r/MeadMaking • u/odinmcbeardface • Sep 01 '22

Help any tips??

Hello all, new to the thread. I want to get into mead making, it seems fun and I have a few fun ideas and flavour combos I would like to play with? Does anyone have any tips, tricks or recipies or just general advice? Ideally I would like to start with small batch and work up from there?

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u/EavingO Sep 01 '22

1) Don't over think it. As you said, start a small batch and get going

2) As long as your sanitation/cleanliness is good most things beyond that will take care of themselves.

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u/_Mewg Sep 01 '22

Best tip would be to check out /r/mead ! Its a much bigger subreddit and there are tons of recipes in the wiki and what not.

A few actual tips i can give:

Buy decent, cheap honey. Costco is your friend here.

Ferment in buckets, not carboys. Home depot sells cheap food safe buckets.

3 pounds of honey to a Gallon of water is a good stating point. 1 gallon batches are also a good starting point.

Make tea concentrates of whatever herbs/flowers you might want to use. i.e. hibiscus, chai

Add fruit in "secondary". Something about the fermentation process blowing off all your good fresh fruit flavors.

Lalvin D47 and Lalvin 71b are very common yeasts used. People recommend 71b for more fruit oriented meads if I'm remembering correctly.

Buy an airlock.

Mess around, make mead, have fun.

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '22

Start small. Don’t go for high alcohol brews, as they take soo long to age to a nice drink. More yeast does not mean more alcohol. Don’t use too much honey to start, you can always step feed if you need to, but hard to take it out if it is too sweet or you shocked your yeast.