I still want to make a mead but never get around to it. I just heard the hangovers from them are from satan himself.
Only if you stuff it up, or do something wrong. I make a GREAT mead with absolutely no hangovers more than regular booze. Due to the cost as well, you tend to not drink litres of it in a single session. I got a few simple rules with mead:
1. Keep it under 10% ABV. This gives you enough honey in solution to give it flavour, but doesn't ruin the profile with alcohol so that it will require a lot of aging. Yes, my fav recipe pushed this to 11% ABV, but I've got it tried and tested and trusted.
2. Feed your yeast. Honey contains very little to no nutrients for your yeast. Not feeding them will produce a mead that'll want a lot of time to come together.
3. Use a proper yeast. Yes, I recommend people using baking yeast and whatnot. This is lockdown brewing. When I do a proper batch, I use Lalvin 71B-1177 as my yeast. Nice and big colony. I know the yeast and I know what it likes and dislikes. This helps a lot.
4. Temperature control. With beers and other drinks, you usually have a lot of flavour and character to hide small flaws. Mead doesn't have that. Mead, the way I make it, is a relatively delicate drink. Like white wine. As such, if you let your yeast heat up/cool down to wildly, you're going to taste it, meaning you'll have to age it to get it more drinkable. I stick mine to 20°C and not a degree higher (ferm chamber set to 19.5°C to allow for the upward fluctuation.
5. Use proper honey. Cheap honey or imported honey is almost always cut with a regular cane sugar syrup. Same flavour when it's sweet, but horrible when fermented. Be careful. Support your local farmers and rather pay R120 per kg of honey than buy supermarket or imported crap for half the price, because your end product will show it.
Sign up with Google
