These meads flavored with flowers are something quite special. The flavor of the flowers in these is not so marked as when more flowers are used to make flower wines. The amounts of flowers given in these recipes give a delightful background flavor while allowing the flavor of the honey to remain unmasked. These ‘meads’ are not, strictly speaking, meads, but I call them meads because the basic material is honey. All flower mead recipes make for medium sweet wines. Those who know in advance that they must have all wines dry should use not more than three-and-a-half pounds of honey instead of the four pounds given in the recipes. Those who must have all wines on the sweet side should use not less than four-and-a-half pounds and not more than five pounds instead of the four pounds given in the recipes.
Clover Mead
Use purple (sometimes called mauve) clover.
- 4 lb. honey
- ¼ oz. citric acid
- ¼ pint strong freshly-made tea
- 2-3 pints clover head
- yeast - nutrient
The clover heads should be loosely packed in the measure and not pressed down hard.
Mix honey with about half a gallon of hot water, bring slowly to boil and boil for two minutes.
Turn into polythene pail containing the clover heads. Add citric acid and tea and make up to one gallon with boiling water. Add extra quart of boiling water to make up for the space occupied by the flower heads - regardless of the number of pints used. Allow to cool to approximately 65ºF, and add yeast and nutrient. Cover as directed for beers and ferment in warm place for five-six days.
Strain out flower heads and return strained liquor to fermenting vessel. Cover again as before and continue to ferment thus for a further five-six days. Then siphon into gallon jar, leaving as much deposit behind as you can. Fit fermentation lock and leave until all fermentation has ceased. Fermentation may go on for as long as several months. When finished and the wine is clear it should be siphoned into another jar and bunged down for one year, after which it may be bottled.
4½ - 5 lb. honey
¼ oz. citric acid
¼ pint strong freshly-made tea
yeast - nutrient
Mix honey with about half gallon of hot water, bring slowly to boil and boil for two minutes. Turn into polythene pail, add citric acid and tea and make up to one gallon with boiling water. Allow to cool to approximately 65ºF, then add yeast and nutrient. Cover as directed for beers and ferment in warm place for ten-fourteen days. After this, proceed as for dry table mead.
- 4-4 ½ lb. honey
- ¼ oz. citric acid
- ¼ pint strong freshly-made tea
- yeast - nutrient
Mix honey with about half a gallon of hot water, bring slowly to boil and boil for two minutes. Turn into polythene pail, add citric acid and tea and make up to one gallon with boiling water. Allow to cool to approximately 65ºF, then add yeast and nutrient. Cover as directed for beers and ferment in warm place for ten-fourteen days. After this, proceed as for dry table mead.
Boiling one gallon of honey and water mixture often proves difficult owing to a vessel holding a good deal more than a gallon being required. Therefore, I have arranged the method to allow for half the water to be used at the start - or approximately half, it will not matter if you are a pint over or under the amount given to start with. As will be seen, the mixture is made up to one gallon before the yeast is added, and this is all that matters.
Dry Table Mead
- 3½ lb. honey
- 1 oz. citric acid
- ½ pint strong freshly-made tea
- yeast - nutrient
Mix honey with about half gallon of hot water, bring slowly to boil and boil for two minutes. Turn into polythene pail, add citric acid and tea and make up to one gallon with boiling water. Allow to cool to approximately 65 Of. and then add yeast and nutrient. Cover as directed for beers and ferment in warm place for ten-fourteen days.
If using hydrometer, take reading when mixture has cooled to the point where the yeast is added.
After ten-fourteen days, pour into gallon jar, leaving as much deposit behind as you can. Fit fermentation lock and leave in warm place until all fermentation has ceased. It may be several months before this happens, but when fermentation has ceased and the mead is clear, it should be siphoned off the deposit into another jar and bunged down and kept for one year or it may be bottled and sealed; then some may be used right away and a few bottles kept to mature. Don’t judge young mead for it is not at its best; at a year old it will have mellowed and developed its full flavour and bouquet.
As with all wines, mead may be sweet, medium or dry. It may also be sparkling. To make sparkling mead one must start with a gravity of 1.100 and when fermentation has finished the hydrometer reading should be 1.000 or less. The mead may then be primed as for beers, and put in screw-stoppered bottles where refermentation will charge the mead with gas in the same way as beers. But because we use rather more sugar in mead making (the sugar being in the honey), it is not always safe to rely on the hydrometer to give deadly accurate results of fermentation. By this, I mean that we are sometimes unsure whether all sugar has been fermented out.
Now, if we primed a mead to make it sparkling and some sugar remained unfermented, this, in addition to that used from priming, would charge the mead with so much gas that the bottles might explode. So, my advice is to leave sparkling meads to those with experience, unless you are certain that all sugar has been fermented out before priming.
There are many sorts of mead: Sack mead is sweet mead of about 14% of alcohol by volume; Metheglin is the same as Sack mead but is spiced according to whim - and often ruined, incidentally, by the over zealous. This may be dry or sweet.
The spices and other flavoring are for some reason referred to as cruits. Their variety is limited only by the scope of the imagination. I am not fond of spiced mead - at least, not that flavored with ginger and clove. Not only do I dislike it for itself, but I consider it a waste of good honey to use ginger and cloves. If you want a ginger-flavored or clove-flavored wine, surely less regal basic ingredients could be used. Many people ruin elderberry wine with cloves so that they have clove wine rather than an elderberry wine finely flavored with clove. So don’t spoil good spiced meads or Metheglins by over-spicing.
Rosemary, cloves, nutmeg, ginger, mace and cinnamon are the usual flavorings and these must be added to suit the tastes of the operator. Start with a little and increase the amount until you have the strength of flavour required. This will vary greatly with each operator and the only guidance I can give is not to add more than one clove to the gallon to start with and only a very small amount of bruised root ginger. Better not to add enough and be able to increase the amount in safety than to over-do it at the start.