A Melomel is any Honey wine flavoured or coloured with fruit, for me it's the most common wine I make now
Hippocrass are vanilla & herb meads named after the father of medicine, Hypocrates
Pyment is the name given to a wine fermented with grapes and honey drunk in Roman times
A Cyser is the name given to any fruit that is fermented with apple juice
An Acerglyn would use Maple syrup (Acer is a Maple tree) instead of honey
And a Metheglyn which would be fermented with Honey and spices
Put your cleaned fruit into a bucket, cover in boiling water and add a crushed campden
The following day pasturise your honey and add until you reach an SG of 1.080
Add other ingredients such as citric acid, pectic enzyme, TronOzymol and
Pitch in the yeast to ferment
After a few days, strain out the fruit pulp and add more honey water until the SG is up back around 1.020 and ferment again for a few days
Strain and funnel into a demijohn, add more honey water, add airlock and ferment for 3 months until there's little to no activity
Bottling is simply a case of syphoning the liquid off the sediment, filtering through a coffee filter and bottling it ... then waiting for 3 months or more before tasting.
Blackberry Mead (Pyment)
The reality is that honey isn't cheap, but if you can make a country wine then you can make a mead. You'll just be cooking the honey in water rather than adding pounds of sugar … and you save a lot of time picking fruit!
Blackcurrant & Blackberry Mead (Melomel)
Next year we'll be keeping our own bees, but for now I bought a few Lb's of honey from the local beekeeper. I've always loved meads and this was the right time to experiment … Little did I know then, but from now on it turned out that I'd just be concentrating on meads and port style wines.
Blueberry & Strawberry Mead (Melomel)
This recipe is for two gallons. When the primary fermentation is complete I'll split the liquid into two demijohns, then when all the racking is complete, I'll age the wine with vanilla, almond extract or spices. If you want to make one gallon, use 4 Lbs of Honey and around half the can of Strawberry juice, less water and TronOzymol.
Blueberry Mead (Melomel)
Next year we'll be keeping our own bees, but for now I bought a few Lb's of honey from the local beekeeper. I've always loved meads and this was the right time to experiment … Little did I know then, but from now on it turned out that I'd just be concentrating on meads and port style wines.
Blueberry Mead w Spices (Metheglyn)
This recipe is for two gallons. When the primary fermentation is complete I'll put the liquid into two demijohns, then when all the racking is complete, I'll age the wine with vanilla, almond extract or spices. If you want to make one gallon, use 4 Lbs of Honey and around 1.5 Lbs of Blueberries and less water and TronOzymol.
Cherry Mead (Cyser)
The reality is that honey isn't cheap, but if you can make a country wine then you can make a mead. You'll just be cooking the honey in water rather than adding pounds of sugar … and you save a lot of time picking fruit!
Cranberry and Raspberry Mead (Melomel)
The reality is that honey isn't cheap, but if you can make a country wine then you can make a mead. You'll just be pasturising the honey in water rather than adding several pounds of sugar … and you save a lot of time not picking fruit!
This is an easy mead to make, all you need is fruit juice and honey … Commercial fruit juice is FULL of sugar and water, but there's enough pulp to actually work as a flavouring especially at the end of the fruit season. Just steer clear of any juices with chemicals - Always read the labels for preservatives because they kill yeast.
Grape Mead (Pyment)
When all the ingredients are in only add as much honey water as you need to reach an SG of say 1.080 - 1.085 and that will almost guarantee a dry ferment at 12%.
Loganberry Mead (Melomel)
When all the ingredients are in only add as much honey water as you need to reach an SG of say 1.080 - 1.085 and that will almost guarantee a dry ferment at 12%.
Honey Mead Wine (Traditional Citrus & Spice)
This is the traditional method of making mead wine, in the cask with oranges and spices. This honey mead wine recipe is an authentic honey flavoured wine enjoyed for centuries across a dozen cultures.
First things first: Honey has no natural nutrients so needs a lot of yeast nutrients. Honey doesn't ferment as fast as sugar so a little more patience might be needed.
When I was a young teenager in the South West of England getting hold of scrumpy or Mead was the most enjoyable use for alcohol. Back then, scrumpy was rough, usually flavoured with dead rat and Mead Wine was thick, sweet and liqueur-like ... and they both worked well on the tongue and senses.
However, I've not been able to recreate either, but this is another Mead Wine Recipe that works. This honey mead wine recipe is unusual in that traditionally the fruit and spices are left in the demijohn - I've never done this with any other wine recipe, but the great thing is that when all the orange pieces float to the mead surface, the fermentation is complete. (I suggest you use a hydrometer as a more reliable indicator)
When topping this Mead Wine up use a hydrometer. After you remove the pulp from the demijohn this mead wine will need topping up back to the neck. So use a hydrometer to note the beginning SG and the straining SG before adding too much Honey water. Only add as much honey water as you need to reach a combined SG drop of not more than 100 points by the time it finishes at 0.995 or so.
Honey Mead w Blackberries (Melomel)
This a nice variation in colour for a honey mead recipe, the flavour is still honey based, but has a warmer colour and flavour that looks great in the bottle.
First things first: Honey has no natural nutrients so needs a lot of yeast nutrients. Honey doesn't ferment as fast as sugar so a little more patience might be needed.
When I was a young teenager in the South West of England getting hold of scrumpy or Mead was the most enjoyable use of time. Back then, scrumpy was rough, usually flavoured with dead rat and Mead Wine was thick, sweet and liqueur-like ... and they both worked well on the tongue and senses.
However, I've not been able to recreate either (yet), but this is a Honey Mead Recipe that works. - Strictly speaking, adding Blackberries makes this mead a Melomel.
When topping this Mead Wine up use a hydrometer. Only add as much honey water as you need to reach an SG that will drop around 95 points in total.
Mead Wine w Orange, Cinnamon & Cloves (Metheglyn)
Here's a mead wine recipe featuring orange, cinnamon and cloves, it's not the traditional method of fermenting with the ingredients in the cask and this honey mead still tastes great … This would be called a Metheglyn mead because of the spices.
First things first: Honey has no natural nutrients so needs a lot of yeast nutrients. Honey doesn't ferment as fast as sugar so a little more patience might be needed.
When I was a young teenager in the South West of England getting hold of scrumpy or Mead was the most enjoyable use for alcohol. Back then, scrumpy was rough, usually flavoured with dead rat and Mead Wine was thick, sweet and liqueur-like ... and they both worked well on the tongue and senses.
However, I've not been able to recreate either, but this is a Mead Wine Recipe that worked for me.
When topping this Mead Wine up use a hydrometer. Only add as much honey water as you need to reach an SG of say 1.080 - 1.085 and that will almost guarantee a dry ferment at 12%.
Medlar Mead (Melomel/Pyment)
This is a great recipe, with a nice warm colour, the most difficult part is finding the Medlars! I'm lucky, I planted my own 4 years ago and in the rectory in the village there's a very large one that I get to raid in November.
When all the ingredients are in only add as much honey water as you need to reach an SG of say 1.080 - 1.085 and that will almost guarantee a dry ferment at 12%.
Peach Nectar Mead (Melomel)
This is an easy mead to make, all you need is fruit juice and honey … Commercial fruit juice is FULL of sugar and water, but there's enough pulp to actually work as a flavouring especially the higher end juices. Just steer clear of any juices with chemicals - Always read the labels for preservatives because they'll kill the yeast.
When all the ingredients are in only add as much honey water as you need to reach an SG of say 1.080 - 1.085 and that will almost guarantee a dry ferment at 12%.
Red Grape Mead (Pyment)
This recipe is for two gallons. When the primary fermentation is complete I'll put the liquid into two demijohns, then when all the racking is complete, I'll age the wine with vanilla, almond extract or spices. If you want to make one gallon, use 4 Lbs of Honey and half a can of concentrated grape juice, less water and TronOzymol. You could also leave the spiced tea out or try another tea flavour.
When all the ingredients are in only add as much honey water as you need to reach an SG of say 1.080 - 1.085 and that will almost guarantee a dry ferment at 12%.
Vanilla Mead (Hippocras)
This mead is fermented honey water with vanilla. I was desperate to make this work for a couple of reasons … In British texts, mead is known as The Honeymoon Drink and in Roman texts Uganda's Rewenzori mountains were known as the Mountains of the Moon. It should have been easy but it took a lot of racking to clear, the vanilla was quite weakened, but it was viscous and clean. After the last rack I added some Chardonnay to top it up back to the gallon because I didn't want to water it down or add more honey and risk it sweetening too much so I used it as a happy medium … it took over 18 months to bottle and it could be a HipPycrasment now!
With this one I dissolved the honey in water to pasturise and skimmed off any impurities and when cooled I added the yeast, lemon juice and TronOzymol - I fermented for 5 days stirring the bucket daily. I split and scraped the vanilla pod and pasturised the material for 30 minutes and added the liquid to the ferment. Several racking's later and a top up with a commercial wine it was bottled four months later.
Yellow Cherry Plum Mead (Melomel)
Yellow Cherry Plums are native to Somerset. I know of several Red Cherry Plums, but only one yellow. I have a red one, now 4 years old started from a stone. Lucky for me I just wait for the wind to knock off all the yellow cherry plums and collect them every year from the side of the road. If you don't have access to any of these unusual plums, you could use any yellow coloured plum, Opal or Mirabelle for example. Adding the grape juice to a Melomel makes it a semi-Pyment and gives it a broader taste, but this is all about experimentation.
2 Gallon recipe
5 Lbs of windfall ripe yellow plum cherries in Lydford on Fosse Sterilised the fruit exterior and removed the bruised & blemished fruit. Poured 3.4 litres/6 pints of boiling water over the cherry plums and added a campden tablet. Removed stones when cooled. Added the remaining ingredients to the bucket for the initial 5 day ferment. With this amount of fruit and this type of pulp, the SG readings were impossible until after the fruit was strained out when it was split into two demijohns and topped up with honey water.