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55 gallon oak barrel big batch ?s

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What I'll likely do once I narrow it down to which mead I'll attempt this with is post a new thread detailing my exact layout with much more detailed info and hopefully a few of the nice people here will comment on it with anything i might not have thought of.
 
I think you should do a bunch of one gallon batches to see what you like best. I just worry that it will take a few months/ a year to figure it out and meanwhile the barrel could go the way of the dodo. If it was me, I would probably go with a traditional mead that is good on its own but can also be used as a base for various fruit and spice infusions. Also always remember that carbonation means you can have two distinctly different meads even if you just made one. Throw a sweet still mead into a keg and force carb it and you get a whole 'nother animal.
 
That's basically exactly what I'm doing. I'm not a huge fan of carbonated meads so I'm staying away from that but like I said I'm making a handful of different one gallon batches as we speak. Some of them i started a couple of months ago, some a month ago and the bomm recipe just a couple of nights ago. I've been using different honeys and different yeast for them. my dad is also making a number of different meads and has been primarily focusing on traditional style mead. So between the two of us and the internet I am learning a great deal about making mead.

However, I'm just not patient enough to do a mead that will take a year to be good. I like the idea of a quicker mead that i can age in the barrel for a few months so all the recipes I've attempted or created myself have been quicker meads.

And don't worry about the barrel, lol. I Have plenty of sulphur sticks and I'm perfectly capable of filling it and cleaning it every couple of months. It'll be ok while I wait.

I'm really excited about doing this project and maybe my enthusiasm makes it sound like I'm rushing to do this without putting any thought into it but I intend to do this in a way where I end up with a pretty good chance of having a great mead. If i can't manage to make a mead in the next few months I think would work than I'll keep at it till i get it figured out.

thanks for the advice!
 
MOst of the carbonated meads I have tried have an annoying carbolic bite at the beginning that really gets to me. But I think that a good sweet high alcohol mead would benefit from some carbonation and the sweetness would balance the bitterness of the Co2. I don't know if I'm talking nonsense with the previous statement, but it's my perception. I can tell you that there are a few meads that I'll be annoyed by at first but then will drink way too much of once I get past that first sip. Monk's Mead in Georgia was a perfect example of that. Had to be driven home after a few of those.

My point is that 55 gallons is a lot, as has been noted earlier and you may want to think about being able to have a little variety. The good thing about such a large quantity is that you will have enough to drink as is, infuse with fruit, and still be able to set aside 2 or 3 cases fro long term aging.

But be careful! Mead packs on the pounds like nothing else I've ever consumed!
 
That's funny. I used to drink a lot of beer. In the last 4 months the only thing I've changed about my diet is i drink mead instead of beer and I've lost weight. I think the beer is worse than the mead.
 
I just Googled bulk beer bottles and went through the first dozen or so and figured out which one would be cheapest with shipping. I forgot to save the link but I'll look again and post it when I get a min.
 
mead said:
That's funny. I used to drink a lot of beer. In the last 4 months the only thing I've changed about my diet is i drink mead instead of beer and I've lost weight. I think the beer is worse than the mead.
Click to expand...

Ahh, the dreaded beer belly. Funny thing that is just starting to come to light: it's not actually a beer belly per se; it's a gluten belly! The way gluten is absorbed and stored causes it to (quite stubbornly!) hang out around the midsection. What is beer full of? Gluten!

I fully agree that mead is better for you than beer. I enjoy both, but mead has never made me feel the general bloat I feel from beer the next day. Anecdotal at best, but hey, drink more mead :P
 
Hmmmmmm. Interesting. I unintentionally gluten "light" a pint Or two or three being the only bready kind of thing I consume.




Sent from my galafreyan transdimensional communicator 100 years from now.
 
Ya, beer was the only gluten i consumed also. I drank mead fairly regularly but beer was my go to drink. Ever since I started making my own mead i have only bought one 12 pack of beer and half of it has been in my fridge waiting for someone else to drink it.
 
Unless scotch is gluten, then in screwed. Lol.


Sent from my galafreyan transdimensional communicator 100 years from now.
 
Ya. I did a little reading and they manage to use gluten in all sorts of stuff i wouldn't have thought of. I probably ingest more than i think.

And scotch/whiskey is the only liquor i drink so........ I'm screwed if it's in there too. But I'm not giving up my whisky.
 
K. I Googled it. There is likely a very small amount of glutens. I think we're going to live.
 
It's been twenty days. My standard bomm is not very good. It's difficult to explain the taste.

It's either due to the huge amount of head space ( didn't think it would matter on a three week mead) or it's because of the cheap Dutch gold honey. I am pretty sure it was the honey. Well lesson learned. Don't use cheap honey.
 
I think the idea of doing a quicker Mead might be awesome in theory but in practice maybe not so much. Maybe I'll just have to wait till I move in the beginning of the year and do a normal traditional in the barrel.
 
BOMM is very good. But three weeks is too fast even for BOMM. It's drinkable in as little as 4 weeks but really it's closer to six. 4 weeks is usually enough to get it completely fermented and starting to clear. Unless your temps got high it should taste good (and pretty sweet) at three weeks.
 
Well I'm not dumping it out yet. We'll see how it goes. Anybody who knows me knows that patience isn't my strong suit... Lol. I'll just continue to wait.
 
But this doesn't taste like young mead. It's got a weird flavor I can't quite explain. Maybe the ale yeast makes it taste different than a typical young mead?
 
It does. It should make u taste good. Hmmm


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