Mead yeast propagation

Thursday morning I am activating the "smack pack" for the yeast. If you click it, you'll see the details for the strain I'm using, and that its tolerance for alcohol will ferment up to 18%, under ideal conditions. Nice. One slight problem with that is that I will pretty much have to make the mead around 18% alcohol if I want any residual sweetness. Otherwise after I bottle it, it will continue to ferment any residual sugar, and if theres enough sugar the bottle will explode. Also, as i said, meads take a long time. Fermenting to 18% and then letting it clear up could possibly take a year or more.

I realized I only have five 4-liter fermenters, so I picked up my 6.5 gallon fermenter to make a sixth, larger batch. I also picked up some extra honey for this. So my plans are to make the 3 metheglyns in small fermenters (shooting for 12% alcohol), a mango melomel around 15% (some other fruit if I can not find mango at this time of year), a sack mead (as close to 18% as i can get it), and I will use the large fermenter to make 4 gallons of the sparkling mead at around 8% alcohol, and eventually keg it and serve it on draft. The sparkling mead is the only one I am pretty sure I will finish this summer. The others may take forever, I don't really know. At least they should all be done in time for my college graduation party in 2017.

I now have my yeast strain, and have finalized plans on how much mead I will make. Next I looked up pitching rates for meads, and couldn't find anythign about meads on the wyeast site, so I looked at recommendations for high gravity ales, and figured that I should definitely have at least 20 million cells per milliliter for such high gravity meads. The smack pack has 100 billion cells, and I am planning on making 9 gallons, so If I just pitched that much yeast, I would have about 3 million cells per milliliter. I have to use multi-step propagation technique. After several days, I will put the smack pack into 0.75 gallons of low gravity (1.040) mead, and let that ferment for a few days. Then I will pour that into about 2 more gallons of low gravity mead, and let that sit for a few days. I will be left with about 2.5-3 gallons of low gravity mead, and I will split this up between the 6 fermenters so that I about 20 million cells per milliliter. I didn't do all of this in my head. Theres a mead yeast propagation growth calculator on the wyeast site. Time to have a Green Flash West Coast IPA and recover from all that planning, driving to pick up supplies, and math.

Mead continued (continued)

So I got 6 airlocks, 6 rubber stoppers which hopefully fit my stable of 4-liter glass fermenters, an ounce of pectic enzyme powder, enough Keystone Homebrew house blend of yeast nutrients for 6 gallons of mead, enough root beer flavoring base to make 4 gallons of draft root beer with my kegging system, a liquid smack pack of "dry mead" yeast, 2 pounds of pale chocolate malt (essential for a smooth chocolate stout or an imperial red ale), and these 2 books:

Classic Beer Style Series: Stout by Michael J. Lewis

and

The Compleat Meadmaker by Ken Schram

The mead book seems pretty awesome, and with my current supplies plus what Goody's uncle said he had for me, it looks like were going to have enough mead to make us have to go for a Valhalla-themed common room in the suite next year. Btw, Goody's uncle steve sent me an email saying it was honey from an amish bee-keeper. I'm pretty hyped. According to most of what I've been reading about mead-making, honey bought directly from a bee-keeper is really legit. An amish beekeeper? That makes me like the Jay-Z of the meadmaking world! Too bad the Beyonce of the mead-making world is probably the amish beekeeper that the honey came from. I could be down with that though.

For anyone interested, all nutrients required for proper yeast growth are provided in brewing by the malted barley. I had to buy yeast nutrient because the nutrients are not naturally found in honey (or in grapes for wine-makers). The pectin enzyme powder is a combination of pectinase and maltodextrins. The pectinase will basically allow me to make a Melomel (fruit mead) without resulting in a hazy mead. I am thinking about going with mango mead to make up for my lackluster attempt at Doorman-go, my golden mango-honey ale. It is still sitting in a fermenter in my garage from almost a year ago.

The 6 rubber stoppers and air-locks will allow me to ferment 6 different types of mead at the same time. Mead takes a long time to ferment out, clarify, and mature, anywhere between a month and 3 years, depending on the type of mead. This is opposed to the one time I kegged and served a dry stout less than 4 days after brewing it. I am hoping to do some high-alcohol meads around 14 percent alcohol, so they may take awhile. I might also go for a 8-10 percent sparkling mead with some fruit. So right now I am likely going for three Metheglins (spiced mead) using the herb and spice packets Goody's uncle left him, a mango Melomel, possibly a sack mead (extra strong alcohol % and extra sweet) and either a sparkling mead or another melomel. Strawberries are not great for beer brewing, but if I can find any evidence that they work well for mead, then I might try for that. I doubt I will ever be able to find prickly pear cactus fruit, but if I can, the recipe in Charlie Papazian's The Homebrewer's Companion is supposedly the holy grail of mead. When the guy who started the homebrewing movement says its the best beverage hes ever had, that means something.

I will finally get to use my kegs for force carbonating something non-alcoholic and my counter-pressure bottle filler to fill bottles of root beer. I am thinking of starting with a basic root beer base, and then adding cinnamon or vanilla bean or something like that. Hit up the comments section if you have any suggestions for this or for a variety of mead you'd like to see.

Finally, the Stout book seems pretty cool. Hopefully it covers both dry stouts and imperials. Its both Goody's and my favorite style of beer so I'm sure buying it will pay off in dividends.

Mead continued

So I spent the last 70 bucks I have to my name at Keystone Homebrew today. 6 airlocks, 6 rubber stoppers which hopefully [post to be continued in 20 minutes, I have to go to taco bell on Berber's dime]

The most popular blog in Lancaster County

Ten minutes ago I was woken by the sound of Goody's answering machine.

"Hello, this message is for Dan Shaw. It's Jared's aunt and I heard you were trying to make mead. I have 60 pounds of honey if you want it...I guess I'll try to get in touch with you some other way..."

Yeah, its called the comments section.

I'll take that deal, Howie!

Brenden: if you brew more than two times on your own dime this summer ill buy you ingrediatnts for anything you want

Boneshaws Bla Bla Law Blog

Tonight I finally ran out of my own beer I brought to my house-sitting gig and am drinking some of Goody's Red's Rye P.A. and watching the Star Wars trilogy. Tonight I got 12 pounds of cloverleaf honey so I can begin my mead-making career in the next few days. Goody left me 3 packets of herbs and spices for mead-making along with a couple pounds of DARK honey unsuitable for making a delicately spiced mead (DUH!), and my first two calls from him and Sean concluded with "Yo you make that mead yet?". I guess they dont understand the preparation needed. Ive already gotten 3 gallons of spring water, 12 lounds of LIGHT honey, picked up three 4-liter glass fermenters from home, as well as star-san. Then I picked up the half-dozen books I have which at least touch on mead-making for a few pages, and I've read about half of it so far. Tuesday evening I think I'll make a trip to a homebrewing store to pick up rubber stoppers, airlocks, yeast nutrient, and mead yeast. The spice kits contained dry yeast of questionable origin, and also say they should be used within 6 months of purchase. Knowing Goody, they were a bar-mitzvah present. So basically I am going to probably drop 60 bucks making 3 gallons of mead, and I am not going to even be able to use anything from the kits. Whatevs. On to a Backwoods Bastard from Goody's stash.