Back in July or so we helped someone harvest their bee hives. It was quite a large harvest and we received a bit of honey in return. We made the grand decision to try our hand at making meade. We had never made wine before, didn’t really know what we were doing, but decided it would be a fun thing to do. We mixed 3 quarts of honey with water in a 5 gallon bucket, added champagne yeast, sealed the lid with an airlock on it and waited.
It has been 4 months (we did this in August) and from much convincing from a good friend we decided to bring out the meade for Thanksgiving.
It was….
Interesting.
Granted this was our first go round of making wine, we weren’t expecting it to be perfect. I can’t lie though, we were hoping, really hoping, but not expecting.
We had a not so lovely mix of really dry vinegary meade. It’s not terrible. It’s a little drinkable, sort of. But certainly not anything we would openly share with people.
That said I bottled up a mason jar of our fine meade and took it to thanksgiving dinner (you can’t go to Thanksgiving dinner empty handed). With a bit of added sugar from my friend the jar ended up being completely empty by the end of the evening. I consider that a score on my end. Although as C said,”if you have to add sugar for the meade to be good, it’s not good meade.”
But I somehow feel like I had a win.
Go me, our first round of wine is somewhat drinkable…. somewhat…
What did I earn for next time? We had some issues throughout the process, especially in the beginning, with the meade being exposed to too much oxygen. We started with the wrong type of lid, which we have fixed. Baby girl kept pulling the airlock out. Next time we will fix these problems. The lid issue has been resolved. The baby girl issue…. We may just have to put the container where she cant reach it.
I think cider will be our next adventure!
