The Worlds Biggest Hopped Mead Experiment (40 Different Hops)
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- Опубликовано: 9 фев 2025
- Today we're doing the world's largest hopped mead experiment! I got 40 different hops and put them into 40 different meads! This experiment was huge and took a lot of effort but was really fun. Every hop is so different and gives out some different flavor profiles. Once I had made all 40 meads, I had a bunch of different people taste test them and score them out of 50. I then took that data and had some friends (Larry and Jage) help me aggregate the data so we can see what some of the preferred hops are.
You can find all the data links here:
Simplified Data: docs.google.co...
In Depth Chart: fourty-hops-ch...
Tasting Scores: docs.google.co...
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0:00 Introduction
0:45 The Test
3:08 Boiling & Making the Meads
6:43 Dry Hopping the Meads
7:50 Bottle Conditioning the Meads
10:00 Collecting Data
12:30 Looking at the Scores
15:45 My Thoughts
19:10 Hop Information
As promised, this video has made $48 from views and $55 from two very generous people! (Updated as of 2/8/25)
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Thank you for the donation!!
You are so incredibly helpful. The hops test is super helpful!
Holy cow!! Thank you so much!!!
Really appreciate your content and the amount of time and money you put into them! Your videos got me into the whole mead making realm, thanks so much for that!
That's awesome! Thank you so much for the kind words and the donation! It means a lot to me!
I'm not a liker of hops but I still watched and appreciated the video. Moreover, as a beginner in mead making I really love your ingredient/process tests. I find them helpful and informative, as well as entertaining. Thanks for sharing all your knowledge and experience.
Thanks for the kind words!
Have you ever used Brazilian pepper Honey for mead making?
man i was browsing hops just yesterday for attempting my first hopped mead. the timing.
Awesome video. I really appreciate the time and effort you put into this video. I am a beer and mead brewer and grow hops at my house and 4 other friends house and decided to make another hopped mead. My first one was a low ABV carbonated version but this time I chose a higher ABV. I made a traditional aged it for 3 months and split the batch. I dry hopped 2 oz of pelleted hops per gallon with citra,huell melon,ekuanot. I also added 2 oz of home grown nugget dried whole cone hops per gallon. I tested daily and on day 2 I was happy. Added both to a keg and carbonated it. 13% carbonated hopped mead. Absolutely delicious. Some of the hops I used made your top 10! Great job and keep up the good work. I really enjoy your channel.
Is there a way to contact you? I am a bee keeper in Florida and have Black mangrove and Basilian Pepper tree honey. I would like to get some to you and in exchange you could show me a great mead recipe for both
Hey! My email is probably the easiest way: ManMadeMeadery@gmail.com
so much work that i dont need to do thanks to this video) Your channel is awesome, mate)
A pretty huge caveat that I think you would have to address with this experiment is the huge variance in headspace as well as the variance in sealing methods/opening size in your individual meads. Hops, specifically hop oils carrying specific flavour compounds, are incredibly sensitive to dissolved oxygen in your brews. I know you tried to address this by being careful, but oxygen can have a huge impact on how flavours present and whether or not they present at all even in pretty tiny amounts.
Dry hopping and transferring without any kind of CO2 purge will have exposed the meads to significant, varying amounts of oxygen.
40 non bitter dry hopped meads next
40 non bitter dry hopped dv10 meads
Was glad to this video been on my to do list some hoped mead
OMG! The question of costs was going through my mind from the minute I saw the title. I have a ton of hops, but I also brew a lot of beer and usually buy mine in quantity for a lot less than the local 1 oz prices. Great job, and I could easily see Motueka Hops doing really well. If you personally liked Motueka, I would give Wai-iti and Pacific Jade a try as they are both very nice with different profiles.
Awesome vid as always. Love these large scale experiments. Your hard work definitely shows!!!
Thanks so much! I love these big experiments too!
Thank you for taking the time and energy to do experiments like this. I have the yeast experiment bookmarked, this one too.
Thanks for an the effort that would have gone into this! Love it!
Thanks for watching!
This is super inspiring! I plan on doing a carbonated Yuzu pear hydromel, and I think adding some fruity/floral hops might kick it up to the next level!
I have dried hopped my meads in secondary but never in primary, interesting. so many great hops out there to compliment your meads. I have really liked the ones I have done.
Excellent experiment.
If you do it again; a blind comparison where the names are hidden would be interesting to see if there is any name recognition bias at work.
Really interesting video - especially as I have been dry hopping my meads over the last few months. Here's a few thoughts. Seasoned Brewers - those who make beer, generally have favorite hops, so it is, in my opinion, quite likely that those who offered their opinions about the "best" hops were choosing to select their favored varieties given that beer brewers and drinkers may not be overly familiar with mead. In other words, given the outcomes, the most popular hops for brewers appeared to score higher... Not really surprising.
The other thing is that ONE reason that hops are used in beer making is that the residual sugars in brewing make for a sickeningly sweet ale (or lager). Brewers (and beer drinkers) need to balance the sweetness of their brews with the bitterness from hops (or gruit herbs). When we make a mead, the yeast will (or should) ferment the honey brut dry. That suggests that there is no inherent need to add a bittering component to our meads. Indeed, even when and if we back sweeten, we choose to sweeten to levels we enjoy - whereas a beer is likely to have 15 points of sweetness even when the ABV is about 4 -6%. In short, it is not self-evident that as makers of mead we need to make use of the bittering elements of hops as much as the floral, the woodsy, the citrusy, the tropical fruit flavors etc of hops. For mead makers, I would argue, that we can use hops to add complexity to the honey flavors - especially when and if we are making short (low ABV) mead. And certainly, if one chooses to allow a mead to finish with a gravity of 1.015 or higher, balancing that sweetness with bitterness from hops rather than adding malic, or citric or tartaric acid might be great new tack..
Last point: I am not sure that we should be thinking about "the best" hops to use. There is no best. What there is are the best hops for the flavor profiles we want in our mead. Each variety of hop will add a different note to the overall flavor and aroma content of our mead.
Very informative comment. Thank you
Nice job. I have been making a tinctures and just adding hop tincture until I get the level I like. I love mosaic hops.
Hello hello,
I would like to ask some recommendations, I started to make mead at home few days ago. The thing is, I live in Myanmar, in a very hot environment (around 25C at night).
I can't find the proper tools to get it done right, so I am using an open jar with some cloth above it to let the gas of the fermentation escape and avoid ants to come in, then do cold crash as I can't find the necessary chemicals here, ten filter it through a cloth to bottle it again.
Two days of fermentation make it taste like an hydromel, I would like to go above but the yeast I am using (bread yeast...) gives a very odd flavor after 4 days so I prefer to stop before.
Do you have any advice to make my mead taste better? I am already quite happy with the result, but I can take any advice to impress my friends!
If you can get your hands on a Kviek strain, that would be ideal for your situation. Depending on which one you find, it will impart differing characteristics. At the temperature you mention. But WELL worth the attempt.
Awesome! I appreciate that you did this. I was guessing Amarillo would be near the top. I’ve only done one hopped mead so far and it was OB honey with a Centennial dry hop. I loved it. I’ll try Amarillo and OB honey next.
Amarillo is a great choice! It’s a popular hop for a reason.
Really Appreciate Your Video , Thanks ! 🐯🤠
Great resource for the community!
10/10.
Have you tried making mead with different honeys? I’m a beekeeper and we get orange blossom Galberry, black mangrove and Brazilian pepper and each is quite different in flavor. how much will the honey flavor affect your final product?
Would you recommend your canning machine? I've looked into these before but have thus far stuck with bottles.
I love mine! I do a ton of canning. It's really great if you can afford to get into it
Nice ! I bought Citra recently to try it out in a semi sweet.
that should be nice! I used Citra in simple syrup for some gin cocktails and it was delicious
When is mead stampede starting to send an entry in as I live in the uk could take a while in the post have some ageing for it
Man, you must have 1 awesome wife! What a study!
She's pretty awesome!
Cool video