Wassail! (errr, in about 6 months...)

Started a little something new today-

Mead!

My first attempt- it's SUPER easy. One of my homebrewing buddies gave me the rundown:

-heat a half-gallon of water (preferably spring water, tap might be ok, definitely not distilled) to 160deg.
-add three pounds of honey (as close to "right out of the beehive and strained" as you can find)
-bring mixture to 160deg and let it sit there for 10 minutes. DO NOT BOIL!
-place this into an ice bath. Don't let any of the water in the bath into the pot (cover it). Bring the temp down to around 90 degrees.
-prepare yeast as directed on the package (you'll want a wine yeast or similar. I used EC1118)
-decant the honey/water mixture into your 1 gallon carboy (I am using an old gallon jug from cheap wine, a juice bottle would work too)
-add the yeast, add remainder of water to bring it up to the level of the neck of the bottle
-add fruit (raisins, in this case) to act as a yeast nutrient. Honey doesn't have a lot of what the yeast needs to work, and wine yeasts work slowly, making more time for foreign yeasts and O2 to get into the bottle. I used 10 small raisins.
-cap and shake the bottle
-remove cap, put a piece of plastic wrap over the bottle and wind a rubber band securely (not loosely, not tightly) around the neck of the bottle. This makes a cheapo "air lock"- the pressure generated by the yeast will "fart" out past the rubber band. Actual airlocks are preferred, and cheap. I just don't have a local homebrew store here- I ordered a couple from the place upstate that carries them- $1 a piece.

More details, and a pic, soon. I'm looking at about 2 weeks to rack this off the yeast cake into another carboy (gotta get busy drinkin' that cheap wine!), and 6 months til bottling.

You can learn a lot by watching youtube...

Been digging around the 'net for homebrewing info... I'd never have realized that extra time in the bottle would matter with beer...



Looks like I am NOT going to be drinking any of that West Coast Pale I bottled 10 days ago, for about another 20 days. GRRRRRRRRrrrrrrr

hmm.. definitely time to get some mead going again... that'll make me learn patience!!