Mead Plans

A project in the making, I plan, with the help of some friends, to prepare a batch of mead. If you have never heard of mead, it is basically an alcoholic beverage created by the fermentation of honey, which closely resembles wine. I have never tried mead before, so I have no idea how our batch will turn out compared to professional stuff.



The plan is to use an old recipe (ancient, actually). Joe's Ancient Orange Mead. The recipe calls for some honey, an orange, some spices, and bread yeast. Yes, BREAD yeast. I bet a lot of homebrewers saw that and doubted its prestige. At least for me, I have a nice stock of bread yeast in addition to the wine yeast I have.

The future fermentation vessel

What is stopping me from starting my batch?

First off, my carboy is not available to use. I should use the term carboy loosely here, because I'm really waiting for my housemates to finish off their 4 Liter jug of sangria so I can wash it out and use it.

Secondly, I'll need to buy some honey. My local farmers market has a few vendors that sell it. The one on Saturday sells a 5 lb jug for $25, and the vendor on Wednesday has a 3 lb jug for $15. Both sell for $5/lb, but would I really need 1.5 extra pounds of honey? I guess it wouldn't hurt to have some left over for if I wanted to do a second batch.

Lastly, I will also need to acquire the spices: the cinnamon stick and the clove. I have a beef against cinnamon sticks; the last time I checked at the store, a jar of maybe like 3 sticks is around $7! This is adding up to be somewhere around $30 for 1 gallon worth of mead. Once I get everything though, all that is left to do is mix it up and wait for 2 months. I shall update (with pictures hopefully!) once I have started fermentation.

Nearly 2.5 years later....