Mead at home – simple recipes for hop honey

Contents

Choosing the right honey from the right bees
Homemade mead recipes

Mead is a drink, by all standards, young. It appeared, presumably, in the XNUMXth century, and gained popularity at the beginning of the XNUMXth century, when the Bolsheviks came to power. Do not confuse mead with honey – these are two completely different drinks. Honey has been prepared since time immemorial, back in Russia, but it was troublesome and long to prepare it, so the drink quickly lost fans. During the time of Peter the Great’s reforms, old Russian drinks received a second life. Honey was no exception, but the technology was changed, bringing it as close as possible to the preparation of wines that were popular at that time. So the modern analogue of mead can be safely called honey wine or even beer.

There is a whole lot of mead recipes and their own classification. So, mead can be set (prepared without boiling) and boiled or hearty (which has been sterilized by boiling). There is also a drink of natural strength, and there is a fortified one (with the addition of ethyl alcohol). The list can be long. The drink was put on the conveyor quite quickly: in Soviet times, and even now, mead was prepared on an industrial scale and sold like beer. The most famous Suzdal – it is still the hallmark of Veliky Novgorod and is produced in a large assortment.

We decided to “process” the whole theme of homemade mead and offer several recipes for its preparation. You will learn how to make mead at home without boiling and with sterilization, with and without yeast, with the addition of hops and various spices. Preparing a drink is quite simple, no more difficult than homemade wine, it is affordable and very, very tasty. And we will start, perhaps, with the choice of honey as the main ingredients, because its taste and aroma will ultimately affect the taste and aroma of the future drink.

Choosing the right honey from the right bees

It just so happened that old, candied honey is traditionally put in mead. It is better to take the most fragrant, linden or buckwheat. It is important that the honey be healthy, without signs of disease, but even in such cases it can be well sterilized, which is often done. Another thing is if the product you are going to buy.

In order not to run into counterfeit and low-quality raw materials, go through this list:

Good honey should not foam – this indicates its low quality and, more often, illness. It foams when it ferments, but good honey cannot ferment on its own – it is bactericidal. The bactericidal properties of honey are lost when it is diluted with water and heated, which we will do in the process of making mead.
Candied honey is good. Some believe that cloudy and thickened (candied) honey is considered old and unfit for consumption. On the contrary, candied honey is a sign of quality. It is liquid only in summer and early autumn, and by October 20, good honey is sugared (the exception is a white acacia product, which can stand in a liquid state until spring, as well as heather – this one does not crystallize at all, but turns into a jelly mass.)
Accordingly, if they try to sell you liquid honey (not acacia) in winter or spring, then they want to sell you a fake.
Real honey is very fragrant. The falsified product has no smell, as it is often prepared with the addition of regular sugar, which completely kills all odors.

Homemade mead recipes

Let’s start with the most common and time-tested recipe – hearty mead, that is, boiled, that is, sterilized. Perhaps this is the only recipe (and similar ones in technology) that we can vouch for. A lot of spears were “broken” about the dangers of heated honey, and we will touch on this issue a little, as we touched on the issue of hydrocyanic acid in an article with recipes for cherry tincture.

When honey is heated above +40 °C, a dangerous toxin hydroxymethylfurfural (OMF) begins to form in it, which eventually accumulates in the liver and has carcinogenic properties. When heated above +60 °C, the OMF concentration becomes critical. However, we did not find data on the level of OMP concentration in a honey-water solution after boiling it for 1-2 hours. Most moonshiners and meaders tend to think that boiled mead is completely safe. They have also been proving this in practice for many years, consuming this wonderful drink in large quantities without any harmful consequences for their body.

But you have the right to take care of your health and refuse to heat honey, especially since you can completely do without it, but the fermentation process will be unpredictable and less long. It is also worth mentioning that boiling is necessary not only in order to completely dissolve honey in water, but also to endow the life of yeast bacteria, which will make an alcoholic drink out of satiety (honey dissolved in water).

Yeast reproduces very poorly in a honey environment, therefore, when full yeast is infected, you need to add as much as is needed to completely ferment the wort, without taking into account the possible growth of a yeast cell colony. Based on books on brewing, 1 million cells should be added at once per 60 ml of honey wort. The instructions usually contain information about the number of active cells in 1 gram of yeast.

Recipe for spicy mead, boiled

This recipe is taken from Professor Tseselsky’s book “Honey Brewing or the Art of Making Drinks from Honey and Fruit”, 1903 edition.

1,2 kg of good honey;
3,6 L of water;
6 g of hop cones (can be taken at the pharmacy);
0,5 tsp nutmeg (or ½ walnut);
0,5 tsp cinnamon (ground);
6 peas of sweet pepper;
4 bud of carnation;
Xnumx ginger root;
a handful of any zest (lemon, orange, tangerine)
1 tsp wine, beer or baker’s yeast.

The amount of spices can be reduced or increased based on personal preference. You can also not use them, limiting yourself to hops.

Step 1. Honey must be diluted in warm water in a container of the required volume and boiled over low heat, constantly removing foam (wax and other substances). Boil in different ways, from an hour to three. While satiated is being cooked, it is categorically not recommended to move away from it – it quickly boils away and can ignite. Before starting honey brewing, you need to measure the volume of satiety and, after boiling, replenish the evaporated water with the same amount.

Step 2. After adding water, you need to add spices and hops. Everything needs to be wrapped in a canvas bag or in several layers of gauze, add something heavy (a weight is needed so that the spices sink and boil normally), for example, a pebble or a spoon, tie it up and throw it into a boiled full. Spices cook for 30-40 minutes.

Step 3. The resulting spicy wort must be cooled to 30 degrees and yeast is added (it is important to cool it, yeast will die at high temperatures). It is better to make a sourdough: add yeast to a small amount of satiation and let it activate (the satiation will begin to foam). Then we pour the starter into the wort, we already pour it into the fermentation tank and under the water seal at a temperature of 25-30 degrees. It should ferment for about 2-3 weeks, it all depends on the yeast cultures.

It is better to use wine or brewer’s yeast. Ordinary bakery, such as “Saf Levure”, give the drink a “mash” taste and smell.

Step 4. After rapid fermentation, honey wine must be drained from the sediment into a clean container, a water seal should be installed and sent to be clarified and fermented in a cool place. It is important not to miss the end of fermentation and drain it from the sediment in time, otherwise the drink will turn out bitter. After the homemade mead has cleared, it will need to be drained again from the sediment, sweetened if necessary and bottled. Then send for exposure. You can drink after a week or two, but it is better to wait – the taste is revealed over time.

Well clarified mead

The result is a very tasty honey drink with a strength of up to 20%. It is easy to drink, it knocks you off your feet with a bang. If the drink turned out to be too dry (without sugar), it is better to sweeten it with fructose. Also, mead can be carbonized – add 1,5-2 tablespoons of fructose and a little yeast to each bottle, and then let it stand in a dark place for 3-4 weeks. You get something like champagne.

Mead “Monastyrskaya”

3 L of water;
1 kg of honey;
2 tsp hops;
1 tsp yeast;
1 cup black tea (brewed).

Cook according to the technology from the first recipe. Boil satu for 2-3 hours, with hops, which must be wrapped in a bag with a load, boil for another 1 hour. Add water as it boils. After the mead has fermented, it must be filtered and 1 cup of strongly brewed black tea should be added. Filter well and bottle. Let stand for at least a month before tasting.

Pouring homemade mead into beer bottles before aging

Medovukha set, without boiling and yeast

Placed mead without boiling and yeast (here we mean wild yeast) is prepared much longer, up to 3-4 months, and the drink is not so strong. As a fermentation catalyst, you can use raisins, raspberries, cherries, blueberries (and other berries with fermentation potential), and we can advise beekeepers to bee bread.

Cherry is the easiest to cook on, and cherry mead deserves all the praise. For its preparation you need:

4 kg of cherry berries;
2 kg of honey;
1 L of water.

Do not wash cherries! (wild yeast lives on it), sort out, pit. Place it in a fermentation container. Dissolve honey in slightly warmed water (30-35 degrees is enough) and pour cherry over it. Cover the container with gauze and wait 2-3 days until the must ferments. After activating the fermentation, you need to install a water seal on the container and let the mead ferment – with wild yeast, rapid fermentation in a honey environment lasts from 7 to 10 days. Then you need to remove the drink from the sediment, filter and bottle. Silent fermentation will last about 2-3 months, but it is better to wait 4 and then try. You will get a light, slightly sour refreshing drink.

Mead without boiling on raisins is prepared according to a similar technology, but slightly different proportions are used. For 1 liter of water, you need to take 40-50 g of honey and 50 g of unwashed raisins. Honey needs to be diluted in water and raisins are added to it, after which you need to wait for the activation of fermentation. Then you need to filter the wort several times and under a water seal, and in this case you can do without it – just leave the bottled drink to ferment. It turns out a drink like honey kvass with a strength of 1-3%, something similar to ginger ale. On raisins, mead should be allowed to stand for at least 2-4 months, no less. The case when prepared and forgot.

Of course, the mead without yeast and boiling is healthier and more authentic. However, many mistakenly believe that only this drink can rightfully be called mead, and boiled mead is a honey drink “without history”. If you dig deeper, then it is the first recipe that is classic, exactly the way it was prepared in Bolshevik Russia and long before it. Absorb information in doses and do not blindly believe everyone, including us. Personal experience is always better 😉