We love when people tell us that make mead! Its a really fun group of people from all walks of life. Some are homebrewers, some have made mead with family, and others just picked it up once they tasted mead. We know some who have made mead for 25+ years and others that just bought honey to start their first batch. We always try to foster the entire mead culture from helping first timers, troubleshooting batches, sharing mead with other people and commercial meaderies, answering questions online, and just trying to boost mead in general. Its the oldest fermented beverage that no one has ever heard of and we’re trying to change that.
We love answering questions and sharing mead. We do occasionally bring in test batches to sample and get feedback from anyone willing to taste! We try to explain what you are tasting in the mead and how different methods and styles vary and why. We love questions, please keep asking.
Recipe for one gallon batches of morat??I have beautiful mulberry trees and would like to try to make some ..also anywhere locally to buy champagne or Mead or wine yeast would like to support local if I can?? Please help!!
Hi Bob, thanks for the question.
I’ve never used (or eaten) mulberries before so I’m not sure how many you would need to get a good flavor. I’ve read that at least 1.5-2 pounds per gallon will give a good flavor.
For 1 gallon I would make a traditional mead with about 3-3.25 pounds of honey and add water to 1.25 gallons. Then add 1.5-2 pounds cleaned / frozen / crushed mulberries.
You will lose some volume to the yeast and the fruit so its better to make more than 1 gallon initially. Champagne yeast would be fine but I would suggest 71B or RC212
yeast with this. Adding 1 pack is good.
I would suggest a nutrient like Fermaid-K, Fermaid-O, or DAP to keep they yeast healthy. You would add the nutrient at 24, 48, and 72 hours. It would depend on the nutrient
used as to how much is added. Please let me know if or what type you would be using and I can get you better numbers on that.
Ferment around 65-67F and mix well for the first few days, mix up the berries twice a day, working some air into the must when you do.
At about 21 days start checking the gravity and if stable for 3 days rack off of the fruit and lees into a glass carboy and let this age for about a month or two.
Adding a clarifying agent such as kieselsol or sparkelloid at this point can help to get a crystal clear mead, let that sit for a few days and rack to a carboy.
Adding sulfite can help preserve the mead as well.
Please let me know if you have any questions or need any clarification.
We do sell mead making kits which include everything except honey and bottles but just ask and we’ll give you as many bottles as you’d like.
(The kits have a 2 gallon plastic bucket, 1 gallon glass carboy, airlock, hydrometer, auto-siphon & hose, nutrients, cleaner, sanitizer, and a few more items.)
There are a few homebrew stores in the Pittsburgh area: Vite e Vino in Derry, Brillhart Ace in Scottdale, Ruffled Wine in Oakmont, Country Wines, or South Hills Brewing Supply and
Pennsylvania Union Brewing in Canonsburg. They all should have a good selection of wine yeast.
Happy Meading,
Matt
I heard your meadery name on The Mead House podcast 111. I have been making mead for a year. I think one of the most exciting meads to make is a bochet. I am still learning how to make this mead. I have dialed back on the temperature and time on the flame. It’s getting better. Do you have any advice on making a bochet?
Hi Tom.
We love Bochet, too. It was one of the original meads we started with in 2010 – Traditional, Hopped, and Bochet.
Unfortunately it is one of the hardest to explain how we make it because a lot of it goes by intuition and gut feeling.
We do not have a specific time that we cook it but typically go for about two hours. It’s hard to describe when it is finished,
its more of a feeling if that makes sense. We will start it out on higher heat, and when it starts to boil we turn the heat
down and mix occasionally. We are then watching for the darkening of the honey and the foam on top. It starts to turn a nice
orangeish-brown shade and it has a caramel, nutty aroma. Going longer does not hurt it, but it can take longer for it to age out.
We have tried a number of different varieties of honey but typically go back to a nice PA wildflower honey since the process will
typically cook out any delicate flavors.
Putting my two cents in on making bochet. I made a batch a little over a year ago now and it was by far one of my favorites. I’ve made many different meads and wines in the last few years but 3 have really stood out, this being one of them. I caramelized my honey in a crock pot. I found it to be much easier to control the process and end flavor verses open flame.
I ended up using equal parts “burnt” honey and raw honey, fermented with cacoa nibs, cardamon pods and a little vanilla extract. Used Lalvin D-47 yeast hydrated with go-ferm and SNA with DAP and ferm-k. OG =1.12 and finished at 1.022. The added spices in the ferment added depth more than actual flavor as opposed to being aged on them. I plan on repeating this soon but will be making a much larger batch this time!
I also made a mulberry mead last fall. I used 3 lb of mulberries 3lb of honey and water to make 1 3/4 gal. I feel it is a little flat. I should have checked the pH, I’m guessing it needed to be a little more acidic. I’m hoping it will age well, but think it will probably still need some adjustment on the back side.
Hope this info helps someone! Enjoy the process and happy mead making!
Thanks for the reply, Audra.
The crock pot method is a good idea for small batches, thanks for posting that.
pH and acidity comes into play a lot especially with fruit mead. When adding acid bench trials are very helpful. Take a few samples with a standard volume and add different types / amounts of acid to them to find the best taste. (Start with lower amounts as you can always add more but cannot
remove the acid.) Once you figure out what works for those smaller samples you can scale up to the whole batch.