Jack Ratt Lyme Bay Christmas Mead, 75 cl

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In the simplest of terms, mead is essentially a honey wine. It is honey and water that is fermented with yeast and can also be flavoured with a range of fruits, hops, or spices and comes in still and sparkling form. Here, we have looked at how to enjoy mead, from serving size suggestions to drinking temperature, and even the glassware you are best to enjoy it from! What is Mead? Once water and honey have warmed, remove the containers from their bath and pour the 2 lbs of honey into the gallon jug. Recap, and shake to mix thoroughly. Once tea has cooled slightly, add it (including all the lose tea) to the gallon jug as well.

tea to flavor (the combos are endless and should be adapted to your taste, but I cut open 6 mulling spice tea bags for this venture)This recipe is for preparing one gallon of mead. If you’d like to make larger batches, you need to scale up the ingredients, making sure they are in the same proportions. Ingredients Add 1/2 tsp K2CO3. One time addition. Increased the amount to compensate for the acidity of the fruit juice. Embark on a Magic Making Mission. Enjoy festive activities, meet our friendly animals, and indulge in delicious treats this Christmas at Mead Open Farm. Book now for a memorable festive day out!

Now that we’ve discussed a few of the best meads that replace merry with berry, we can talk about the other meads that fit the holiday season. Let’s not forget the more classic favor if the berries aren’t your style, nothing wrong with enjoying something a bit more traditional. Spiced Honey Mead As the days grow colder and the wild winds start blowing down from the north, there are few things more satisfying or warming than a glass or two of something steaming, delicious, and ( ahem) alcoholic. I’ve produced a few more versions since that first batch—all interesting, all drinkable–and the mulling spices I currently have on hand in the pantry seemed to demand that a Christmas mead be made. I bottled it on the early side (eight days) so it’s retained its honey sweetness, with distinct cinnamon and orange notes. I think it’s going to make for a lovely glass to raise around the tree next week.With this recipe we’ve got another hybrid melomel/metheglin, using both the fruit and spice to blend into the final result. This recipe recommends using finings eight weeks before bottling to clarify your mead. Just boil finings with water and add the boiling water to the fermenter. Pour a small amount of mead into a glass and swill around the glass, where you should notice that it leaves behind a coating on the side of the glass. Smell My typical meadmaking process would be to use the yeast rehydration agent to prep the yeast before pitching, and then a staggered nutrient addition regimen (with degassing) to feed the ferment for the first few days. Depending on the time of year and temperature in my house, I may or may not choose to place the fermenter in a 64 °F (18 °C) temperature-controlled space. Once the fermentation is complete I always use both potassium sulfite and potassium sorbate as stabilization additives, whether I filter the mead or not. All of these additions are based on volume and there are a number of choices for the types and sources of nutrients that can be used. Additional tips and resources on the meadmaking process are included in the “Notes of the Meadmaking Process” sidebar at the end of this article.

Place the sealed honey jar and gallon jug of water in the sink and fill with hot water to warm the ingredients.Make it through the Naughty and Nice Detector and meet Father Christmas for an enchanted group story. Mead is extremely versatile and has an untold number of subcategories, including Cyser, which is mead mixed with cider. An extensive list of other varieties of mead can be found here. At this point you’ve probably got all kinds of ideas swirling around in your head for holiday-themed meads. While they also drink well out of season, something about timing them when the flavors are at the front of people’s minds really makes them sing! To that tune, I’m going to share with you four of my favorite meads that I consider perfect for the holidays. Note that all of these recipes have flexibility to adjust the amounts of spices, fruits, and other ingredients, as well as the techniques used when making them. I will outline my basic procedure, but feel free to follow your own traditional process and adapt the recipe as you feel comfortable. Christmas for the best part of a decade. Lyme Bay Winery’s Christmas mead is arguably their staroffering.

Over the nearly 15 years I had been homebrewing I ended up developing a couple basic concepts for how I made different types of meads. For most of the draft-style meads (carbonated, lower-alcohol) I tend to flavor them in the secondary. Meads containing either apple and grape juices were often co-fermented with the honey, but most others tended to have the best presentation when raw fruit was steeped with or without spices in secondary. The bold flavors and freshness is what makes this technique stand out for me. Spiced mead is a mixture of honey, water, and yeast, but with a twist. How to make spiced mead is very similar to brewing base mead . The only difference is the spices added to it, which significantly impact the mead’s flavor, taste, and color. Seasonal drinking traditions are a really interesting subject to delve into, as holiday parties and family gatherings often open people up to new beverages that aren’t available or of interest during other parts of the year. There’s also the added excitement around family traditions, which may seem unique to your family, but they often have common traits shared much more broadly. No matter who you are, where you are from or what you celebrate, there are common themes with the liberal usages of herbs, spices, and fruits, as well as unique, scarce, or prized ingredients in the holiday beverages from wherever you hail. Now that is something we can all celebrate!! Making Your Best Holiday Meads Calculate must nitrogen requirements per TOSNA Calculator. Then plug the Fermaid O needed into the Advanced SNA Calculator to find the amount needed for Dap, Fermaid K & O. While mead-drinking on the whole has become less and less common throughout the past few centuries, mulled mead is still very much enjoyed in a couple of places to this day as a traditional celebratory drink. Various parts of Sweden and Norway still enjoy warmed, spiced mead at Yule (or Christmas time), and no May Day celebration in Finland would be complete with a cup or two of this most special of drinks.Add all ingredients to a warm glass mug mixed until honey is dissolved and garnish with Star Anise & Cinnamon.