mead-lovers@nsa.hp.com
Send digest subscribe, unsubscribe, or any other administrative requests to

mead-lovers-request@nsa.hp.com

NOTE: There is now an MLD FTP archive on sierra.stanford.edu in pub/mead

---

Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1993 07:28:15 -0700 (   )
From: schiefferr%postoffice.agcs.com@agcs.com (Ron Schieffer)
Subject: My try at pyment 

Some of you may recall a couple of months back when I made a
request for mead recipes with grapes. After getting a half
dozen or so recipes, I decided to put together the following.

This is the story so far…

Ingredients:

2 gallons of purified water (store bought)
6 lbs of mesquite honey
1/2 teaspoon yeast nutrient
1/2 teaspoon acid blend
4 lbs of grapes (frozen)
1 package of whitbread ale yeast.

Heated water to boiling.
Turned off heat, then slowly added honey while stirring
continuously.
Ran the frozen grapes through the food processor.
Put grape mush into kettle with water and honey. Turned
heat back on (due to cold grapes) until close to boiling
but not quite. Turned heat back off – covered – and let
cool.
Poured contents through strainer to get most of the grape
pulp out of the mixture.
Separated remaining contents into two one gallon jars and
added yeast.
O.G 1.076

Extremely vigorous fermentation within four hours.

After nine days, racked to second container. Still extremely
cloudy, but that is to be expected due to the grape mush
being added directly to the boiling honey/water mix.
I tasted it during the transfer-this one’s gonna be good!
Gravity reading at transfer – 1.020.
It is still fermenting now although very slowly. I will
probably put it in the refrigerator shortly to stop the
fermentation and settle out as much of the yeast as possible
before bottling. I want this one sweet.

Things to do for next time:

1. Be more prepared for blow-off.
   
2. Some kind of container to hold the grape mush in the
   kettle. (cheesecloth bag??)
   

Most of you who have made many, many meads will probably
read this in horror. What – no precise control of
temperature? Adding the grape mush straight into the
kettle? I am sure there are other things also.

I always have an ear out for improvements, but most of the
time I just let go and have fun and see what comes out.

Let me know what you think!

Ron

---

Ron Schieffer @ AG Communication Systems .

schiefferr@agcs.com ._______|_______.

If you do good every day, you will go to the spirit \(*)/
world and see other good people on the other side. o/ \o
If not, you will not see them. -Joe Flying Bye

---

Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1993 18:46:38 -0500 (UTC -05:00)
From: ROWLEY@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Commercial Examples 

Howdy, all.

I heard that there were no examples of commercial mead in the

US. (supposed to be, that is). If I am not mistaken, though, there is
something in the northwest (don’t recall where or what, exactly) as
well as a winery in Weston, MO, north of KC, which sells mead year-
round. Other than knowing it begins with a ‘P’ I don’t recall its name.
Can anyone else out there come up with other examples (perhaps a little
less vague)? And what’s the legality of shipping the stuff?

My own update: I’m sitting on 25 gallons of mead to be bottled

and put in storage. I stumbled across a quarter-case of unmarked bottles
the other night: last Christmas’ mead. So much better than quaffing it
at six months! If you can stand the wait, I suggest leaving the stuff
bottled and forgotten as long as possible (withing reason, of course-
we don’t need anyone going into withdrawal).

Matthew Rowley
Dept of Anthropology
University of Kansas
rowley@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu

---

End of Mead Lover’s Digest

---