Just Mead

  I've had a professionally made Elderberry and Currant mead that was in the wine category, and I have had my homebrewed Elderberry Mead (that used wine yeast).  But I had not had the pleasure of drinking a plain mead, just water, honey, and yeast.

 So I took 3 (three) cups of the rawest honey I could find, M&L Titmore in St. Albans, Vt, and 12 cups of water. I warmed some water and mixed it with the honey to get it to liquify enough to pour into the carboy. Then I added about 1/5th of a Red Star Wine Yeast Packet.
I put a air lock on top and set it off to the side with one of the handmade carboy covers on it on Thanksgiving day at 12:30 in the morning.
On December 12th I bottled it straight out of the primary fermentor. I had taken a sample a few days earlier and decided to bottle it early to keep the sweetness.

Fridged some on the 23rd of December so that they would be cold to drink on Christmas. It is wonderful. There is a slight bitter alcohol scent that is smelled over the flower bouquet, but when it is tasted there is only the flowers. The lovely sweet taste of the honey is prominent  with a after taste of flowers.

I was not expecting this level of carbonation to be there. That cap is actually popped out not dented in. I will at least do a month or so in a secondary fermentor the next time around if I use the same yeast. I may try just a ale yeast, or and ale yeast then a wine yeast, oh the possibilities.  Anyway this is a very simple recipe and very good (of course that depends on how good your honey is too).  Enjoy.

Pine Wine

It seems that I have been neglecting my poor blog immediately after starting it, and so much has happened too!
I have brewed and bottled a mead (recipe log coming soon (I promise)) and right now I am brewing a Pine Wine.

I boiled a double fist full of pine needles off the White Pine in my front yard in a gallon of well water (I put the needles in the pot then poured the cold water over them) for thirty (30) minutes.

While this was going on I put three (3) cups white sugar in the gallon carboy.












After the 30 min. passed I strained the wort and poured that hot over the sugar and stirred with a long stick.















I poured one (1) cup out into a large measuring cup. Then I rinsed out the pot and put the carboy in that and filled the pot with cold water to cool the wort faster.  Once the set aside cup cooled I poured the 1/5th packet of Red Star "Premier Cuvee" wine yeast in it. Then I sprinkled one (1) tablespoon white sugar in that to help speed that up.





When that got frothy and the carboy was cool enough I pitched the started yeast into the carboy and set it aside in a bakeing dish (to help catch any spill over) with the carboy cover over it and a air lock on it.