⁵Øl Mead$

Wort

Yeast Starter

12 lbs wildflower honey

2 c apple juice

1 ^oz Fuggles Hops

Small pinch of energizer

≈ 4 gallons distilled water

Champagne yeast

½ lemon

With Ales, the initial brew is a wort, instead of a must.

Sterilize / sanitize all equipment first.  I put 1 cup of bleach & 5 gallons of warm water into my primary fermenter, and let everything else sit in there until needed.  Rinse the bleach mix off before using.

Make yeast starter before starting wort.  Mix juice, energizer and yeast, & put in the dark.  Let sit until wort is ready.

Blend honey and 2 gallons of water normally, making sure must doesn’t boil.  After simmering for 20 – 30 minutes, add ¾ of the hops.  Simmer for another 45 minutes then skim.  Add the remaining hops and let simmer for another 15 – 20 minutes.  Strain into primary and add the lemon ½.  Cover and let sit overnight.

Add the yeast mix to the cooled wort, top off with water to 5 gallons, there should still be space on top.  Install airlock.

This should be skimmed regularly, once or twice a week until 1^st rack.  First rack around 1 month, remove lemon.  Bottle at about six months, make sure air lock popping is down to about once in ten minutes.  Should be palatable at bottling, but best to age at least 9 months (the hops will somewhat speed the aging).

OG:  1.125

Rack 1

Rack 2

Rack 3

FG:

5-19-04

6-27-04

8-14-04

Around the middle of June I switched to One-Step for sterilizing, so the racking on the 27^th was not using the bleach method.

8-14 – SG at 1.000, ph at 4.0