We left off last night with our berries sitting in mounds of sugar and turning into something wonderful. Now it’s time to pull them out of the fridge and take a look at how they are doing.
Thats looking good. See all that juice? That’s super food for the yeast, and it give our mead its flavor. The berries are good and soft, but they are still a little big for the yeast to process, so they go into the blender and get reduced to a thick liquid.
All the juice and berries go into the blender, make sure to scrape the bowl clean. Excess sugar that may be in the bottom of the bowl goes in too. Then hit the button and you should end up with something like this.
No one can resist putting a finger in that and seeing how it tastes. It’s like the sweetest blackberry jam, perfect for putting on a big bowl of vanilla ice cream…… but I wont. Instead I need to put it aside for the mead after just one more finger full….
Ok, now to the heart of making mead. We need 5lbs of honey. It needs to be raw unprocessed honey, cooking the honey or adding preservatives to it will change it so that the yeast won’t thrive. You can use raw filtered honey, I use the unfiltered because the brand I use doesn’t usually have any comb or other things in it needing to be filtered. Here’s what I use but any good quality honey will work.
The other important thing is to make sure all of your processing equipment is clean. There are wild yeast all over the place and we want our yeast to dominate and be the only yeast processing the sugar into alcohol. So everything needs to be freshly washed and clean.
I use water as hot as I can stand it with liquid detergent and a cap full of bleach to clean everything. A big bottle brush helps to get into the recesses of the 1 gallon containers and get them scrubbed out. Make sure to rinse well too, the bleach can kill off your good yeast just as quick as the bad yeast. Some people us campden tablets to sterilize their stuff, I’ve heard it can leave a taste in your finished product so I don’t. Try it if you want, its a personal decision on my part not to.
When everything is clean, get your big ass pot up on the stove and get about a half gallon of water into it. Put it on low heat and get the temp to around warm bath water temp. I have filtered water on my house, but I still use bottled water to make my mead because of the mineral content in the water here. You want the water warm, but not hot, just warm enough to dissolve the honey in it but not so hot it scalds the honey. Once it’s to temp pour in your honey and stir until the honey is completely dissolved into the water. If it’s good honey you will be left with a honey water (it’s called the ‘must’) that is a nice deep amber color and still sweet to the taste.
My my, that is nice. If you wanted to make a straight mead then you could just use the must (honey water) and yeast to make a true unflavored mead. I’ve done it, it’s nice, but I like my flavored meads and so do most who try them. So, since we are making a flavored mead, lets add the flavor..
The blackberry mix is so thick and rich the few drops that fell look like blood on my stove.
It tastes a lot better than any blood Ive ever tasted though, lol. Keep stirring the blackberry mix into the must until its well combined and a consistent temperature. Remember to not let it get too hot! just warm bath water temp.
At this point I usually pour a little bit into a shot glass and enjoy the sweet concoction I have made. If you are going to sample it in this way do it now before the next step cause we will be adding the yeast to this happy new home we have made for it. Speaking of the yeast, better show you what I use.
The yeast I use in my meads is Lalvin EC-1118. It’s a champagne yeast and produces high alcohol levels if given lots of sugar to eat and a favorable environment. Yeast can really change the flavor and alcohol level of your creations. I have used Fleishman’s bakers yeast and it works well, but it is less tolerant of the alcohol level and dies off at around 8-10%. This is good if you like a sweet wine, lots of sugars left over, but if you like a kick and don’t mind your stuff slightly dry go with the Lalvin. If anyone uses a different yeast that comes out well then drop me an email so I can try it too. On to the feast!
That is the yeast just poured right on top. It’s warm, there’s lots of food, everything yeast like for a feeding frenzy. Well, except the light. Yeast aren’t particularly fond off light as far as I can tell. That’s why I use the green glass bottles to ferment. Speaking of bottles, mine are all clean and ready to go with sanitized stoppers and water locks. Since the yeast don’t like light, stir them into the mix where they can re-hydrate and wake up.
Next is to get the yeast and mix into the bottles where they can ferment in peace and make us a wonderfully intoxicating blackberry drink. I use a cut off funnel that I keep special for filling the 1 gallon containers and my small 1 liter casks (more on that in a later post). Just make sure everything is clean and you are good to go.
When filling the bottles don’t fill them to the top. The yeast can get aggressive in the fermentation and it causes a lot of carbon dioxide bubbles and agitation. If you fill them too full then your mead will end up coming out of your water lock or popping the stopper, a very bad thing. I fill mine about 2/3 full and it has worked well for me so far. Once you get the fluid in the bottles put the stoppers on.
Next comes the water lock. There are three parts: the body, the bubbler, and the cap. The purpose of the water lock is to let carbon dioxide gas made by the fermentation process escape and not letting outside air with wild yeast back in to the container to ruin our work. It’s fairly straight forward. Insert the body into the stopper first.
Next put the bubbler into place. This part moves and allows the bubbles to escape while keeping the outside stuff outside.
Now fill the body of the water lock with… yup, water… until it reaches the line scribed in the body of the lock. This sets the proper water level to keep everything working like it should. You need to check the water level regularly through the ferment so that it doesn’t get low and allow outside air to get into your container. Finally, put the cap on top of the water lock. Don’t leave the cap off, I learned the hard way it’s a bad idea to leave it off.
There it is. Two 1 gallon containers filled with blackberry love in the making. It will take about two weeks in a dark room-temp area (I use a my pantry closet) to complete the ferment. Make sure to check on the water locks every couple days and let the yeast do their job.
To make things easy I have some links to an online supplier for the equipment I used. All up: two 1 gallon containers, two locks, 4 stoppers, and three yeast packs is $20 plus tax and shipping. Not an amount that should stop anyone curious to give this a try.
Water lock/ Fermentation lock
Lalvin EC-1118
1 Gallon Containers
#6 Stopper
