Making Booze

18 pounds of honey, bring to the slightest boil with water in a canning basin. When the meringue rises, skim it off. Decant the boiled "must" into a 5 gallon carbouy, topping it off with cold water to bring the temperature to about 80 degrees farenheit. Pitch a culture of Wyeast, sweet mead yeast. when it stops working, and falls clear, redecant the mixture into another clean carbouy (leaving the scum, or lees in the bottom of the old carbouy). It may work again, may not, when this falls clear, bottle it, age about a year. When the mead is matture, you will never drink anything finer. (I call it liquid sunshine). It is perfect for the lazy, or busy winemaker, as it will sit happily for months without you having to do anything to it. You can drink it right after the first carbouy, but you'd be cheating yourself. The long it sits, the better it gets.

Stills. Das ist verbotten. If you fail to heed my warning, there is a really excellent PDF file on line you can get that shows you everything you need to know about building a fine reflux still right the first time. However, if you can drink a matured mead that hovers around 18% alcohol, and survive the hangover, with a lust for stronger drink, mead makes an excellent distillate. (my suggestion would be to use mead distillate to fortify a sweeter mead, naturally fermented). If a person would be foolhardy enough to build a still, that is.

• Login or register to post comments