Nice recipe and I love your labels! One suggestion is if you have your tea hot in a big pot, mix in the honey then as it will be a bit easier to disolve. The degasser you have on the drill makes that part easier though :)
I read somewhere that using heat to dissolve honey can cause you to lose flavor from cooking off the "aromatics." I have no idea if this is true, and I guess I should actually test that theory at some point... Thanks for the suggestion; I should do a side-by-side test batch this year to see if heat actually makes a difference.
Use D47 yeast instead! I only used ec1118 because I was in a rush to have it done by Christmas and I didn't have time to wait. D47 would be a slower ferment, but will give it a much better flavor if you have the time to let it sit.
@@lordhavemaerzke great! Thanks Ben. I'll report back here this time next year :) I'm actually going to get nice ingredients for once. Not the cheap Aldi honey (which still makes lovely mead IMO) How did yours turn out?
@@thewrastler it was good, but I'll be making some tweaks next time. The tea I used (tiesta brand "fireberry") came through VERY strong, and kind of buried the other spices. It was a great mead that was super drinkable and tasted good, but it ended up smelling and tasting like a raspberry/elderberry Mead, rather than what I was going for, which was a cinnamon-clove-ginger-nutmeg Mead with notes of fruit. In short, it was a delicious and fruity Mead that tasted less like Christmas than intended.
Given the crazy amount of flavor I got from the tea, I would probably scale back the amount of tea by 50% or more and see what that does. I also might consider skipping the tea at the beginning and just floating some dry tea leaves in during the secondary fermentation...
It definitely would with enough sugar! The corn sugar restarts fermentation in the bottle, so a small amount of sugar gives it a little carbonation; too much sugar creates a bottle bomb. I was very careful to measure the exact amount of sugar I needed for my batch. I generally use about 1 oz corn sugar by weight per 1 liquid gallon of mead. Since I was down to about 5.75 gallons by the time of bottling, I used 5.75 oz sugar.
You can definitely use honey! I like to use sugar since its weight and sugar content is consistent. Honey can be more or less "sugary" depending on the harvest for that year, so using sugar makes it easier to calculate a stable level of carbonation.
Nice recipe and I love your labels! One suggestion is if you have your tea hot in a big pot, mix in the honey then as it will be a bit easier to disolve. The degasser you have on the drill makes that part easier though :)
I read somewhere that using heat to dissolve honey can cause you to lose flavor from cooking off the "aromatics." I have no idea if this is true, and I guess I should actually test that theory at some point... Thanks for the suggestion; I should do a side-by-side test batch this year to see if heat actually makes a difference.
@@lordhavemaerzke try to keep the honey temp to 100-110F max and it shouldn't be a problem.
This must be delicious
I'm going to make this recipe between Christmas and New year 2021, and then drink it with Christmas dinner 2022
Use D47 yeast instead! I only used ec1118 because I was in a rush to have it done by Christmas and I didn't have time to wait. D47 would be a slower ferment, but will give it a much better flavor if you have the time to let it sit.
@@lordhavemaerzke great! Thanks Ben.
I'll report back here this time next year :)
I'm actually going to get nice ingredients for once. Not the cheap Aldi honey (which still makes lovely mead IMO)
How did yours turn out?
@@thewrastler it was good, but I'll be making some tweaks next time. The tea I used (tiesta brand "fireberry") came through VERY strong, and kind of buried the other spices. It was a great mead that was super drinkable and tasted good, but it ended up smelling and tasting like a raspberry/elderberry Mead, rather than what I was going for, which was a cinnamon-clove-ginger-nutmeg Mead with notes of fruit.
In short, it was a delicious and fruity Mead that tasted less like Christmas than intended.
Given the crazy amount of flavor I got from the tea, I would probably scale back the amount of tea by 50% or more and see what that does. I also might consider skipping the tea at the beginning and just floating some dry tea leaves in during the secondary fermentation...
@@lordhavemaerzke thanks Ben, great advice
Wouldn't the last step create a bottle bomb ?
It definitely would with enough sugar! The corn sugar restarts fermentation in the bottle, so a small amount of sugar gives it a little carbonation; too much sugar creates a bottle bomb. I was very careful to measure the exact amount of sugar I needed for my batch. I generally use about 1 oz corn sugar by weight per 1 liquid gallon of mead. Since I was down to about 5.75 gallons by the time of bottling, I used 5.75 oz sugar.
I assume the sugar was for carbonation. My question is why sugar and not more honey?
You can definitely use honey! I like to use sugar since its weight and sugar content is consistent. Honey can be more or less "sugary" depending on the harvest for that year, so using sugar makes it easier to calculate a stable level of carbonation.