My history with brewing has been spotty. Back in college, I thought I'd try my hand at cordials. I'd heard that, because of the sugar and fruit flavor, you could use the cheapest vodka, so I did. Then I decided that sour apple would be the best fruit to try for my first attempt. These were both bad decisions, as the resulting cordial was sweet but tasteless, with the burn of bad vodka.
Next up - in grad school, I learned at an A&S nice that brewing can be easy! Just do it! Get some fruit juice, add some honey, throw in some bread yeast and go! The beverage that resulted was bad. It wasn't vile, but it also did not taste good. It could produce a buzz, but that was its only virtue.
Third time's a charm? Mistress Sorcha Crowe provided a recipe for quick mead for our local baronial newsletter, three years ago, and I finally got around to making it. I upsold myself on airlocks and sanitizer, but her recipe has work-arounds so the beginner does not have to have them. Here's my process:
Ingredients and Equipment
- 3 gal. spring water from Weis
- 2 lb orange blossom honey
- 1 packet Lalvin EC-1118 champagne yeast (I also had Lalvin chardonnay yeast (D47?), but at the last minute decided to just do two batches with the champagne)
- Phosphoric acid-based santizer in spritzer
- 2 rubber plugs and air locks for gallon jugs
Process
- I used a bit less than a quart of one gallon of water to mix up the sanitizer, then sprayed down the plugs and air locks.
- Poured another quart+ down the drain so the gallon was half-empty
- Filled the sink with hot tap water and put the jars of honey in it until they were runny
- Added 1 lb of honey to the half-gallon of water
- I didn't do any heroics to get the last bit of honey out of the jar. I should have just poured some of the water in there, shook it up, and added it back to the gallon.
- Shake shake shake shake. The honey dissolved pretty quickly, maybe about a minute of shaking?
- Attempt to divide yeast into 5 portions by eye.
- Add 1/5 of yeast to gallon.
- Top off gallon with half of 2nd gallon.
- Gently shake maybe 1-2 minutes (next time, time it!)
- Loosely cap with original gallon cap.
- Repeat for 2nd gallon
- Press in rubber stoppers; fill up airlocks and insert
- Place under dining room table on a baking sheet
After the ordeal of dividing the yeast sans scale, I decided not to try it again with the chardonnay yeast, but just used another 1/5 of the champagne yeast.
It was all quiet yesterday; hoping today or tomorrow I'll start to hear some bubbling.
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