Bottling my mead

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A few months ago, I started up my first batch of mead. The process was really simple; just honey, water and yeast is all you need. I also added some yeast nutrient to help the yeast get started quicker, but that's not strictly necessary. The specific ingredients are as follows:

• 1350g Orange Blossom Honey
• 5g Lalvin ICV-D47 Wine Yeast
• 1.5g FermFed DAP Free Yeast Nutrient

I mixed up the yeast and the FermFed in a little bit of warm water, and then I mixed up the honey and the water in a gallon jug. It takes some effort to get all the honey dissolved, but it will all dissolve. I then pitched the yeast mixture into the honey water (this is properly called must). Lastly, I put an airlock on the jug and put the jug in my wine fridge (set to 65F) to let it ferment. After two months, the fermentation had stopped enough that it seemed ready to transfer into another container for aging. You don't really want the mead to be sitting on the sediment layer (called the lees) since it can impart some yeasty flavors. It sat in secondary for three months until today when I bottled it (this is generally considered the minimum amount of time to age a mead).

The mead came out very well. It was a bit sweeter than expected. I had a starting gravity of 1.094 and a final gravity of 1.010 which makes for about 11.2% ABV. I had expected it to ferment to dryness (FG < 1.000), and I don't quite remember the ratio of honey to water necessary to achieve this. More research is required. I ended up with seven 16oz bottles of which I intend to draw out my consumption so I can see how it changes as it ages further.

Here's a low quality image for no real reason:

By Michael

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