Mead is one of the most wonderful things on this earth, IMHO. Here is the recipe I use to make it. It's sorta rough, but I'll try to improve it as I remember / find out how to do it better. This is a pretty quick recipe for mead.
To make 5 gallons of Mead
What you need:
- 8-10 pounds of honey
- 5 gallons of water
- yeast
- yeast energizer / fertilizer
- clarifier
- a 5 gallon brewing vessel
- an air lock
Optional
How to get this Stuff:
Go to your local brew store. There are home brewing stores in most areas, run by people who love to brew and know a lot about it.
Yeast - Champagne yeast works well. If you want to increase the amount of alcohol in the final product you can put Sherry yeast in after a few weeks, instead of champagne.
Air lock - allows gas out but not impure, germ filled air in
Brewing Vessel - You can use just about anything - 5 gallon water jugs like they use in office water coolers work well and are easy to find - but a pain in the butt to clean out.
What to do:
The most important part of brewing is to keep everything clean. Sanitize everything you use to brew.
Take a large pot and fill it with honey and put some of the water ( about 1/2 gallon - gallon). Put it on the stove or other source of heat and start bringing it to a very gentle, slow boil. As it starts to bubble up wax, bee parts and other impurities will come to the top. Skim those off. (It works better to let it all come up then start skimming it off.) Be careful not to let it boil over. This soupy mess of honey and water is called the 'must' (called 'wort' if you use malt instead of honey).
When it looks good (most of the bee parts are gone) dump it into the brewing vessel and let it cool to room temperature.
After the wort cools add the rest of the water, until the brewing vessel is full. Then put in one or two packets of yeast. Also put in the yeast energizer / nutrient (how much depends on what kind it is - read directions / ask the guys at the brew shop) If you so desire you may add acid blend now.
Then put the air lock on it and put in in a dark, non-extreme temperature place. For the first few days you may need to gently shake it, until the air lock starts bubbling.
Leave it there for a few weeks, of course you have to check on it to make sure it's still bubbling, talk nicely to it, show it off to all your friends, etc. etc.
You can now add more yeast and/or yeast energizer if you desire. Doing so will result in a faster batch.
The next step is to rack the mead. Basically all this is, is moving to another vessel so that you can get rid of the sludge on the bottom. The more times you rack your mead the better and clearer it will be. It's generally a good idea to do it once or twice. Before actually transferring the mead from one vessel to the next add the clarifier. This clumps up with the particles floating in the mead and helps them settle to the bottom.
While racking the mead you will probably want to taste it, Go ahead. You will almost definitely be able to taste the yeast in it - it's the odd aftertaste. If you think it's too dry you can add extra honey to sweeten it.
After racking the next step is to bottle the mead. The bubbling should be finished by now, lest the mead explode in the bottle. Ideally you want to use regular beer bottles and cap them, but washed out liquor bottle and/or anything else will work. However, if they don't have an air tight seal the mead will not last long.
After this you can let the mead age and improve it's taste or you can drink it right away. I usually strive for the former and end up doing the latter.
This will produce a regular, non-flavored mead. If you want to make something different there are a couple things you can do:
- Use apple juice instead of water. - Make sure you get apple juice with out preservatives. This tends to produce a dry mead, so you might want to sweeten it with apple juice and/or honey. This kind of mead is called a cyser.
- Spiced Mead - add a few spices to the mead when you start brewing it. It's best to put them in the spice bags you can buy at brewing shops. Popular spices include: Clove (Don't use much), Ginger, Grains of Paradise (Pepper) and several others.
- Other Fruit flavors are also good with mead. The easiest way to add a fruit flavor to mead is to add fruit flavoring to the batch before bottling.