yet another product of the hive :drinks: 3lbs of honey per gallon of water and yeast, wife and I plan on adding lemons to the next then oranges then wild blackberrys to yet another, sooo much can be done once you have hives of bees, man this rocks :yahoo:
:beg: Pick me! Pick me! :beg: (You're asking for taste testers, right?) This is what my eldest is waiting for. LOL So awesome! Is this from that dark, wild bee honey you collected?
Zkeep you may want to go easy on the citrus,I don't know you've ever have orange or grapefruit wine,but it's not a flavorful experience,maybe in small amounts it will be ok.
I have found that adding a cup of strong tea to the mixture while it ferments, adds the needed tannin to balance the flavor of the finished mead.
I joined a group called HAMs here in sarasota , Homebrewers Association of Manatee and Sarasota 2 of the members are state beer judges and the help Im getting on the brewing is real top knotch ancing:
#8 above is a real travesty... an unfinished bottle of mead should be a crime. a finished bottle of 'good' mead on the other hand make you want to go jump in your long boat and go and plunder and pillage England. efmesch writes: I have found that adding a cup of strong tea tecumseh ask: what kind of tea EF? I have heard a couple of the local home brew folks tag mead as tasteless. this suggest to me that a number of home brewers have primarily use tasteless store bought honey to make mead and therefore sometime add more stuff that necessary if you started out with 'good honey'.
Tec, Just "plain old tea". Nothing with added flavors of any sort. Just like sugar-water needs some flavoring to give it "zing", as delicious as the honey may be, for it to really taste good, mead needs two additional ingredients-- 1: Acidity (supplied by a little bit of citric acid (crystals). citrus juice or tartaric acid [that's the best, available from wine supply shops] 2: Tannin, supplied by the strong tea. Both of these ingredients help the mead mimic the flavor of a good wine. Specific recipes should be available over the internet, giving quantities and ideas. Anyone who can get hold of the pamphlet: "Honey Wines and Beers" by Clara Furness, (published by Northern Bee Books, West Yorkshire, England) will have an excellent reference to work with. :thumbsup: On more than one occasion, when I forgot to label my mead properly, I had trouble being sure it wasn't a home brewed wine. I don't want to brag (too much), but there are members of my extended family who have standing orders for mead and are all too often disappointed when they visit and I don't have a "spare" bottle for them to take home. :drinks:
dont worry tec there was no crime, #8 was the pic of opening the bottle, the bottle was long empty 20 min later :drinks:
There really ought to be some forum rule about posting photos of mead without offering free samples! Some awesome looking mead, Zookeep!
