This recipe is based on procedures outlined in Making Mead, by Bryan Acton and Peter Duncan. They advocate the use of campden rather than boiling because they feel that after boiling for a long time most of the essences of the honey are gone.

 Ingredients:

 6 pounds, peaches

 3/4 pint, elderflowers

2-1/2 pounds, acacia honey

 1/30 ounce, tannin Graves yeast

 1/4 ounce, tartaric acid

1/4 ounce, malic acid

Procedure:

 Press peaches (after removing pits). Dissolve honey in 4 pints warm water, blend in peach juice along with acid, tannin, and nutrients. Add 100 ppm sulfite (2 campden tablets). After 24 hours, add yeast starter, allow to ferment 7 days before adding elderflowers.

 Ferment on flowers for 3 days then strain off flowers and top off to 1 gallon with cold water. Ferment until specific gravity drops to 10, then rack. Rack again when gravity drops to 5, and add 1 tablet campden.

 Rack again when when a heavy deposit forms, or after 3 months, whichever comes first. Add another campden tablet. Rack again every 3-4 months, adding a tablet after every second racking.

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This is more winey than your straight mead, but very pleasant. Medium dry and spritzig---very nice as a table wine. Those of you set up to crush your own grapes might try a grape honey mix. A drink of noble history!

Ingredients:

 4-1/2 pounds, wildflower honey

 5-1/2 pounds, partial blueberry honey

2 tablespoons, acid blend

1 tablespoon, pectic enzyme

 4 pounds, Alexander's Johanissberg Riesling extract

 1 pack, Red Star champagne yeast

Procedure:

Boil honey, acid, enzyme and Riesling extract for 1 hour (I have since learned that honey is best not boiled; subsequent batches have been made by holding the mixture for 2 hours).

 Cool and pitch yeast. Rack to secondary after 8 days. Bottle after 4 months.

Specifics:

 Primary Ferment: 8 days

Secondary Ferment: 48 days

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 Ingredients:

4 gallons, fresh cider (no Pot.Sorb)

5 to 6 pounds, honey

1 gallon, water

 1 large stick, cinnamon

5 cloves

 2 pods, cardamom

2 packs, Red Star Pasteur champagne yeast

 Procedure:

Simmer the spices in the water for 10 minutes. Dissolve honey. Simmer and strain crud until there isn't any more. Transfer to primary, along with cider (this should bring primary to a good pitching temperature).

 Pitch yeast and wait 1 to 2 weeks for the foam to die down. Transfer to secondary. Ferment in secondary 3-6 months. Bottle and age another 3 or more months.

Specifics:

Primary Ferment: 1--1/2 week

 Secondary Ferment: 3--6 months

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 Ingredients:

12-1/2 pounds light clover honey

4 teaspoons acid blend

5 teaspoons yeast nutrient

 wine yeast

 Procedure:

Add honey, acid blend, and yeast nutrient to 2 gallons of water and boil for 1/2 hour. Add this to 1-1/2 gallons of cold water in the primary fermenter. Pitch yeast when the temperature reaches 70-75 degrees. Use a blow off tube if you use a carboy.

 Allow fermentation to proceed for 3 weeks or more (up to several months). When the mead becomes fairly clear, rack to secondary. Attach air-lock. Leave the mead to sit at least 3 weeks. When yeast settles to bottom and is clear, it is ready to bottle.

 Adding 3/4 cup of corn sugar at bottling will produce a sparkling mead. Sparkling meads should not be made with an original gravity higher than 1,090.

Specifics:

 O.G.: 1.100

 F.G.: 1.000

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 It was still bubbling when I bottled. Yes, I plan to begin drinking it soon, before it becomes a grenade six-pack. Ingredients:

Procedure:

Simmer these together and skim off the scum as it rises. If you wait for it all to rise so you can skim just once and you miss the moment, the scum sinks, never to rise again.

 Pitch yeast when cool and kept it at room temp (65-72) for 5 weeks where it bubbled about once every 5 seconds for the whole time.

Specifics:

 Primary Ferment: 5 weeks

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Classification: mead, melomel, kiwi mead, star fruit mead, cranberry mead..

 Ingredients:

Procedure:

Pasteurized the honey and fruit at about 180 degrees for 10-15 minutes, ran through a chiller, pitched with VERY vigorous aeration. Let it sit with the fruit in for 7 days, then rack off.

Specifics:

O.G.: 1.124

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Classification:

mead, metheglin, melomel, raisin mead

Ingredients: (for 5 gallons)

Procedure:

 Dissolve honey in water, add raisins and cloves, & bring to a simmer (don't boil) for about 5 minutes. Let cool to 95 degrees or so, reserving a small portion to start yeast.

Start yeast and add to must in primary fermentation container. Rack to carboy after a week, removing raisins and cloves and topping off with water.

Rack again after 3 mo. and bottle at 6 mo. Drink after a Year.

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Classification:

 mead, melomel, banana mead.

Ingredients: (1 gallon)

Procedure:

Slice washed bananas (skins and all) and put into a nylon bag and tie. In 1.5 Qt water bring to a boil and simmer for 30min. Remove bag and pour hot liquour over honey and grape conc.

Add the rest of the ingredients and enough water to make 1 gallon. Pitch when at 70 deg. Keep me updated on its progress.

Specifics:

 OG: 1095

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Classification:

mead, melomel, raspberry mead..

 Ingredients: (for EACH gallon)

Procedure:

 The honey was purchased in bulk at a nearby grocery co-op store. The raspberries were frozen to help break down the cell walls, and they were crushed by hand (in plastic bags) while thawing. The lemon and orange juice were to provide acids. The tea was to provide tannins. I do not know what the nutrient is, but I suspect that it supplied nitrogen.

Boil the honey in some water for 30 minutes, skimming off any scum, wax, bee parts, etc. that rise to the surface. Remove from heat and add berries, tea, juice, and nutrient. Let sit, covered, for a few minutes to let the heat sanitize the fruit. Chill to room temperature in an icewater bath. Put into primary fermenter and add water to bring the volume of the must up to the appropriate level. Pitch yeast into must. ( I just pour the liquid yeast into the must without making a starter.)

It was fermented at about 70 degrees F. (room temperature in my kitchen). A word of advice learned from previous experiences: If you use a carboy as your primary frementer, use one with a LOT of extra headspace, or use a wide blow-off tube. If you do not, the raspberry pulp will foam up and will plug the airlock. This will cause a pressure buildup which can pop the stopper off of the carboy and spray your walls with sticky raspberry stuff. I hear that it can also cause your carboy to explode, leaving an even bigger mess.

Rack after about three weeks, when the fruit pulp has settled. Rack again at month 2, 4, and 6. Bottle at month 8. The mead had cleared and was finished fermenting by the racking at month six. During the last two months in the fermenter there was no airlock activity at all, and nothing more settled out.

I waited the extra two months to be certain that the fermentation was complete. There is still some residual sugar, and I did not want the mead to continue fermenting in the bottles.

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Classification:

 mead, metheglin

Ingredients:

 12 lbs. Florida Wildflower Honey

2 lbs. Honey blend (Sam's - cheap) + 2 cups for starter

1.5 cups New York Maple Syrup - Grde A - Med. Amber

2 oz. Yeast Nutrient - from Beverage People - w/hulls (I think???) 

1 tsp Acid Blend

1/2 fresh lemon juice some pulp

4 pieces dried orange peel

5 pieces dried tangerine peel

3 pieces dried lemon peel

1 oz. corriander

1/4 tsp Irish Moss

Wyeast sweet mead yeast

Procedure:

Yeast starter. 1.5 liter - 1 week and 2 days old Wyeast Sweet Mead yeast. In 1.75 liter bottle. Starter from 2 cups honey blend and 1 tsp. of Yeast Nutrient above. Boiled and chilled.

Other Yeast Starter - 1.2 liter - 3 day old Wyeast American 1056. in 1.75 liter bottle. Started with 1.5 cups light DME with a few hop cones. Boiled and chilled.

 Started Saturday morning by generating ~6 gal RO (Reverse Osmosis) water. Then treating it with 1 tsp. gypsum, 1tsp. CaCO3, 1 tsp Sea Salt. Brought to a full boil in 8gal brew pot for 30 min. Heat off, let sit till finished eating and cool to 90 (all temps in C) added Honeys and syrup (75 min). Temp dropped to 75. Back on heat.

 Stirred a few times for 30 min. (45 min) Temp up to 77. Added rest of yeast nutrient and acid blend. Added lemon juice (40 min). Chopped peels and corriander in chopper and added (35 min). Small amount of Irish Moss added (15 min). Temp at 80. Started to get some hot break and moving around quicker. Let sit 10 min. Final Temp at 82.

Heat off, sat 5 min. Stirred well (whirlpooled). Covered with saran wrap, put lid back on and ice bathed for 2 hrs. Removed saran wrap to find a nice conical forming upward from the center of the brew pot. Crystal clear with spices and fruit mostly in the center.

Racked to carboys. 2.5 gal. got the Ale yeast and 3.5 gals. got the Mead yeast. OG was 1.079. Nice citric smell and taste. Will try to keep temp at 68-75F for fermenting. Will post results 6 months to a year from now.

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 Classification:

 mead, traditional mead...

Ingredients: (5 gallons)

Procedure:

Bring 1 1/2 gallons of water to a boil. Add the honey and boil for about 15 minutes (just to sterilize it and get it dissolved) then add all the other stuff. Pour into your carboy and fill to 5 galons. Mix, let cool, pitch yeast.  

 You could also be more scientific about this and add specific amounts of citric and tartaric acid as well as specific amounts of the salts and whatnot but for me that seems a bit anal. I like to treat brewing like cooking not a like chemistry experiment.

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 Classification:

 mead, melomel, honey, berry mead, raspberry mead, blueberry mead, blackberry mead, cherry mead.

 Ingredients:

Procedure:

Boil 1 1/2 gallon (6l) of water and stir in honey. Add other ingredients (nutrient,gypsum,acid blend) and reduce boil to simmer add Irish Moss 10 minutes before finishing allow to cool and sparge into carboy with 2 or three lites of room temperature water add water to 1 below neck of carboy.

Allow to cool to room temperature. Rehydrate yeast to instructions and add to must. Allow to set for 24 hrs. Then add thawed fruit slightly mashed.

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 Ingredients: (for 1 gallon)

 3.5 lbs. clover honey

4-5 cups fresh sweet basil leaves, loosely packed, picked about a week earlier

"the house yeast"

 Procedure:

 First, I boiled a few pints of water with the basil leaves, to make a tea. Leaving the leaves (pardon the pun) in the pot, I added the honey. The temp was right about 150F at that point, so I let it sit for a few minutes to pasteurize. I covered the pot, and put it in a sink filled with ice water.

 About 20 minutes later it had cooled to about 60F, and I transferred it to a 1-gallon jug which had the dregs from a dandelion wine in it. The dandelion wine was the fourth or fifth reculturing of a yeast I've been using for about a year now. It's a mix of Wyeast European Ale yeast and Wyeast Champagne yeast, probably pretty heavy on the Champagne at this point, due to alcohol levels.

 Possibly contaminated, but a sip of the dandelion wine told no such tale. (Though it was very immature, it didn't taste contaminated.) I topped it off with pre-boiled and partially cooled (could have done better, but it mixed in okay) water. 2 days later, it still hadn't started, and then I remembered that I had forgotten to aerate it.

There was an airlock on the mead, so I wasn't terribly worried. I shook that jug mightily, aerating with vigor. It is now fermenting merrily, about 1 week later. I think this should probably be the last time I use that yeast.

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Ingredients: (for 3 gallons)

Procedure:

 Initially, only six pounds of the honey was added to preboiled water and pasteurized at 150 F for 15 minutes with the yeast nutrient and hulls. After cooling with an immersion chiller, the yeast starter was added and air was pumped through the must for 25 minutes with an aquarium pump.

 After one month the specific gravity dropped to 1.008, so the mead was racked and two more pounds of honey were added. After another five weeks, the gravity was 1.020, the pH was 3.2, and the acidity was 0.7% acid. This was too acidic, so I added the calcium carbonate. After another month, the numbers were 1.015, 3.7, and 0.6%. I then added the sodium benzoate to kill off the yeast and another half pound of honey. Three days later I added the sparkaloid and polyclar.

 Then one week later with a specific gravity of 1.019, I bottled straight from the carboy. I should have waited longer to add the clarifiers and even longer to bottle. Then I would have had less sediment in the bottle.

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Ingredients:

Procedure:

Skimmed and heated honey to 170 degrees in 1 gal water for 30 min. Added 6 oz.. ginger and OJ, and let sit for another 30 min on the stove with no heat. Mixed in 4 gal. more water with must in primary.

Starting S.G. 1.082, on 11/17/95.

Racked off ginger mead, SG was 1.067, mainly to get it off sediment.

Took an a SG reading of the orange ginger mead. S.G. 1.030. Extremely sweet and gingery, should be really good when it goes dry. Aprox 6.5%.

Racked off Orange-ginger mead into one 5 gal. carboy. Small bottle we tasted last week had an S.G. 1.020 and large carboy had S.G. of 1.040. Loads of crud on the bottom of both containers.

Tasted both. Big bottle sample way too sweet, small bottle sample sweet but getting to a drinkable stage. Strong ginger taste in both samples. Time will tell. Small sample already at 7.8% alcohol and is not nearly done.

Tested Orange-Ginger batch. S.G. 1.026. Still very sweet but getting there, need time for this batch to mature.

Racked off Orange-ginger mead. S.G. 1.020. Ginger taste is becoming prominent., honey taste is quite noticeable. Overall fruity and sweet, honey Moselle kind of flavor.

Racked off Firewater mead still at S.G.1020. Fine fruity and gingery smell and taste.

Bottled Firewater. S.G. 1.020. A poignant smell, certainly can taste the ginger in it.