# Wine or Beer Bottles?



## markalbob (Jan 31, 2007)

this is a very open question.

1. If you plan on carbonating in bottles, beer bottles or champagne bottles are needed--wine bottles are only corked, the pressure will push corks and you share your mead with the basement floor.

2. If you make it "still", you can use any bottle--wine, beer, or champagne. Purists like wine bottles, and I will use them, but I also use beer bottles--depends on what you want and how much you care about "presentation", as well as what you have available--bottle capper? corker?

3. You can make a mead at anywhere from say 4-5% alcohol to 20+. It will depend on yeast, honey content (fermentables), handling, etc. Generally, people tend to make mead in "wine" ranges of 10-14% alcohol.....18% meads take forever to age out (avoid "champagne" yeast), and below this percentage it is difficult not to go to dry, plus there is the issue of "preservation" at low alcohol levels. Still, I HAVE seen some 5-6% meads, which are more like a beer than a "traditional" mead, often even including hops.

Generally, it's a wine.


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## Black Creek (May 19, 2006)

wait..... did you say 20+ %? holy shenanigans!! what kinda yeast do i need for that? what level of sugar would you start at? 

do i need an old moonshine still?


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## markalbob (Jan 31, 2007)

well, some people like to get drunk. Eau de Vie can go over 20%, so can some distillers yeasts, and even champagne yeast if you nurture it. No distilling, the yeast go that high before dying.

"CAN GO TO 20%" and "Worth Drinking" are worlds apart in my opinion though.....I'd rather have 2 glasses of anything pleasant than a single glass of something that tasted like paint thinner.....

Still for some it's a "macho" thing......same with dandelion wine and similar--they'll be more excited about a "strong" wine than a "good" wine--it's a whole lot easier to make a strong wine than a good one, and if you don't like the taste, what's the fun anyway--it's just a race to get drunk, like when you stole your parent's gin in high school......


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## Black Creek (May 19, 2006)

i didnt realize that there were any yeasts that could stand that kind of alcohol saturation, but then again i guess they have something special they use for whiskey and such. i've heard the higher % stuff takes at least a year to be palatable, but i was thinking maybe make a batch just for holidays and what not, and it would have ample time for aging. i've made wines for a while(cab.,merlot, pinot noir, shiraz....) but i'm just now going to try my hand at my 2nd attempt at mead. i'm thinking about trying a couple 'country wines' this year too.

HEY !, how did you know i stole the gin??


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## markalbob (Jan 31, 2007)

expect a year for a 12-14% with D47 or similar yeast....goto 18% expect 2 or more years......


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## Sport (Dec 11, 2006)

I always give a good year before I drink a mead and sometimes two or three. that's time in the carboy, not the bottle. That I've left for as much as ten years. Oh, the memories... But I digress. I've had three month mead before and I don't plan on trying it again. Time is a friend to mead making. Don't rush things and don't try to get more out of it then it's willing to give.


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## markalbob (Jan 31, 2007)

I have heard, by the way, of a few ways to help speed things up in mead, but as noted this is more a "make it drinkable in 9 months versus a year, and it willl still improve considerably at 1 year" sort of thing--mead takes time, and there's a few "quick mead" recipes out there, but they're the exception. To "help" speed things along:

1. Melomels and ceysers and pyments are often somewhat "quicker", probably more a side effect of the stronger fruit flavors masking some of the "off" flavors.

2. Nutrients...the cleaner and healthier the ferment, the better the mead and the less off compounds that need to "age out".

3. Narbonne has a reputation for producing wines and meads which mature "faster".

4. Again, the lower the alcohol, the sooner it will be "ready". Try to go to 14% or less.


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## Aspera (Aug 1, 2005)

I would disagree strongly with most of the above statements. Melomels and cysers, IMO, age more rapidly due to higher amino acids/nutrient/tanin levels and larger bacterial populations. Likewise, I would add that some very attenuative strains such as KV1-1116 are also well known as exceptionally rapid agers. The caveat is that higher alcohol content usually slows aging and high alcohol beverages improve more with aging. This includes distilled beverages, when they are stored in tanin/charoal/bacteria rich wood casks at cask strength.


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## markalbob (Jan 31, 2007)

Aspera, as pasteurized juice ceysers also seem to, I'll agree strongly that the nutrients and tannins play a role, but I'm not so sure on bacteria. Regardless, he seemed to express some interest in a mead for consumption in just under a year (next Christmas)

Also, one can certainly use KV1 and "just enough" honey to go to 12-14%, then stabilize and back-sweeten. Depends in part on your desire to stabilize (I had a bottle made w/ Narbonne start back up on me once, I'm now a fan of stabilizing anything that isn't dry, because I'm paranoid about glass explosions). 

As far as high-alcohol beverages improving even more as they age, that may be true, but again he wanted something fast, and as you point out, high-alc. beverages take much longer.

All things considered, my suggestion might be to try several....you can have the lower alcohol stuff while you're doing the necessary wait for some of the other meads, so you aren't tempted into wasting most of the bottles that need aging on early taste tests.


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