# Recipes



## Swobee (May 18, 2007)

Just freeze & bring those bothersome blackberries and other fruit by on your way elk hunting! I'd do you the favor of saving you some work!! The recipe I have for apricot is very basic - fruit, honey, pectic acid, yeast. It's fermenting along nicely under air lock. I'll have a bottle of regular mead for you if you want to stop by in Oct.


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## drobbins (Jun 1, 2005)

you can find a few recipes here

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=80

Dave


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## Ben Brewcat (Oct 27, 2004)

Zane said:


> I have the equipment but not sure if I need some nutrients or anything else?
> Do you start off in buckets as primary fermenters or always stick to glass?
> What do you use(if any) for clarifying? I use irish moss for beer. Whats prime ferment temp (depends on the yeast some I know)
> Someone recomended corn sugar to carbonate? why not honey? after all its mead right? either way I have corn sugar also.
> I've tried non carbonated meads and have found I'm not a "dry" fan too much but maybe if it had an essence of some fruit in it. I'd like to carbonate a batch for sure


You likely won't need nutrients for a mead made with fruits. I usually wait to add things like noots or energizer if there's a stuck ferment of something similar.

Buckets are fine for primary, and are great if you'll do a secondary with the fruit. Avoid making a fruity primary if you can; the cap is a hassle and many of the aromas from the fruit get scrubbed out by devlolving CO2. After the vigor of fermentation slows, get it into glass for any prolonged storage/conditioning.

There is one two-part clarifying agent that works for 97% of meads: time and gravity . For stubborn haze or hurried meads, any number of finings work. Or try chillproofing it. 

Corn sugar is easy to measure, is largely sterile, and has a known sugar content by weight allowing you to sparkle exactly as much as you want (barely pettillant to champagne-like). Honey's sugars can vary a tiny bit, contain osmophilic yeasts, and must be dissolved first.

A good all-purpose nuclear bedtime story fermentation temp is around 65.

Carbonation is really a seperate issue and character than dryness/sweetness, though the sparkle does lighten the feeling on the tongue. And the carbonic acid has a flavor of its own. But one can have a very dry sparkling mead or a very sweet but sparkling mead. Though sweet and sparkling is difficult to do without kegging, pasteurizing bottles or other advanced techniques. The yeast didn't read your recipe, so if they can wake up enough to eat your priming sugars they'll happily keep eating your residual sweetness in the mead and you can get overcarbonation (frustrating and even messy) up to bottle grenades (frustrating, exciting and divorce-inducing if not actively maiming ).

An din terms of recipes, lots of old threads have recipes or read the Intro to Meadmaking stickied thread. Either way (you make a recipe or we help come up with one) we'll need to know how sweet or dry you want the finished mead, how much alcohol, and whether you'll use fruit. The Intro has an (I think) important section on recipe formulation that can help get a mazer started.


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## Scrapfe (Jul 25, 2008)

Zane said:


> Anyone have some good Mead recipes?
> 
> 
> I have wild blackberries, strawberries, plums and elderberries out in the field I can incorporate into the batch.
> ...


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## Zane (Mar 28, 2008)

Thanks folks for the info.
I was wondering afterwards about the fruit addition. 2ndary it is! 
Does wine like a hard or soft water? I have gypsum to add to harden it if needed, but my water though very sweet is pretty hard too!
Swobee, I dont have plans to drive through in Oct. Choosing to fly over(thank goodness for flight bennies)to get my peaches. Keeping my costs down to $40a bushell for peaches I do plan in driving through in early Dec. Thanks for the offer though!

Brewcat, do you work at or have a "Brew"ery? I'd like to visit it if so.

Thanks for the recipe links. I was kinda hoping for some good home tried versions but will wait for more info or just try the links or books. 

Scrapfe, interesting recipe and I will try that one. I plan on expanding my grapes more and should have some fruiting next year. I might get some grapes from the neighbors to try this(why buy raisins if I can make them!!).

So far the Meads I've tried where good but I dont LOVE the dry ones(except in a bubbly). Being a rookie at this too I'd probably like the fruitier, sweet ones best! Time will tell
Thanks again


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## Scrapfe (Jul 25, 2008)

Scrapfe, interesting recipe and I will try that one. I plan on expanding my grapes more and should have some fruiting next year. 

Ihave never tried to make my own rasins since I live in a humid climate. I would suspect that it will be a daunting task. Good luck.


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## Zane (Mar 28, 2008)

*Recipes?*

Raisins= 1part grape + 1 dehydrator = raisins!!! right???

I worked as a produce kid in school. I would buy all the left over grapes from the boxes we sold them in. I'd take them home and dehydrate them all the time. They were great.
unless raisins have the grapes sulfated or something?

What do you call your drink Scrapfe?


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## Ben Brewcat (Oct 27, 2004)

Zane said:


> Brewcat, do you work at or have a "Brew"ery? I'd like to visit it if so.


Not any more. Well, not one I get paid for . I'm a homebrewer originally who also managed a wine and beermaking store for a few years. I had some offers to brew pro, but (luckily I think) I always elected to keep it as a hobby and teaching others. Wearing rubber boots all day for CIP regimens and hoofing sacks of grain were disenchanting enough. But being a slave to that one big-selling recipe over and over and over, having a bean-counter telling me that "that would taste just as good with a couple fewer buckets of raspberries/grains of paradise/spruce tips/"whatever, and especially not having quite the freedom to experiment the way we can as home brewers/mazers/vintners. If I want to make my house mild ale with munich malt, American hops and some turbinado sugar because that's what makes it perfect, and I want to make it even though everyone else wants an 11% IIPA, then I'm making it. And loving it .


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## Zane (Mar 28, 2008)

*mead recipe*

Ha I understand that completly!!! Having some big shot change "my recipe's" would not work for any of us I imagine. An 11% mild ale? hmm

And I also understand peoples "perfect" mead recipes are sacred. I was just hoping for some nice tried and true recipes that "I" can modify to make "my" perfect mead recipe.

Oh well

I do like to visit different micro breweries and Colorado has a bunch of fun ones. I like Ft Collins, Idaho Springs, Dillon, Glenwood, Grand Jct, Durango and Steamboat for places to sample. They all have nice tasty and a wide variety of thing new to try


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## Ben Brewcat (Oct 27, 2004)

Well give us some more info: % alcohol, dry sweet or in between, and we can dial in some recommendations for you.


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## fisholot (May 23, 2010)

If your looking for a nice honey ale I have brewed this one a few times

4 lbs Extra Light Dry Malt Extract 
3 lbs Fireweed Honey 
1/2 lb Honey Malt 

1 1/2 oz Cascade Hops 60 mins 
1/2 oz Cascade Hops 1 min 

Wyeast 1056 American Ale 

OG 1.055
FG 1.006
6.3 %

Prime 3/4 cup Corn Sugar 


Add cracked Honey Malt to 1 1/2 gals of cold water and bring to boil. When the boiling starts, remove the grain. Add the Extra Light Dry Malt Extract and Fireweed Honey then bring to a boil again. Add 1 1/2 oz Cascade Hops. Boil for 60 mins. Add 1/2 oz of Cascade Hops and boil for 1 min. Sparge the hops with cold water then add the wort to the fermenter with cold water to make 5 gals. Add yeast when the temp reaches 70º. Ferment at 65º for 5 days or until fermentation slows. Rack to a secondary fermenter. Let it age 2 weeks in secondary, then bottle or keg. For bottling, use 1 1/4 cup of dry malt extract boiled with 2 cups of water added in the bottling bucket


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## Fivej (Apr 4, 2016)

Excellent post Donnie. J


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