Susan’s Traditional Mead + Bochet

The honey should be of good quality—your mead will have flavors of the honey you use. If you like the subtle background flavors of the honey, it should make good mead.

Nutrients need to be dissolved in either must or water before being added to the larger volume of fermenting must. Stir or swirl your must gently before adding the nutrients to remove CO₂ and avoid a honey volcano.

Mix water and honey well (I attach a blender to a drill and have my honey at liquid stage before starting). Gravity should be around 1.120. By mixing vigorously, you will oxygenate the must well, which is beneficial to yeast at this time.

Rehydrate yeast with Go-Ferm, add to room-temperature honey mixture, and allow to ferment for 24 hours. At 12 hours, you can mix the must again to introduce additional oxygen. After 24 hours of fermentation, add 5.1 g Fermaid O. At 48 hours, add remaining Fermaid O. At 72 hours, add 5.7 g Fermaid K and 7.1 g DAP. Add remaining Fermaid K and DAP when 1/3 of available sugars have been fermented (SG 1.080)

When your mead is done fermenting (several weeks)—specific gravity of about 1.025—transfer to new carboy for clarifying. You can add 1 Campden tablet (potassium metabisulfite) per gallon of mead and ½ tsp. potassium sorbate per gallon to stabilize fermentation and prevent renewed fermentation. If you want to avoid these, you will need to let your mead stabilize longer to make sure fermentation is complete and avoid bottle bombs.

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