I was watching a podcast about some of redstones meads and he mentioned that some of them are ready in 3 months and go out into stores. I am wondering how can I replicate this I have several that are sitting for a year or so until bottle and I have 60 lbs of orange blossom honey. I want to make a really good mead that will be done fermenting / clear / ready to drink in 3 months. How does one go about this and what is lost by this method.
meads that are ready in 3 months
- Thread starter meadsome
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From what I was told at a mead tasting Redstone sponsered, on the weaker meads, when they reach the desired gravity, they are cold crashed, sorbated, then kegged. These are bottled from a keg for carbination. This of course explains how he gets the cleared and bottled so quickly, why they taste so good is because of the raw materials. Also wonder how their "quick meads" would taste with a year or two of age on them......
Ha ha! that's not a difficult question to answer! Honest!
Not bleedin' much it isn't
So, Ok, without having any quick recipes I'm thinking along the lines of picking something that you can manage as a quick fermenter, and then any "faults" in the "green" mead, that would normally be sorted with ageing and similar techniques, but instead of ageing, you use other methods.
For instance, if whatever you make has an "alcohol hot" or medicinal type taste, then that can often be covered up with back sweetening, as can something that's very acidic in taste.
Or the other way round i.e. if it's too sweet, you can use extra acid.
Or, you might be thinking about finding an "oak extract" to help flavouring along a fair bit i.e. balance etc.
Plus, there's also possible lack of body issues, which can be improved with the use of glycerine.
What else ?????? Hum? I'd think that you should be thinking about not having too high an initial gravity - something like a max of 1100 because it's going to be easier to manage the ferment and shouldn't need to much extra care (aeration, staged nutrients, chaptalization etc). If you are very strict in working out the numbers i.e. the pH and TA etc you should be able to produce a quick fermenting batch.
Sorry I can't just come up with an instant recipe that will "just work", but the above suggestions would be some of the things to be thinking about.
Some of the other members might have more concise suggestions.......
regards
fatbloke
p.s. Oh and if you made it a melomel or similar, well to reserve some of the fruit juice for addition after the ferment is complete, then it can often help in producing "ready to drink" products quicker.
Having aged one of the Redstone bottles for a year after I bought it, they do improve with age.
Most of my big sweet meads are drinkable in about 3-4 months...but they are much nicer after say a year.
Most of my big sweet meads are drinkable in about 3-4 months...but they are much nicer after say a year.
