Jeff and Chris wander out into the yard and back to the olden days of brewing to examine a way to make beer using herbs and spices in place of hops, talking through some of the historical and some of the modern herbs being used, and how to incorporate these herbs into a gruit beer, a gruit braggot or just a metheglyn.
The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopping and supply needs! Thank you Bacchus & Barleycorn!
Jeff and Chris continue making their lists. Jeff shares a rather involved recipe for a Christmas braggot with some fun ingredients (recipe below!) and then the guys spend a long while plotting out several ideas for flavor combinations that might just hit the spot for a Christmas seasonal brew.
The Mead House Sugar Plum Fairy
8# Maris Otter (OR 5# Golden Light DME)
1# Carafa III
.5# Chocolate Malt
.5# Special Roast
.5# Crystal 80L
.5# CaraPils
.5# Honey Malt
1oz Northern Brewer 60min
.5oz Fuggles 15min
Bocheted or melters honey to 1.095
1 package Omega Scottish Ale yeast
4 additions of Fermaid K at 5.5g each
1# Dried Figs, chopped
1# Dried Dates, chopped
1# Hazelnuts, roasted, chopped
Remove yeast package from fridge and allow to reach room temp.
Mash grains at 156 for 60 minutes. Sparge and boil, adding hops according to the schedule. Measure gravity, expecting 1.065 when adjusted for temp. Cool wort to 70 degrees F. Add honey and reach target gravity of 1.095, where additional honey may be used to compensate for lack of efficiency.
Add yeast and cover with airlock
Follow standard fermentation protocols, degas 1-2x daily for the first week and add nutrient additions at 24hrs, 48 hrs, 72hrs, and 1/3 sugar break (1.063)
Rack to secondary and add chopped figs and dates in a mesh bag. Pull when desired flavor is achieved, adding more if needed.
Chop hazelnuts roughly and roast until desired color and flavor is achieved. While still hot from the oven, pour into a brown paper bag and shake vigorously to remove the bulk of the oils. Either tincture the resulting nuts on grain alcohol, or add in a mesh bag and introduce until desired flavor is achieved.
Fine and filter as desired. Add to keg and force carbonate to 2 vol CO2.
The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopping and supply needs! Thank you Bacchus & Barleycorn!
What do you do with a drunken meadmaker? To complement the previous Mead House 8% and Mead House 12% recipes, this week Jeff presents the highest base recipe yet, a 16%. He walks Chris through the process and ingredients, along with subtle changes from previous base recipes, then Jeff and Chris spend a little time chatting about what they’d use a higher ABV mead for, when the higher ABV can be a benefit and when it can be a drawback.
The Mead House 16%
~1 gal water
Honey to 1.125
Fermaid K in 4 doses of 2.33g each
2g K1-V1116
2.5 g Go-Ferm
Mix Go-Ferm and Dry Yeast together in 50ml (or approx ½ cup) warm water and let sit.
Add honey and water and mix thoroughly, testing gravity and adding more honey until target gravity is reached.
Add yeast slurry, stirring to incorporate and place under airlock.
24 hours after airlock activity has been detected, begin degassing, add first nutrient addition.
Degas 1-2x daily, adding nutrient additions at 48hrs, 72hrs, and at the 1/3 sugar break (1.083)
Follow standard procedure for fermentation, rack to secondary at appropriate time, allow to ferment as normal.
After secondary, stabilize and backsweeten to desired level of sweetness, then fine and filter as desired before bottling.
The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopping and supply needs! Thank you Bacchus & Barleycorn!
Chris and Jeff spend a little time going down the rabbit hole of fruits that are exotic, hard to find, or otherwise rarely seen in meads, as well as talking about how to handle working with an unfamiliar fruit. Various ways to process fruits for making a mead also quickly become a topic of discussion.
The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopping and supply needs! Thank you Bacchus & Barleycorn!
Jeff and Chris spend a little time chatting about meads for the spooky season. Both share a personal recipe that fits the holiday fun (see below!) and then the guys riff on ideas like candy meads, and much like their thoughts on meads made from soda versus meads inspired by soda, they also give some thought to meads based on candy varieties.
Mix Go-Ferm and Dry Yeast together in 50ml (or approx ½ cup) warm water and let sit.
Add water and the bulk of honey to a bucket, mix well. Add blackberries in a mesh bag, stirring to incorporate as much juice as possible. Measure gravity and add honey slowly, stirring often until target gravity is reached.
Add yeast slurry, Opti-Red & pectic enzyme, stirring to incorporate and place under airlock.
24 hours after airlock activity has been detected, begin degassing, add first nutrient addition and Rouge Berry.
Degas 1-2x daily, adding nutrient additions at 48hrs, 72hrs, and at the 1/3 sugar break (1.063)
Follow standard procedure for fermentation, rack to secondary at appropriate time, allow to ferment as normal.
After secondary, stabilize and backsweeten to desired level of sweetness, recommending slightly sweeter than your usual preference in this instance.
Wearing gloves, process your pepper to remove seeds, veins and stem. Using a needle, thread the pepper with a length of unwaxed dental floss and add to the mead. Contact time for the pepper may be very short, in as little as an hour or two for desired heat. Intention is to create a sweet mead with just a lingering bit of capsaicin burn in the mid to late palate.
Fine and filter as desired and bottle.
The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopping and supply needs! Thank you Bacchus & Barleycorn!
Chris and Jeff spend some time talking about strategies for making time for making mead and getting mead made in an efficient manner, then they also take time to cover some equipment that can be a major time saver for your mead making processes.
The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopping and supply needs! Thank you Bacchus & Barleycorn!
Chris and Jeff take some time to brainstorm on fall flavors and what makes a good fall mead now that Kansas City weather has taken a decidedly more pleasant turn in recent weeks. The guys share some past experiments, successes and lessons learned along with throwing out a handful of new flavor ideas and directions for future experiments. They also taste some results from Chris’ fat washing experiments using peanut butter with grain alcohol and coconut with rum, to some very pleasant results.
The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopping and supply needs! Thank you Bacchus & Barleycorn!
Chris shares some thoughts and recipe ideas regarding making meads inspired by popular sodas like Mountain Dew and Dr Pepper. The guys discuss their thoughts on making a mead that tastes like a soda without the high degree of processed ingredients that come with commercially available sodas.
Chris’ Mountain Dew Base (for 1 gallon of mead)
12 Oranges
8 Lemons
8 Limes
2 cups sugar (or honey?)
Zest fruit, careful to avoid pith.
Combine with sugar, making sure zest is completely coated.
Allow to rest at least a few hours, but a day or more is better to extract oils from the zest.
Juice the fruit. Freeze or refrigerate until needed.
Once oils are extracted, strain out the peels and set aside liquified sugar.
Rinse zest with the saved juice to capture as much sugar as possible.
Transfer citrus sugar solution to fermenter
Add water and honey to SG of 1.060 to 1.065
Add yeast
Follow standard fermentation procedure vis a vis nutrients, degassing, racking and fining, etc.
Dr Pepper Mead inspiration (x4 for one gallon): https://www.tiktok.com/@sokoskitchen/video/7509658070625176863
The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopping and supply needs! Thank you Bacchus & Barleycorn!
Jeff gives Chris a rundown on a handful of tools and processes to go beyond single use yeast packs at your local homebrew store. From freezing for long term storage, reuse, collecting, and even capturing wild yeast, the guys cover a bunch of techniques for the rare instance when it makes sense to take that effort into your own hands.
The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopping and supply needs! Thank you Bacchus & Barleycorn!
Chris and Jeff take some time to walk through their own process for planning and developing a recipe including ingredients, thought process and planning – and of course a few anecdotes and tangents along the way.
The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopping and supply needs! Thank you Bacchus & Barleycorn!
