hi guys so today we're gonna be making
some Mead or as it's also known honey
wine now meat is a very simple fermented
beverage it uses honey as the base sugar
needed to make the alcohol and it's a
lot simpler than for example making beer
which is a lot more difficult this comes
the cost of time it does take a little
bit longer typically to ferment properly
than for example beer does it doesn't
require heating or specific temperatures
and in the end it really just is a very
nice product to drink I had a lot of fun
making this my friend Colin is actually
helping me make this mean today we ended
up doing this as gifts for people for
Christmas and in the end the version I'm
showing you today we ended up with a
semi dry Mead with an alcohol percentage
of around 11% so let's get started at
making Mead and we'll start by looking
at our main ingredient which is our
honey now the honey I'm going to be
using here today is a raw mesquite honey
from a local apiary we were really lucky
to get our hands on this stuff it's
entirely up to you if you want to
experiment with different types of honey
this will give you different types of
meat in the end I'm using for a five
gallon batch of Mead about 15 pounds of
honey now this will yield a semi dry
Mead so it'll be slightly sweet but
mostly Drive if you want it to be a
little bit sweeter feel free to add more
honey doing so you'll end up with a
sweeter more alcoholic meat in the end
so this is a raw honey we really don't
want to heat it doing so will denature
some of the enzymes and in the end
really alter the flavor of the honey now
if we actually really break down what
we're gonna be doing for making Mead all
we're gonna do is add this honey to some
water with some yeast and some other
additional ingredients but before we get
into that let's focus on some
preparatory steps one of the main things
we're gonna need is a vessel for
fermenting our mead now I recommend
using a homebrew bucket which has a
proper sealing lid and a hole for an
airlock which will help keep the germs
out from entering our meat and infecting
it as it ferments
we're additionally gonna need some yeast
nutrient now when making beer there are
vitamins and enzymes that come from the
grains that actually help these
reproduce and actually produce alcohol
efficiently now in honey those elements
just aren't there with the primary
pieces we can move on to the most
important and probably least sexy part
of making Mead which is the
sterilization to sterilize I'm using an
O rinse sterilization solution which is
specifically known as stars' and the
stuff is great and you'll find it at
your local homebrew store or online and
it's really one of the most important
components to ensure that you have a
really good meat in the end and you just
haven't wasted you
and money now I've added the stars' and
solution into the primary fermenting
bucket with some warm water as the
instructions call for I've also used
this opportunity to sterilize the lid a
ladle a rubber spatula our airlock
anything else that I think that we might
need a spoon another consideration that
we need to take into account is that
we're using raw honey this means that
the honey itself contains its own set of
microorganisms that may interfere with
the yeast now normally this would be
eliminated through boiling but as I
mentioned before I really don't want to
heat the honey this can change the
flavor we don't really want that so to
get around this I'm using what's known
as Camden tablets well this will help
disable the reproduction of
microorganisms that are in the honey
before we add the yeast so how the
additional benefit of getting rid of any
excess chlorine in the waterr this stuff
is used in winemaking and can also be
picked up from a homebrew store so once
everything's properly sterilized it's
time to add our honey to our water start
by pouring five gallons of water into
our fermentation bucket and then next we
just add our honey in and it's as simple
as that
lastly we'll finish with our additions
which we have one teaspoon of yeast
nutrient and to Camden tablets using our
sterilized ladle we can mix the
ingredients up as best as we can and it
doesn't hurt at this point to take a
sample sugar measurement this will give
us a concentration of how much sugar is
actually in the solution and from this
we can use this as a baseline for our
original gravity which in the end will
help us calculate the final alcohol
percentage of the meat once we're done
with that go ahead and seal the lid on
and add the airlock it doesn't hurt to
give it one additional shake to just
kind of mix everything up we're gonna
let this bad boy sit for 24 hours at
which point it's time to get ready to
pitch the yeast so the next day we're
ready
these days the agent that will turn the
sugars in our honey into alcohol
now most beer yeast can handle an
alcohol percentage up to about eight to
ten percent before the alcohol
concentration starts to kill the yeast
itself so to make sure we get a little
bit more bang from our buck and actually
a more conversion of sugar into alcohol
from our honey I'm using what's known as
a champagne yeast which in principle is
a strain that is able to stand alcohol
concentrations up to about eighteen
percent we the amount of sugar that
we're adding in from the amount of honey
that we've added in we should be well
below this tolerance so this yeast will
be able to get us there
now once again before working with the
yeast we need to make sure that we
thoroughly sanitize everything the yeast
will come into contact too and since the
mead mixture is not heated it's actually
at room temperature as
for example it would be heated and
beer-making as it cools down you'd pitch
the yeast we need to activate the
dehydrated yeast by adding it to some
warm water so follow the instructions on
the packet for the best results once
everything's ready we can actually pitch
our yeast into the prepared honey water
and we can let the fun begin
give it a good Rock to kind of mix
everything together replace the airlock
and bam we're ready to rock the stuff
should sit for about 10 to 14 days
untouched to give it time to go through
primary fermentation after about two
weeks in primary fermentation it's time
for a secondary fermentation now this
step is technically optional so if you
want to just omit this and just wait
until you start bottling that's
completely fine but it will help us get
a better overall flavor and will allow
us to kind of flavor our meat and play
with it a little bit more essentially
what we're doing here is we're removing
the mead from the primary fermentation
bucket pulling it away from all the dead
yeast that's accumulated at the bottom
of the bucket during primary
fermentation it will also really give us
a chance to kind of put them into
smaller bottles and play with the
flavors so the process is pretty simple
once again we're going to need to
sanitize all the equipment coming into
contact with the meat in our case this
is the secondary fermentation jugs as
well as our siphoning equipment and
airlocks once everything is sanitized we
can use a siphon to pull the meat from
the primary fermenter and siphon it into
a secondary fermentation vessel I'm
using one gallon glass jugs here so that
we can easily have five different types
of meat and be able to kind of divvy
this up but if you want to you could
just use another five-gallon bucket when
siphoning it's helpful to maintain a
height difference so that gravity kind
of do the work of transferring the
liquid from one vessel to another it's
also a good idea to siphon from the top
and slowly follow the level of the mead
down in the primary fermenter this will
ensure that we don't suck up any of the
dead yeast chillin at the bottom of the
primary fermenter and just transfer it
into the secondary fermentation vessels
also it's not a bad idea at this point
to do a measurement of the sugar
concentration using a hydrometer or
refractometer at this point I was
measuring an alcohol percentage of about
8% which was good but it kind of
indicates that wasn't entirely done yet
now once the jugs are full we can go
ahead and add in our flavoring agents
and we ended up going with a few
different variations we left a few of
them plain as just kind of control needs
but we also had one with some
pomegranate juice added
one with some almonds and raisins and
orange peel and another with blood
orange and raisin feel free to add
whatever flavorings you want you know
you can really go all out here or you
can just leave it plain once all of our
jugs have been filled and we're happy
with the flavorings we can go ahead and
place the lids and air locks onto them
and we're just gonna let these sit for
an additional two weeks now after about
two weeks
technically the fermentation should be
close to done but it's not going to
taste super great at this point it
should probably taste a little bit like
cheap wine very alcoholic and strong and
very like cutting in the nose you can of
course drink at this point but it won't
be very nice letting it sit in jugs for
longer will allow the alcohol and
everything to kind of mellow out and the
meat to really develop a nice flavor
some people insist on letting this stuff
sit for about six months to a year but
unfortunately for me time was a
constraint here so immediately bottled a
few jugs to hand out as our Christmas
gifts now it's a bottle it's best if you
can find a bottling bucket essentially
this is of just a normal bucket but with
a spout if not you can try using a
bottle of filler or you can also try to
just sanitize a funnel and a pitcher and
fill it out the bottles this way but at
the risk of sounding like a broken
record we really need to sanitize
everything that's going to touch the
mead including the bottles themselves
the bucket the siphon everything we're
going to be using to transfer from the
secondary jugs into the bottling bucket
once everything is again sanitized we're
gonna use the siphon to transfer from
the secondary fermentation vessels into
our bottling bucket at which point we
can just turn the spigot and then just
start filling our bottles with Mead now
since this mead wasn't a hundred percent
finished I opted to use swing top
bottles but in principle you could cap
them if you choose once we bottled our
Mead we're done
now this can sit for longer including
even in the bottles and it will become
better over time I hope you enjoyed this
video and if you're new here please
consider subscribing or maybe even just
watching some of my other videos if you
feel inclined to help me further I have
attached a link to my patreon down below
I'm really trying to get new equipment
for this channel since the stuff I've
been using is definitely a little janky
and old well anyways thank you again for
watching and I hope that I'll be able to
give you guys another video soon all
right bye
