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.
Chris’ Apple Pie Cider Mead
- 2gal cider
- honey to 1.100 sg
- 2-3# apples cored and sliced thin, frozen
- 1 pkg 71B
- 6g GoFerm
- 3g Fermaid K
- 1 1/2 tsp pectic enzyme
Secondary
- 4 cinnamon sticks
- 8 whole cloves
- 1 1/2 tsp nutmeg
- 1 1/2 tsp allspice
- 1″ finger of fresh ginger, peeled and sliced thin
Jeff’s Trick & Treat Mead
- 3# Frozen Blackberries (freeze, thaw, squish, freeze, thaw, squish before brewing)
- ~1gal water
- 1g Opti-Red
- ½ tsp pectic enzyme
- .2g Rouge Berry
- Honey to 1.095
- Fermaid K in 4 doses of 2.11g each
- 2g RC212 yeast
- 2.5g Go-Ferm
- ½ of 1 Carolina Reaper pepper
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.
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