made a batch of maple mead

i wanted to make a batch of mead that was simple yet unique, and required no yeast nutrients. I chose the maple mead recipe because i had most of the stuff on hand and the recipe calls for no brews store ingredients besides the yeast. also the recipe is for a one gallon batch so i didn't have to reduce the recipe.

Maple Mead

This mead was made from an original recipe I developed when I was staring into my larder one day.  Looking for some breakfast and staring at a bottle of pure maple syrup, I realized that syrup would ferment with honey, just like fruit.   Drawing upon (at that time) 3 years of brewing experience, I came up with the following recipe for 1 gallon:

Ingredients
3 lbs Honey	3 TBS lemon juice
1/4 cup brown sugar	4 oz very strong tea
3 fluid oz of Pure maple syrup	yeast according to preference

Boil some water and pour about 4 oz into a cup with a single teabag.  Let this sit for a couple of hours.  Boil honey with 7 cups of water until it stops foaming, then add maple, brown sugar, lemon, and tea.  Turn of the heat and let cool.    Pitch yeast when approximately 70 degrees F.
I tried hard to stick to 'period' ingredients like lemon juice and tea (instead of using chemicals).  The lemon juice adds acidity and the tea adds tannin.
Let it ferment for a month, and then rack into a secondary.  After about 2 more months, rack again and taste.  If you like it, bottle it.  If not, let it sit another couple of months and then bottle.  If you don't like sweet meads, you can cut the honey down to either 2 or 2 1/2 lbs.   Drink at your leisure!

...... this is the recipe I used. its on the first link to mead recipes on my mead links column. the recipe uses tea and lemon for the yeast nutrients.

ad about half of your water to your pot for boiling in the honey and the other ingredients. after cooling, ad the mead to your sanitized jug and then top it off with the rest of your water. leave room for your yeast if you activated it in water. shake the jug well to mix the fresh water just added with honey or it can settle apart.

stir the honey as you ad it to the pot to keep it from burning to the bottom.

a good way to cool your mead is submerge it in cold water. I have a two gallon pot that i make one gallon batches of mead in. I also have a 5 gallon canning pot which makes a perfect water bath for my two gallon pot. be sure to mix the water around in the bath to move the warm water away from the sides of the mead pot. should cool in a half hour of 45 min if you replace the water in the bath once during the process. also mix the mead too because only the area toughing the side walls of the pot will get cooled. its good to mix it around and help it cool faster.