The dryness of the mead can be varied depending on the dilution of the honey and with the choice of yeast. I tend to use Red Star champagne yeast and a 4:1 dilution of the honey and a low temperature ferment to give a semi-dry mead.
Chaucer's Mead is a spiced mead and very good hot but marginal if chilled. Heck, they even market a spice packet hanging around the neck of the bottle in some sales venues.
Sullivan Vineyards mead from up in Washington is actually very good. I used to live not far from there and they started asking me why I was coming in every couple of months for ten pounds of honey from their hives.. they were almost giving it away at the time. Well, I shared my recipe and they started marketing a mead as a sideline to use their honey up. Honey from cherry orchards has a wonderful fruity note to it.
These days I'm using a wildflower honey from a Mennonite beekeeper that is heavy on the wildflowers and food crops. Makes a good higher proof dryer mead.
For the beginner.
Warnings:
Do not brew beer in the same area you are making mead. Mead needs a wine yeast and will make a good vinegar if you use a beer yeast... not always but QC is hard.
Cleanliness is your friend. Sterilize everything. Brewer's cleaning tabs are basically oxygen based bleach and you can use the laundry variety if you rinse with boiled water like you were testing the Ark for Noah.
For a small basic batch... gallon of water and 1-1/2 pints of honey
Get all the wax out of the honey. My method is to put my honey dilution in the crock put and skim until no foam comes out and the dilution gets up to 160+ for at least a half hour... usually a couple of hours, I don't watch the pot that closely. (kill off wild yeast and bacteria and infuse any fruits or herbs used for flavoring)
Cool covered until 70 degrees F +/- three degrees.
Add yeast and put in fermenter. A gallon jug with a balloon stretched over is the old classic like my grandma and mother used but a fermentation lock is really not that much. (Scored a 10 liter Nalgene and a fermentation lock on eBay for <$20 U.S.)
Ferment for 10 days to two weeks, depends on temperature, etc.
Rack into bottles and store. (Racking refers removing the the clear liquid while leaving the yeast remains in the bottom of the fermentation container. Clean tygon or nylobraid type tubing from hardware with a squeeze bulb to start the siphoning works well for me.) It is possible to save the dormant yeast in the sludge for a new batch (really old school) or you can toss it, feed to the pigs so they are very very happy, or add it to the fruitcake batter for better flavor.
Variants that are not really mead include using cider with honey with a hefty load of flavorings in the boil. Then, adding hard spirits to stop the fermentation when you reach where you want to be on sugar content. (Old family recipe for winter has cider and honey boiled with spices then fermented for two weeks then rum added and served hot) Now if you ferment a cider/honey mix to natural termination you get a rather high proof hard cider... I'm reminded old song "The Johnny Jump Up"
Time to start getting a batch ready for Christmas... happy brewing
