# Brewing Mead DIY | Equipment | Ingredients | | :------------ |:--------------| | Fermentation Jar (E1) | 3.8 L of fresh water (I1) | | Air Lock (E2) | 1.4 kg of honey (I2) | | Hydrometer (E3) | 1 gram of white wine yeast (I3) | | Filter Cloth (E4) | ~25 grams of fresh herbs (I4) | | | Yeast (Included) (I5) | For the herbs, ingredient I4, note the following: a. Make sure no woody parts of plants like barks are used b. If you are using fruits, use only the flesh of fruits and discard the peel c. If you are using dried and powdered spices, make sure they do not have any woody plant parts mixed. For powdered spices, use around 3-5 grams only for the whole 3.8 L batch of Must ## Sterilize all your equipment by 1. Spraying dilute acids like hydrochloric acid (whatever dilute acid is available) or, 2. Rinsing with vinegar or, 3. Boiling all equipments in water for 3-5 mins ## Prepare the initial mixture (Must) for fermentation 1. Bring the 3.8 L water (I1) to a boil to sterilize it 2. Add the boiled water (I1) to the sterilized fermentation Jar (E1) 3. Let the water (I1) in the Fermentation Jar (E1) cool down to hot from boiling. Adding honey to boiling water may change its taste. 4. Add the honey (I2) slowly and keep stirring the mixture to completely dissolve the honey. It is important that a complete homogenous mixture is formed and no honey settles down at the bottom. 5. Add the spices (I4) to this mixture. If you crush/pulverize the spices, they may take over the flavour of honey completely and also affect the final color of the mead. For only a hint of flavour, add the spices whole. 6. Stir the mixture thoroughly. This mixture before fermentation is called **Must**. ## Do some Hocus Phocus 1. Measure the Relative Density (Specific Gravity) of the Must. This is the baseline measurement which will be used later on to calculate the alcohol content of the Mead. Generally this is between 1.060 and 1.120. 2. Check the flavour profile of the Must and make notes for reference and measuring how the taste changes after fermentation. After this we can immediately proceed to the next section. There is no need to wait for Must to completely cool down to room temperature. Fermentation is faster in slightly warm mixture, but generally proceeds very well at room temperature as well. ## Fermentation itself 1. Use about 1 gram of the Yeast (I5) and sprinkle it over the Must mixture. This is enough for 4 L of Must. Adding too much yeast will only make the process go much faster, but will not affect the taste of the final Mead by a lot. 2. Thoroughly stir the mixture to distribute the yeast evenly. 3. Cap the fermentation jar (E1) and make sure the lid is tight. 4. Attach the airlock (E2) at the top and to make sure the hole is airtight, fill the crater in the lid where the airlock receiver hole is with water. This will guarantee that the airlock hole is not leaking any air. Mead does not usually require an air tight container, but making it air tight increases the quality of fermentation. 5. Put a few drops of water into the U-Tube of the airlock (E2), so as to forbid the inflow of air, but allow the outflow of air in case pressure builds up inside the fermentation jar (E1). 6. Stir the mixture once or twice a day for the first 48 hours. This just makes sure that yeast colonies are even more evenly spread out. ## The Period of Waiting and Observation 1. Fermentation will begin soon after yeast is added. As the fermentation happens, the sugar in the Must is metabolized by the yeast and converted into alcohol. Since alcohol has a lower density than water, the relative density of the solution will keep dropping until fermentation stops. 2. The yeast will produce metabolic waste which shows up as residue at the bottom of the jar. While not harmful to consume, the residue will have affect the taste of the final Mead. 3. You can try to transfer the Mead into another sterilized container to get rid of the residue once or twice during the fermentation process. Do not forget to sterilize this new container before transferring the Mead! For more details check point number 1 in the next section. ## Bottling and Final Measurements 1. Remove or filter the Sediment by any of the following methods: a. Sedimentation & Decantation with the filter cloth (E4) provided. In this case transfer the liquid slowly to reduce bubbles. b. Siphoning into a new sterilized Jar, in this case siphon the bottom Mead first in order to reduce the exposure to oxygen. This is because alcohol gets converted into vinegar in presence of oxygen over time. 2. Once again sterilize the Hydrometer and measure the Relative Density of the Mead. a. Dry tasting mead will read between 0.099 to 1.006. b. Medium tasting mead that is slightly sweet and slightly dry will read between 1.006 to 1.015. c. Sweet mead will fall between 1.012 to 1.020. d. Very sweet dessert mead will read anywhere past 1.02. The drop in relative density can be used along with the initial baseline relative density to calculate the alcohol by volume in the Mead (ABV) And you are done! You can consume the Mead for upto 2 years! ## Points to remember for Safe Consumption ### A note on Methanol Formation Make sure you are adding as little woody substances to the Must mixture before fermentation. The reason is that woody things are mainly composed of plant cells which contain a substance called pectin. This is one of the proteins that gives wood it's structural strength. While sugar gets metabolized to ethanol by yeast (which is what we want), pectin can get metabolized to methanol (this is poisonous). This happens when the fermenting yeast has a specific mutation, most wine yeasts have this mutation. Methanol gets metabolized into formaldehyde and formic acid in our liver and is extremely toxic to our liver and our neural systems. One good thing is that drinking ethanol is an antidote to methanol poisoning, because ethanol can bind and dissolve the methanol in our systems making it harmless. Home brewing will inevitably involve trace amounts of methanol, but with a good volume of ethanol present in homebrew mixtures, the risk is microscopic. But still, just to be sure, avoid adding woody substances to the Must mixture before fermentation. ## Calculating Alcohol By Volume (ABV) Value For basic measurement, we measure two values of relative density, one before and one after fermentation. Alcohol By Volume is given by $$ \frac{76.08 * (BaseRD - FinalRD)} { (1.775 - baseRD) } \times \frac{FinalRD} {0.794} $$ How did this formula come about? Perhaps Stochiometry. It would be cool find out.