 Here is a traditional dry mead made by Sean. Its' bottled, labeled and capped. Looks fantastic and I love the name "Drunken Spider Meadery". My thanks to sean for submitting the pic.
 And Sean's friend carved a drinking horn so they could enjoy the mead in the traditional way. Check out pics of the drinking horn here.
Here is a great example of improvising with your mead! Here is a pair of pics of Mike's mead. Mead has to be covered and protected from light as it is fermenting so... how about using a box! Great job, I love this kind of thing and my thanks to Mike for sending in the pics!!
 
Here is a terrific picture submitted by Chris. It shows his cherry melomel right after racking. You can see the cherries left behind and he did a terrific job trying to get as much of the mead into the new jug while leaving behind all the sediment. My thanks to him for sending in this terrific picture. This is a great tip for you if you are going to be racking your mead.
Here is Matt's First batch of mead. It is a three gallon batch of my orange clove mead. My thanks to him for the pic and you can check out the orange clove recipe here.
 Here are three batches of mead made by Bow. My thanks to him for sending in the pic! Here is what he has to say about these batches:
Using everything I could find on your great website I have started 3 different 1 gallon mead batches. Using 3 different honeys that I could find down here in Florida, 1 apple and cinnamon, 1 orange and raisin, and 1 with cinnamon and tea leaves. This picture just an hour after being made they already are showing signs of life. I wanted to thank you and everyone that contributes to stormthecastle. (He used the fast easy mead making method I have right here)
 Here are two batches of mead made by Brandon and Nick. They are just waiting for it to clarify! Here is what they have to say:
Hey Will, we're great fans. Your website taught us everything. I'm Brandon and my good friend Nick and I are attempting the mead. We got really into it and are very excited about it. Ill attach a picture. We have one batch of five gallons that is simply your original recipe on the front page. Then with our second we have a good amount of strawberries that we added after the first two week ferment.
 John has bottled his Nan-king and BC Cherry meads.
Here is what he has to say about these meads:
Nan-king and BC cherry meads now bottled. The bottle on the left is the straight Nan-King mead. It is so tart my tongue jumped out of my head and slapped my brain..the cherry taste lingers after swallowing..it'll be sitting for a while before tasting. The one on the right had BC cherries mixed in after the primary fermentation was done. It is considerably sweeter with a nice cherry smell and aftertaste. Made four bottles each. Was enough left over to mix one bottle of half and half...will see how it tastes in a year..
Note that you can see these meads being fermented in pictures lower down on the page.
 Here are a couple of bottles of Mead made by Taresa. She calls it Wicked Remedy. I absolutely love it! My thanks to her for submitting the pic.
Reaping the Fruits of Mead Making Patience! Here are some batches of mead that have been bottled up. This mead is made by Ken H. and my thanks go to him for the update.
He gives his mead some great names (see below the pic) and he calls his operation "Milky Way Meadery"
Well, here I am, 7 months later, and the 9 x 1 gallon jugs of mead that survived the trip (we didn't drink them!) were bottled and labeled. I created labels using "Beer Labelizer" from http://beerlabelizer.com , by Andy Biggs. It's such a great resource for fast and cheap (free) labels. Just save them as images, do some touching up in Photoshop, and print!
I put my "meadery" name as "Milky Way Meadery", being an amateur astronomer, and recorded the ABV % (two of them are fairly high: 20% and 26%, after combining different yeast strains and slowly adding additional sugars into the mix to keep fermentation going), and then got to make up goofy names!
I've gotten 1 gallon of mead down to $15 ($8 honey, $1 water, $2 wyeast, $4 fruit), and 1 gallon of wine down to about $7 ($1 water, $2 sugar, $4 fruit) by shopping at Wal-Mart for everything but the yeast (which I order online). Of course, "$2 Sugar" is one of those large packages of sugar, so that's going to last for at least 5 or 6 gallons of "wine".
Without further adeu! Each tasted absolutely fantastic (although with the green apple, I may mix it with something else is it's rather dry and EXTREMELY potent!).
Left to right:
"Goblin Blood" (Strawberry - Wine)
"Troll Drool" (Green Apple)
"Golden Grog" (Pineapple)
"Fruity Tartbomb" (Raspberry - Wine/Mead)
"Virgin's Blood" (Cherry)
"Perky Peach" (Peach)
"Drunkard's Piss" (Lemon - Wine)
"Freyja's Triumph" (Plum)
Here is a batch of mead made by Eric. He lives in Japan and couldn't get the normal supplies easily. So he improvised. Here is what he has to say about this batch:
I live in Japan, and as a result I have had to improvise with materials. I was not able to find any glass containers with the same thin mouth, so I purchased a glass container used for making umeshu liquor. Umeshu uses Japanese plums soaked in very high percentage alcohol, as such air tight locks are not as important. I did my best to completely tape shut the lid and make a hermetic seal. I was able to find this air lock, completely over priced at roughly 12 U.S. dollars !
 Here is a great look at a Glass of Mead. The great thing about this, other than the mead, is the bee on the glass! My thanks to Doug for sending in this pic. And below are a couple more pics of his mead making operation.
Here is what Doug has to say about his mead:
The glass of mead was our first attempt. it was from a kit and we added strawberries and a little bit of blackberry cider to it. tastes great. the pic with the mr. beer fermenter in is my son's mead. The pail on the right is pumpkin mead and the jug on the left is the ancient mead made with cinnamon, and orange. the second series of pics are of the son's mead that was racked to half gallon jugs, one with a vanilla bean, one with oak chips, 2 with blackberries, and one with nothing added. the jug on the far right is the pumpkin mead we moved to a jug.
 
 Here is a picture of three meads made by James, A pineapple melomel, a spiced cyser, and another pic of the wildflower as it cleared.
Here is an update on a couple of batches of mead made by John. (The previous picture is right below this pic. You can see how the batches are clearing up very nicely. I love this process of clarification. It's almost like magic.
Here is what he has to say about these batches:
Nan King Cherry Mead. Bottle number 1(the one of the left) had nothing extra added. Bottle number 2 ( the one on the right) had a 1/4 pound of quartered British Columbia Cherries added to it after last racking. Just racked again to remove cherries. Both have wonderful legs and a amazing taste. Will be bottling them in the next few weeks and then they will sit for another 6-8 months before first testing.
Here is a pic of a couple of batches of Nanking Cherry Mead submitted by John. My thanks to him for the pic!
Here is what he has to say about making it:
Here is a picture of the Nanking cherry (very tart) mead I started a couple days ago... I pitted the cherries, then put them in a vintners bag and squeezed the juice outta them...got approximately 1 litre of cherry juice out of two pounds of cherries...Emptied out half of the water into a sterilized container. added 3 pounds of honey, half package of EV-1116 yeast in each,17 raisins and added water until there was just a little headroom in the container.
 A Note from Will: Want to make some Mead? You can check out my ebooks here
 Continue on to More pictures of Mead Making submitted by web visitors
 Make a peach or pineapple fruit mead
If you have always wanted to make a fruit mead (melomel) you might want to check this tutorial out. I take you through the whole process from start to finish including bottling. Make a Peach or Pineapple Melomel
Want to make a mead that is ready to drink in a week?
This is Sima and it is a Finnish mead! I have the recipe with pics right here. This was submitted by a web visitor (Shelby). Make Sima - The Finnish Mead
And a bonus is that it is lightly carbonated!!
|
