Recipe 2: Sack mead

This is a basic mead recipe that I found in the book "The complete mead maker" by Ken Schramm. It is slightly modified due to the yeast that I used, so here we go

Ingredients:

7.20 kg of my own garden honey

about 15 L of tap water

Wyeast "yeast nutrition" 2 g / 10 L

Vinoferm - Bioferm Killer (up to 16%, low residual sugar) 

All equipment was first washed thoroughly and then sterilized with an iodine solution.

I started by adding 7 L of water to my 15 L pot and began bringing it to a boil. 

The original recipe use 6.8 kg  (15 lps) of honey to about 19 L (5 gallons). Since I will end up in 20 L then the mass of honey need to be scaled up to 7.2 kg. The honey was weighed out in two bowls.

My yeast, Bioferm killer, goes up to 16% ABV whereas the original recipe used Lalvin 71b-1122 which goes to 14%, so I would expect my mead to be a bit more dry even though I also expect my honey to be quite low on water. I still need to get this measured, but so far I estimate 15% water.

Once the water was boiling I tool the pot off the heat and placed it in the kitchen sink. Now it was time to add the honey. Best as I am holding the larger bowl over the pot the !"¤#"#"¤ thing breaks in half and falls into the pot with a great splash. So I got some kitchen cleaning to do tonight...

Anyway, both pots was finally added and I started to stir to get it dissolved. As with the last mead (recipe 1)  I checked the temperature and it had dropped to 60oC. I heated the pot a bit and when the temperature was 66oC I turned off the heat. Shortly after the temperature was 69oC which was high enough (as long as it is above 65oC). After 10 min the temperature had dropped to 66oC and it was time to transfer the solution to the fermenter.

I placed the pot on a stool and the fermentor on the floor and just poured the solution into the fermenter with as much splashing as possible to oxygenate the solution - and yes, the floor and cupboards need a wet cloth for a quick clean-up afterwards. The volume of the must added up to almost 12 L and I topped up the fermenter to 20 L with cold tap water. 

The temperature was now 40oC so I had to place the fermenter on the balcony to cool off with the lid put on loosely and a long thermometer in the hole for the airlock. Even though it is end of October it is quite warm (14oC) outside, so it would still take a while for the mead to cool off. When it was time to call it the day I took the mead inside, and planned yeast spiking the following morning.

Next morning the temperature was only 23oC so it was time to spike yeast and nutrients. 4.2g of Wyeast "yeast nutrition" was mixed with about 0.5 dl of 32oC warm water. Afterwards the 7g of yeast was hydrated also in about 0.5 dl of 32oC water. Both solutions were added to the must after 15 min.

While the solutions were left to hydrate, the density was measured to 1.120 with hydrometer (this was the max of the scale of the one I have). pH was also measured with strips to about 6. The optimal pH for wine yeasts should be around 4 so 35 g of citric acid was added which lowered the pH to somewhere between 3 and 4.

Actually I initially added 25 g and measured pH to around 5 after stirring. So I added another 10 g. Then it dawned upon me that it takes some time for the citric acid crystals to dissolve so I stopped any further additions. After the yeast and nutrition was added I waited about one hour and measured pH again and got the result above. I was aiming at pH 4 which I think would have been just perfect with addition of the initial 25 g - shit happens and yet another lesson learned.

Now all was ready and the lid was sealed. The airlock was filled with a bit of water and the entire fermenter covered in a black plastic bag. Now it is time to wait for the happy bubbling to begin - again :o)