September 11th 2023
Without the beekeeping husband around the adventures get more… chaotic. I’m learning to make mead! Mason left me 3lbs of honey from last season, a gallon jar with an airlock, a hydrometer and a recipe.
First I made the ‘must’ which is fancy honey water. I heated a gallon of water almost to boiling and added half a lemon, allspice and cloves for flavor. Once it was warm I dissolved the 3 lbs of honey and now it’s a must!
In my second largest pot I sanitized the one gallon jar and then filled it with 3 lbs of blackberries. Blackberries aren’t required for mead but I wanted a berry flavored one this year so Mason found a recipe that used them.
I filled the one gallon jar all the way up with the must and that’s when I realized the 1 gallon jar probably isn’t big enough for a gallon of water AND 3 lbs of blackberries. So I put down my ladle and ran to Lowe’s to get a 2 gallon food safe bucket. I sanitized that (with soap and warm water) and transferred the must and berries over. They fit perfectly.
After letting the juice cool over night I measured the specific gravity of the juice so we can see how alcoholic it is. I’m not 100% sure how this works but we measure the specific gravity before and after fermentation and the difference allows us to calculate alcohol content. (Maybe beekeeping husband can explain in the comments). The hydrometer floats in the juice and the buoyancy tells you the specific gravity. I had to try three different containers to find something tall enough that the hydrometer would float in the sample.
Then I added the yeast and gave it a good stir! The lid has an air lock so as the yeast eats the sugar in the honey and produces gas it will get released out the top while still keeping the juice sealed up. We’ll check back in a few days to see how the first round of fermentation is going. At that point we’ll transfer just the liquid to the one gallon jar and do the rest of the fermentation in there.
