Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire mead

watching to many episodes of "the vikings" getting wasted on mead, then robbing, raping and pilaging europe. first episode of sixth season mentioned eastern baltic, circa 800 a.d.
hey, wait a minute, those were my people and i have never drank mead.
i have all the ingredients to make it, but bought a bottle of danish mead rated at 19% to see what it should taste like before home brewery.
trying to celelbrate heritage, i think i am going to get some horn cups too.

anybody drink this stuff or make it?
the bottle i got from denmark is using a recipe dating back to 1700a.d. I always thought of it as beer but it's honey wine.

hope it tastes better than that malt vinegar from Captain D’s

I'd like to try it

It gets them Vikings plenty fuuucked up!!

It is a worthy beverage to drink occasionally. More toward the Wine side than Beer but on that side of the fence as opposed to Hard Liquor.

I make it once in a while, it's good, use red star premier cote des blancs yeast it's a good yeast for ciders, mead or white wines. once it ferments it will probably be dry/tart. you can stop fermentation by pasteurizing it, put it 180dg water for 15 minutes. make sure you put the bottle in the hot bath after it's up to temp and take the pot off the burner. once that's done you can back sweeten if you don't like a dry mead. just add more honey or sugar to your taste. there are all kinds of videos on youtube on how to make it. that yeast will give you about a 12% finished product.

Not that crazy about straight mead. Kinda sweet for my taste. I did make a batch of mead/ale hybrid once that was fantastic. 6# of honey and 6# of malt to a 5 gallon batch. Took a schit load of hops to get right and then a long primary and secondary fermentation. After all that, it had to bottle cure for about 16 months before it was fit to drink. Good stuff when done though and you didn’t want to be operating any heavy machinery after a liter of it.

a LITER?!
been 30 years since i could drink a liter of anything!

if you want to carbonize it like a beer add your conditioning tablets or corn sugar and back sweeten and bottle it then let it sit 4-7 days to carbonize before pasteurizing once you pasteurize it, it will stop the fermentation but still have sugar and be sweet. you can put some in a soda bottle and when the firmness feels like a newly bought coke you know your glass bottles are ready for the hot bath. don't pasteurize the plastic soda bottle, you can put it in the fridge and drink it. the pasteurize bottles will be shelf-stable.

I use some saved wort for bottling sugar. It will get carbonated in a week or so but to bottle condition an ale with that high of an alcohol content, it takes months. We tried it at 2 months and it sucked, 6 months it sucked, we ended up stacking cases on it and forgot about it till we were digging through or stash one day and found it. We figured it had been in there over a year and decided we’d try it one last time and throw it out. It was incredible! Only beer I’ve seen that took that long to age.
I don’t use the tablets or corn sugar for bottle conditioning. There are much better sugars depending on what you brewed and what king of head you’re after. Fine powdered cane sugar for a Guinness like head all the way to molasses for big bubbles. Wort from the batch you’re bottling is always a good call.

We used champagne bottles. You don’t have to clean as many bottles and you can get em for free if you hit a bunch of restaurants right after New Year’s.

I'll try that, been making shine for several years just recently started doing this other stuff. still haven't tried a beer.

Without adding some alcohol, how did that bottle that Ron has get to 19% ABV?

Can you guys get it that high before the yeasts die off?

I used to believe 14% or maybe 16% was about as high as one can get naturally.

Just asking, as I no longer drink and am just curious.

they make some yeast that will work that high or you can add some vodka or everclear to raise it.

I have drank some mead at mountain man gatherings, home brew of course, and for me it's wise to plan ahead with a supply of toilet paper. Just one mans experience. I prefer the ubiquitous "apple pie" served at those affairs.

I never got a batch above around 15% and to do that, I had to use some pretty badass yeast, ferment for a week, rack it off and secondary ferment for 2 weeks. I believe a batch will crash if you try and get it any higher. As to putting vodka in it. Blasphemy!

I been making mead for years.

I use safbrew s-33 as yeast.
One pound honey per one gallon water. One pound berries frozen in mesh bag. Or pure juice ( Trader Joe's).

Pasteurize it. Let it sit the longer the better. I love it!

we cracked the bottle last night, and had a nip. this stuff was made from like a 1700's recipe. very sweet, understand why diabetes runs in us with nordic genes. definitely has a alcohol bite to it. reminds me very much of a danish cordial a friend brought back from denmark.
this stuff isn't beer, which is what i thought it was, it's a honey wine. we drank it straight last night, next time will be over ice.
gonna make some tho. i like the idea of adding berries too.
as i understand it you can do a lot to mess with the flavor.
if stxhunter goes to my facebook page, i posted a picture of the bottle, which he can repost here. i would buy it again.

The joy of home brewing has a whole chapter on mead. I honestly think it could be next big alcoholic beverage due to selzer success and gluten intolerant choices.

The mead I've had a couple of times has actually been pretty dry, about like a fino sherry, though with a distinct honey aroma.

I think it would be pretty easy to get to that with the right sugar content at the start - such that you can ferment it all out before the alcohol content kills the yeast.

I haven't made any, but I have made quite a bit of beer and some cider and perry.