I'm one for keeping life simple. I didn't always. But age does that to you.

I recently made some mead and had to jig a bit of math to work it all out. Being in Canada our gallons are imperial and not the same as US. After a fair amount of checking and double checking I opted to convert the basic recipe into grams. I wasn't positive if my gallon jugs were imperial or US. Turns out they were imperial so it was good I made the conversion.

Typically it's 3lbs of honey for 1 US gallon of water. In grams it's a 1 gram honey to 2.78 gram water conversion. With that you can scale it to whatever size you'd like. And of course having bees I'm using raw honey.

I ended up making a half gallon or so equivalent to test the waters and mixed the honey and water together with a pretty vigorous shake in the jug to aerate the mix well. I also ended up taking some of the water needed (before any honey was added) and brought it to a boil with a black teabag and a handful of raisins that were chopped up. The raisins were for yeast nutrient and the tea bag to add tannin. It was about a cup of water. Once at a boil I let it stay there for a minute or two and then let it sit until cooled. The teabag and raisins were strained and only the liquid added to the jug.

As to yeast you should think about alcohol resistance. I didn't want a sweet mead but something dry and crisp so I pitched 1 gram of E118. It's a champagne yeast with an 18% alcohol resistance before it puckers out. If I wanted it sweeter I would have picked a lower alcohol resistant strain. I added 1 gram given the volume.

Lastly I cut up a clementine into 1/8ths and dropped it into the jug to see if that would translate well. Be careful if using a regular orange as the thick white pith of an orange peel could add a bitter note to the mead. You could alternatively use a kitchen peeler and peel an orange and add those to the tea boil above and not add the clementine. It's been about two weeks and I still have some slow bubbling through the airlock. The pic below doesn't show the clementine floating on the top as I added it after this pic was taken.

And of course as someone mentioned above, keep it clean. I used starsan.

 

Looks tasty! I've made JOAM a few times, and a couple variations off of it. It's a super easy, almost foolproof way to get your feet wet. I've got bottles of the stuff that's several years old and it continues to improve it seems. The recipe and videos are all over the www and YouTube.
https://gotmead.com/blog/recipe/joes-ancient-orange-clove-and-cinnamon-mead/

 

I have only made a handful of meads, I got too tied up in making beer to get into again, not a big mead guy anyway. But I followed the advice of Curt Stock, and the few I made won a couple of medals, including a 2nd BOS. His advice is solid and I would highly recommend reading his article.

https://docplayer.net/21098982-Other-fruit-melomels-for-experienced-dummies-curt-stock.html

 

Honey is all simple sugar. Definitely use yeast nutrients to keep the yeast happy or they will get a sugar crash and poop put early. I don't think fermaid k is absolutely necessary, it's likely just the brand the recipe author had on hand. As long as you use something you should be ok. And mead almost always gets better with some age on it so don't drink it all right away.

 

That's a big'un. You could freeze a bit and create some meadjack.

 

Thanks for that link!

 

Put your mead away and forget about it. It generally improves greatly with time.

 

I assume you mean when bottled. But put away for how long typically? A few months or are you thinking a year or more?

 

After bottling, I stash it away and try after a few months. I've got some that's several years old and is great. Mead is good, but I'd much rather have a few beers than a small glass of Mead.

 

I hear you.. I don't know much about mead and am going to try some small gallon batches. I have a traditional on the go now and will make some more with fruit as well. I have four beehives so the honey is easy for me so I figure why not. I'm thinking this summer/fall when I replenish the honey stock I'm going to try a braggot to see what that's like.

 

Ain't nobody got time for dat!