I brewed a Sweet Mead this afternoon with the wife's uncle.

Basic Sweet Mead (app OG 1.155)
20# Raw Honey
3 gallons artisan well water
1 T yeast nutrient
2 t acid blend
Cote de blanc yeast

heat to 200 deg to kill nasties
cool to pitching temps
pitch and open ferment 5 days to 1.010ish
rack to secondary for 3-4 months
add finings
rack again 1-2 months
bottle and celler 6 months.

Bob is a wine maker and so I knew he had the long term storage to do this. It is amazing to me to see what they do different and whats the same.

Sounds good! Where'd the recipe come from?

http://maltosefalcons.com/recipes/bruces-traditional-mead

sorry at work, hard to paste link on my phone. It was way higher than the 1.151 the recipe states, finally checked a sample after 2 days of ferment, it is at 1.155 yet. Thinking we may thin it down with a gallon of water and some more nutrient what you think? I wanted sweet, but not undrinkable

Undrinkable is a matter of opinion (says the woman whose family loves southern-style sweet tea)

;-)

Good luck!
I just did my first batch of wine (a couple days in now). It took less time than to make a batch of MrBeer!

I've got enough leftover honey for a 1gal batch. I might look into doing some sort of mead with it.

Another gallon of water might help things, but since the yeast are working, you can always wait and see how far down they get it before adding more water.

It probably won't hurt to add more nutrient, though. Maybe wait 'til you rack it?

This was way sweet, would have ended as syrup. We added 2 gallons of water and more nutrient last night, thinned down it still had a SG of 1.105 so it will be plenty sweet yet, and I still have 5# of honey to backsweeten if needed, but would be shocked if needed

Racked this to a secondary last night. With the water addition we came up at 6 gallons. Going to give it 2-3 months in the secondary, then will rack 2 more times. Am not going to like this waiting BS but I tasted the hydro sample and it needs some more time.

i want to do a mead for a friend's wedding in June. Doesn't have to be drinkable but would it be bottleable if I made it at the ned of Feb?

It depends...you could brew a mead at the end of February that's drinkable by June, but you have to do things a bit differently than is traditional, and also plan to not make an incredibly strong mead.

Start a new thread telling how big of a batch you want to do, and I'll bet we can come up with something that should be drinkable in that time frame.

Short Mead can be drinkable in a month, but it has to be kept refrigerated when it's done lest it become a bottle bomb. One popular recipe is posted at http://www.gotmead.com/index.php?option=...&Itemid=459

The gotmead.com site in general has a lot of info on mead if you want to go researching.

Sorry for jacking this thread. I trotally did not intend that. Thanks. I'll get a recipe together and start a new thread.

I got an update, we went to the uncles house for some beer and conversation, so I checked on the Mead. It has dropped almost perfectly clear without sparkoloid or any other additives. bad part of it is that it was still bubbling at a bubble every 16 seconds. long time till we rack

Another label

*chuckle* Love the graphic.

loving it BK! what did you use to make that cool graphic?

Stole the graphic from the web and used PowerPoint then just save the slide as a jpeg so it is easier to use from there.

*chuckle* Sounds just like what I plan to do when I create labels :-)

Those would be interesting pics for the names of beer your brewing

This gets final racked tomorrow night, so excited to taste it! Now to only wait another year to drink it

going to have to give this time, and possibly change the title. racked this into the first and tasted it, it has gotten way drier than I had hoped, and went down like a shot of vodka. same burn and warmth. this is going to be racked again in 30 days, then sit 30 more days, then if no more lees we will bottle. this will have to age a long time.