Medieval Mead!
One of my favorite alcoholic beverages is mead. It's a sort of wine made from fermented honey, and it's been around pretty much forever, as far as I can tell. Today it's more closely associated with the Norse of Scandinavia and the Anglo-Saxons of post Roman Britain, though it remained popular through the Middle Ages. It's pretty hard to find these days. Most of what you see in stores is just cheap white wine sweetened with honey. An actual proper mead can cost upwards of $60 USD a liter, which is just insane.
A little while ago I stumbled across the YouTube channel Tasting History and saw his video about making mead. I thought 'Hey! This can't be that hard! Let's give it a shot!'. Well...it is, and it isn't. For instance, don't use a drink dispenser thing like Max did. When I tried it, the thing sprang a leak and I ended up with warm honey water all over my kitchen floor. This was about as much fun to clean up as one would expect. Learn from my mistake.
Hit up your local brewing supply store or look around online for a gallon sized fermentor. Here's a couple I got sitting on the counter, sanitizing while I get everything else ready. Helpful hint: you don't have to spend $8 on fancy brewing sanitizer. I looked on the ingredients label on the stuff I bought, and it's plain ol' iodine.
Everything else I put in the sink with a mixture of water and sanitizer. Whatever sanitizer you use, be sure to follow the instructions on the bottle. I think it's a good rule of thumb that anything that will be touching your mix should be sanitized as best you can. I sanitize my airlocks, stoppers and carboys. Don't want any unwanted creepy crawlies growing in your fermentor, after all. The yeast is a creepy crawly, but it makes the delicious, delicious alcohol, so it can stay.
Pour a gallon of water into an eight quart pot and bring it to a boil, then add a quart of honey. I used a bit more than a quart in this particular batch, just because I want to see if I can make it a little sweeter. I use store brand spring water and honey, but boiling the mix is kind of important. Any bits of stuff like parts of beehive or anything in the honey will float to the top. Skim it off with a spoon and get rid of it.
Next comes the hard part. Take the mix off the heat and let it cool to 98 degrees Fahrenheit (36 degrees in non Freedom Units). Using a funnel, pour the mix into your fermentor and add your yeast. From what I've read you can use just about any kind of yeast you want (even bread yeast in a pinch) though I used a wine yeast. This is important because if you add the yeast while the mix is too hot, the yeast will die, and you won't have mead. Instead, you'll have some kind of horrible non-alcoholic icky water, and nobody wants that.
When you've got the fermentor filled (you may end up with some excess) jam your stopper in the mouth of the fermentor and put your airlock in the hole in the stopper. Use some high test alcohol in your airlock instead of water if you have it. The alcohol will keep any creepy crawlies from swimming down and heading for your soon-to-be booze. I used a few drops of Yukon Jack, a 100 proof whisky I had kicking around, which is why it's kinda yellow.
The fermentor on the right had about an hour or so's head start on the one on the left. The foam on the top of the mixture is how you know the yeast is doing its thing in there. So yay for that.
In a couple of weeks, I'll bottle it for aging. Expect another post directly when I start that process. It's actually pretty straight forward.
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