Building Unity Farm - Making Mead and Cyser

The entire family visited Unity Farm for the holidays.  After all the gift giving, merry making, and
yuletide time by the fire was over, what should a family do at a farm with apples, honey, fermentation equipment (there's a basic chemistry lab in the cider house), spring water, and microbiology know-how?   Make mead of course!

Mead was the earliest fermented beverage created by man - evidence of honey and fermentation products begins about 9000 BC.   Mead figures prominently in Hindu writings, the work of Aristotle, and the Old English poem Beowulf.  

There's a new vocabulary to learn when deciding how to make Mead.

"Show" Mead - a higher alcohol, full flavored mead made with more honey and less water
"Small" Mead - a lower alcohol, lightly flavored mead made with more water and less honey (Queen Elizabeth the First enjoyed a very dilute mead)
Melomel - mead with added fruit or fruit juice
Pyment - a melomel made with grapes and often herbs.   You could call it a honey-fortified wine
Cyser - a melomel made with apples.   You could call it a honey-fortified hard cider
Zythos or Braggot - a mead fortified with malt.   You could call it a honey-fortified beer
Morath - a melomel made with mulberries
Metheglin - a mead made with herbs or spices.   The name means "Mead of the Glen".   Some believe it is the root of the term "medicine"
Rhodomel - a metheglin made with roses

At Unity Farm, we tend to prefer our beverages fermented dry.  We often create both sparkling and still versions of our beverages, but I only make still mead after a bad experience with exploding bottles as a mead maker in my 20's.   Here's the approach we used during the holidays:

Unity Farm Mead
 3 quarts water from our 600 foot deep well
 3.5 cups Unity Farm Orchard Honey (wildflowers and clover)
 1 teaspoon acid blend (citric/malic/tartaric acids)
 5 grams Redstar Pasteur Champagne yeast
 6.25 grams Go-Ferm yeast nutrient in 125cc's of 110F water
 10 grams of Fermaid-K

Heat the water to 160F, add the honey and acid blend.   Simmer for 10 minutes and do not boil.   Skim any foam from the top.   Pour into a 2 gallon sterilized fermenter (we use food grade buckets with a drilled lid and airlock, pictured above).    Take a ph or specific gravity measure if you wish.   Our 12/29/13 batch had a specific gravity of 1.090 and a ph of 3.43, giving us a potential alcohol level of 12%

Add 6.25 grams of yeast nutrient to 125cc's of 110F water.    At 104F add the yeast and wait 15 minutes.   Cool 100cc's of the honey/water solution to 104F and add it to the yeast solution.   Wait 15 minutes.   The resulting yeast solution will be frothy with new yeast growth.

When the honey/water solution in the fermenter is 104F add the yeast solution.    Place in a room with a constant temperature in the low 60's for slower, more flavorful fermentation.

After 1 day, add 5 grams of Fermaid-K

After 1 week, add 5 grams of Fermaid-K

After 2 weeks, rack the solution with a racking cane into a sterilized gallon jug and seal it with an airlock.  Leave very little air space  in the jug (1/4").  Top up with water if necessary.  After 2 months, sterilize the mead with 50 parts per million of potassium metabisulfite, then bottle and age for 6 months before drinking.

Unity Farm Cyser
 1 quart water
 2 cups Unity Farm Meadow Honey (wild asters and japanese knotweed)
 1 teaspoon acid blend (citric/malic/tartaric)
 1 cup black tea (steeped 3 minutes at 200F)
 2 quarts Unity Farm unfiltered Apple Cider (made from 11 types of apples)
 1/2 teaspoon pectic enzyme
 5 grams Redstar Pasteur Champagne yeast
 6.25 grams Go-Ferm yeast nutrient in 125cc's of 110F water

Heat the water to 160F, add the honey, acid blend and tea.   Simmer for 10 minutes and do not boil.   Skim any foam from the top.   Pour into a 2 gallon sterilized fermenter.    When the mixture has cooled to 110F, add the cider and pectic enzyme.

Take a ph or specific gravity measure if you wish.   Our 12/29/13 batch had a specific gravity of 1.085 and a ph of 3.56, giving us a potential alcohol level of 11.3%

Add 6.25 grams of yeast nutrient to 125cc's of 110F water.    At 104F add the yeast and wait 15 minutes.   Add 100cc's of the honey/cider/water solution to the yeast solution.   Wait 15 minutes.   The resulting yeast solution will be frothy with new yeast growth.

Add the yeast solution to the fermenter.    Place in a room with a constant temperature in the low 60's for slower, more flavorful fermentation.

After 1 day, add 5 grams of Fermaid-K

After 1 week, add 5 grams of Fermaid-K

After 2 weeks, rack the solution with a racking cane into a sterilized gallon jug and seal it with an airlock.  Leave very little air space  in the jug (1/4").  Top up with water if necessary.  After 2 months, sterilize the mead with 50 parts per million of potassium metabisulfite, then bottle and age for 6 months before drinking.

Although we've not enjoyed the flavor of commercial melomels, we will create our own blueberry, raspberry, and elderberry melomels this summer when the berries are ready.

Mead is an acquired taste and you will want to experiment with different styles to find the right mead for you.   Hence I recommend 1 gallon batches that enable you to evaluate each recipe variation but not create an overabundance of something you'd prefer not to drink.

Happy mead making!