A [Insert Fruit] Meade Recipe
We're gonna get shitfaced....in like six months!
Many years ago, while I was a youngin’, I discovered the SCA (Society for the Anachronism), and while I was learning how to beat things to a pulp with a sword made of rattan, one of the other hobbies I managed to pick up from my mentor, Sir Thorfinn, was meade making. Turns out, he learned from a recognized Brewmaster, during his time in the SCA, so you know this is going to be the real deal!
He showed me how to make this using fruit juice, and you’ll want a 100% real fruit juice. At the time, Juicy Juice claimed that it used 100% fruit juice, so we made a pineapple meade for my wedding. I’ll excuse myself now, as I got very wasted from all the copious alcohol consumption that occurred that night in early May.
Word had obviously gotten around, and so I was asked to make a batch of strawberry meade for my partner’s best friends’ sister’s wedding. (Yeah, it’s a Kentucky thing. Complicated.) This time, on our way back from Gattlingburg, TN, we stopped off at a farmer’s market and stumbled onto a giant bushel of strawberries! And for this occasion, I attempted to make two varieties: Leaded, and Non-leaded. (If you’re old like me, you’ll get the reference!) But this recipe, we’re only going to be focusing on the alcoholic version.
If you want to make your own homemade meade, you’ll need some equipment:
5-gallon Carboy
20-quart Stock pot
3-foot length of food-safe flexible tubing
Funnel
Fine-mesh strainer
Airlock Burper (or cheesecloth)
A stove / electric burner
A knife
A cutting board
A teacup / coffee mug
A kitchen chair
A calendar
Gather all of this stuff, hopefully in your kitchen! Most of the brewing stuff, you can buy as a kit for like $60 - $80 on Amazon or at your local party store. At least I hope that it’s still that cheap. With inflation throwing it’s temper-tantrum in the Economy right now, I would budget a minimum of $200 for this after everything is gathered. I’m going to use my favorite flavoring, blackberries, but you can use just about any fruit! And if you don’t want a fruit flavoring, you can also try making a potpourri meade by combining a bunch of random herbs together! Now let’s move on to the ingredients:
36oz fresh blackberries
15 pounds of honey
1 gallon of water
1/4 cup bleach
one black tea bag
one orange
brewer’s yeast
Irish Moss
You can get the yeast and Irish Moss anywhere you bought the brewing kit from. And I can hear you now, this girl’s crazy! Why are we playing around with bleach of all things?! This is actually the very first step, and ensures that you get a wonderful batch of meade. Cleaning. Everything. Well. Do not skip this step! You might inadvertently introduce foreign pathogens or crud we don’t want doing the tango with our yeast and sugars. After you’ve wiped everything down with a good helping of bleach water, rinse everything again. And again. And if you’re really paranoid, five or six times should do the trick. (Note, this is rinsing with pure water—nothing else added, after that initial bleach cleansing!)
Now what we’re going to do is put all 15 pounds of honey into that stock pot and heat it up. You want to keep an eye on it’s temperature. When tiny bubbles begin to form, immediately remove the pot from the heat! You do not want boiling honey! Note that this is for five gallons of meade, although the link above is for a one gallon kit. The ratio for honey is three pounds per gallon. Adjust everything else as needed.
While the honey is heating up, we can prepare the fruit. Blackberries are super easy, you can either gently mash them up a bit or through them in whole. I’m going to just throw them in whole, after rinsing them off in a colander, drop them into the carboy. You’re also going to want to juice that orange. Peel it, and separate the segments, and squeeze with all your might over a bowl to capture the juices. Wash your hands! They’ll be sticky, and working with a teabag clung to the backside of your palm is a pain in the butt. Boil a mug of water, and brew the tea.
The honey might take as long as 45 minutes to come to a near boil, but watch it closely. As soon as it reaches that tiny bubble point, remove it from the heat immediately! Yes, I repeated myself. Now just let it sit and cool down to somewhere around room temperature. If you can put your hand on the side of the pot and not burn yourself, it’s good enough to proceed.
Now, put the carboy in the sink (I had to stand on a kitchen chair to be tall enough to pour the heavy honey into the carboy. Use the funnel! Slowly pour that golden glory into the carboy, then add the orange juice and finally add the the brewed tea. Top off the empty space in the carboy with the water. (It should be about a gallon’s worth.) The reason we did this in the sink is just in the off chance that glass shatters, the mess will be mostly contained. You totally can’t tell that I’m a paranoid individual, can you?
Now we’re going to put the burper on, and you’re going to want to move this heavy object to someplace cool, dry and dark. Sunlight may work miracles, but it destroys alcohol for some reason. I’d take a further precaution and wrap several towels around the carboy, just in case you get some leakage. Why? Well, the way our yeast buddies are going to work is, they’re going to eat the sugar and fart out the boozey-stuff. Anyway, let this sit for minimum of one month. Mark the future date on your handy calendar!
Now that we’ve waited at least a month, resurrect your brewing concoction, and gently set it up on the counter top. Remember that bleach? Yeah, we’ll need that. bleach the tubing and the stock pot. Rinse over 9,000 times. (You just knew I’d have to through that Dragonball joke in there, right?). After you’re certain you’ve flushed all the bleachiness, stick the tubing into the carboy and start sucking. You really wanna suck, and suck hard. In fact, this is probably the only time in your life that you really want to suck anyway! After you get the pre-meade flowing, keep the other end of the tubing over the stockpot. We’re only using the stock pot as a temporary reserve basin. If you’re wealthy, unlike me, you might have a second carboy that you cleaned instead of the stock pot, but, I’m poor and this is what I had to work with. You want to siphon as much of the liquid out as you can, but leave behind all the crud that’s settled to the bottom of the carboy.
Now it’s time to clean that carboy again! Rinse out the crud, swish some bleach around, swish some more. I probably should have included some old clothes that you don’t mind getting bleached, huh? Just in case you’re a complete klutz like me. Rinse the Hell out of that carboy to ensure that you could perform surgery on the inside walls. Also, we’re going to bleach that funnel again, and you can do the tubing again, if you’re super paranoid, like yours truly.
You may have one of those fancy funnels with a removable filter. You’ll definitely want to use that this time. Transfer the pre-meade from the stockpot into the freshly cleaned carboy. Now, we’re going to add a second batch of brewer’s yeast, and some of that Irish Moss. What the Moss does is clears up the coloring, making it shiny and translucent. Congratulations! We’ve finished with our first racking!
Put that newly racked meade in a dark, cool, and dry location. Let that rest for a minimum of two months. After it’s done resting, you’ve got about a 20 to 40 proof alcoholic beverage. You can now do a final racking by siphoning the meade into individual wine bottles. You’ll probably want a bunch of corks, labels, and a cork-pusher to help. This stuff should last a maximum of seven years, just keep it out of sunlight in a cool location. Happy festivities!