Catherine and I have made a few beers and a few meads (honey wine) in the time we've been together. The results have ranged from awful (our first mead) to pretty good (our last mead). She's currently tackling a kit cherry cider; we started it yesterday. Being on an apple kick, I've decided to pursue a cyser, which is a mead that also has apple in some form as a flavoring. Any fruit-flavored mead can be called a melomel, so I decided to call my concoction Brian's Apple Melomel, Mark I.
This is the first time I've done a flavored mead, so I decided to get some help. Weeks ago, I was browsing the homebrewing section at a local Borders and found a book called Making Wild Wines & Meads by Pattie Vargas & Rich Gulling. I have a fairly extensive homebrewing library for both meads and beers, but little on wines, so I bought it. Page 109 had a recipe for an apple melomel that is essentially the heart of what I'm doing. However, the original recipe required slightly different-sized equipment than what I had, so I've boosted some quantities, modified their proportions, and made some substitutions. It's still their basic recipe, however, so I give credit. If you try making the following and it doesn't work, I get the blame. By the way, if you're new to all of this, what I tell you here won't be enough to get you started. The Vargas & Gulling book looks good to me, but I'm not a fermentation beginner, so you might need additional resources, like a friendly homebrewing shop, to get you started.
The following list describes version 0, with annotations describing version 1, which are the alterations I made as I began to put things together. Version 0 is what I planned; version 1 is what I did.
4.5 lb honey (version 1 used 5 lbs of clover honey)
1.5 gal fresh apple cider
1 1/2 tsp acid blend
1.5 tsp pectin enzyme
1 pkg Wyeast sweet mead yeast #3184
1.5 tsp yeast nutrient
2 1/4 cups orange juice (dropped in version 1)
1 1/2 Campden tablets (reduced to 1 crushed tablet in version 1)
Once I got home, I boiled one part honey in two parts water for twenty minutes, skimming the foam to get rid of various things that won't contribute positively to the final product. If you try this, when boiling, this stuff can burn you badly, so be careful.
Now is probably a good time to talk about cleanliness and sterility. In the old days, they didn't know the importance of either, and still managed to (usually) make good wine and beer. But some batches went awry, and it wasn't known why. It helps to think of each fermentation process as a race between what you want and what you don't. What you want is for your yeast to have a perfect environment to turn sugar to alcohol. What you don't want is anything to interfere with this, or for anything to happen that causes your final beverage to be less than perfect. A big problem leading to the latter is bacterial or foreign yeast contamination. Boiling kills everything, so if it doesn't interfere with your ideal product, it's a good thing. We don't boil the cider, however, because that would cause some loss of quality. The above boiling step makes sure that your honey and water are sterile, at least to start. The Campden tablet will take care of what might be in the cider (I hope).
I moved the pot off the hot burner and let the pot cool loosely covered for maybe an hour. Then I started wiping the outside of the pot with a wet dishtowel to speed cooling. After I was comfortable that the pot wouldn't be damaged by too rapid cooling, I put the pot into a sink full of cold water to speed the process. Once the contents were fairly cold, I then added the cider, acid blend, pectin enzyme, and the Campden tablet and set them aside to work for 24 hours. This whole process ended about 6:30 pm.
I should have popped the Wyeast pack then, if not sooner. The manufacture date is about one month ago, so it should have a full day to grow. I forgot about the lead time, though, so I didn't pop the pack until about 8:45 pm. I'll throw the yeast at this time tomorrow.
The next step will be to add the yeast and the yeast nutrient at about 8:45 pm on Monday, November 20. I'll also take a specific gravity reading and a temperature just before adding the yeast.
Yeast added, yeast nutrient skipped. The sp. gr. was 1.105, taken at 70 F. The yeast was pitched at 9:00 pm on Monday, Nov. 20. The pail was covered with plastic wrap and loosely with its cap.
On Tuesday, I relented and added 1.5 tsp of yeast nutrient. The fermentation never appeared vigorous.
On Sunday, 11/26, I racked to a secondary fermenter, a glass carboy. Within 15 minutes, the wort was bubbling vigorously. At this racking, the temperature was 72 deg F and the sp. gr. was 1.034. Note: the primary fermenter was originally a cat litter container; it was yellow and not transparent. It turned out not to be too good of a choice for watching what was going on.
orange juice - part of yeast culture, Wyeast probably already has the equivalent, so I dropped it.
cider - I added a scant 1.5 gallons.
Last modified: Fri Dec 29 16:22:03 Eastern Standard Time 2000