My Lords and Ladies of the Guild
As an amateur Brewer.... mostly in Ginger beer.....
one is after a little help, if that is not too much to ask.
I am looking into brewing Mead..... i do have one small problem as in I only have 1 gallon Demi Johns rather than the 5 Gallon Carboys that are suggested in most recipes... what would be the best way to brew mead and things fantastic?
Prof. Phineas
Well, if you reduce the quantities then you easily could do it in a demijohn (most recipes I use for my brewing feature quantities for making a gallon at a time) as most mead recipes I've seen specify the amount of honey per gallon. However, if you do wish to make larger quantities, 5 gallon polythene buckets are readily available (check in your local Wilkinson's, they're the only major high street retailer to really stock home brewing supplies). The only difficulty you would have in using demijohns for mead is the storage after racking, as whilst the mead's in the demijohn, you can't use it for anything else, but they do make excellent brewing vessels.
I always make mead in one gallon demijohns, because otherwise I would never drink all of it
If you find a recipe that you want to follow and that is for a 5 gallon batch, just divide the ingredients up by 5 and you should be fine.
Make sure to only use 1/5 of the amount of yeast called for in the recipe as well; anything more than that is just overkill and can result in excess sediment.
What kind of mead are you wanting: dry, medium, sweet, or something in-between?
The desired sweetness and alcohol content will be what determines how much honey you use.
You can also add fruit or fruit juice to change up the flavor.
One of my favorites that I make regularly is an orange mead.
If you do add fruit/juice, do it at the beginning of fermentation.
If you want to add spices or something like that, do it when fermentation ceases or it can cause some very strange flavors.
As far as storage after racking goes, if you only have the one demijohn you can rack the mead into a clean gallon water/juice jug, wash the demijohn, and then re-rack into the demijohn.
I would suggest racking every few weeks; you don't want the mead to sit on the sediment for too long, because it can result in off-flavors.
Once fermentation is finished, I would suggest bottling it to age it.
That way, you can open one bottle, drink it, and then determine if you want to let the rest age for longer before drinking.
