MEAD: Ye drink of the Gods

Ah! sweet nectar that afoards me such pleasure when brewed!

To brew your own mead, you will need some honey, the les refined the better, some water, and some yeast. Taketh the honey and mix it one part to three with the water over a heat in a great pot. Boil it to pasturise the honey, and skim off the scum that riseth to the top, it's just the impuritys in the honey, but we wish to brew good mead, do we not? If making a metheglyn, add the spices now (cloves, cinamon, nutmeg, allspice and whatever you think'd taste nice. Some people put in hearbal tea. Dont dip your finger in, sugar burns are nasty, as my right hand index finger will tell you. (it's still all wrinkly and rough after that experiance, I kept it in a bucket of coold water all day!)

You must now assemble your brewing apparatus which can be as simple or complicated as you like. I started off using an old decanter I bought second hand with some kitchen towel held over the top with a rubber band. It may be advisable, however, to make a gas lock, as we dont want any other organisms poluting the must (unfermented mead) and giving it a disgusting taste. You cant just screw the top of the bottle on though, as the yeasty beastys give off CO2. I made my own gass locks: one was a bit of tubing leading from the mouth of the fermentation flask (decanter/bottle) to another one full of water which I bubled the co2 through. Others I improvised from bits of bottle lids and bike valves, keeping the valves closed with water exceptwhen the preasure bu9ilt up forcing a stream of bubles out through the water.

Put the yeast into the cooled must in the fermentation vessl, do up any gass locks, and leave for a week. Then "rack out" (syphon off) the mead into a new fermentation vessl, leaving behind in the old one the little bits spice and dead yeast. Leave for another three months, racking out every month.

By about three months I get bored. The mead looks cloudy and therefor the yeastybeastys are still hard at work, so I normaly put in a bit of vodka to kill them off (ah! a Drunken Death !) When the mead it clear, rack it off and store it somewhere cool for a month or more to age. (I get impatiant) I normaly do this in the fermentation setup because I am parinoid about the mead blowing up bottles with CO2 preasure. When I am satisfied the yeast is dead and the mead aged a little, I tend to drink it.

Needless to say it improves with age. I had a bottle I left in my attic for a year after fermentation, and it was fantastic.

Mead is not a sweet drink, in fact it can often be quite dry. A metheglin is a spiced mead, a melomel is a mead with fruit, a cyser is a mead with apples, a pyment one with grapes, and sack is just strong mead. Happy brewing!

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