Tiffany’s Mead Recipe.
This recipe is based on purchasing 2 x standard 500gm pots of honey from the supermarket. You will need Brewer’s Cleaner, Sanitiser, a 5 litre glass jar (demi john), bung with hole and an airlock to begin with. Later on you’ll need a bit of syphon hose and suitable bottles to store the mead in. Glass 750ml or 500ml “swing top” beer bottles are an excellent way to store your mead. Make sure your 5 litre jar has been cleaned, then sanitised. While doing this, soften the 2 pots of honey by standing them in hot water for long enough that you can then pour the honey directly into the 5 litre jar. Dissolve it with (some warm) water, then cold water, to make a total volume of 4 litres. This will give you about a 10% mead. If you have a hydrometer you can dissolve the honey-water mixture to your desired O.G eg 1.075 is about 10%, 1.090 about 12%. Crush and add 1 x Campden Tablet to sterilise the honey “must” from wild yeast, mould and bacteria’s. Fit the airlock (with water already added to the u-bend) into the bung and jar to protect the must. The water in the airlock should be “uneven” to indicate the jar is correctly sealed up. The following day add 3 level teaspoons of acid (malic, tartaric, citric or a blend of all 3), 2 teaspoons of wine nutrient salts and a tiny amount of tannin. Make sure the must has been well oxygenated while adding these ingredients. Add a pack of Champagne Yeast, refit the airlock and allow to ferment out in a cool place. Fermentation is finished when the yeast has consumed all the sweetness from the honey and no more bubbles are pushed through the airlock. A better way to test the mead has finished is to use a hydrometer OR wait until the airlock water inverts back inwards. Crush and add 1 more Campden Tablet to the mead. The next day, clean then sanitise enough (glass) bottles to hold the volume of mead made and also syphon hose. Carefully transfer the new mead into bottles. Allow the mead plenty of time to mature in a cool, dark place. There is no way to tell how long a batch needs to mature for so sample slowly. Make your next batch while this is maturing.