Elderflower mead

[Zante]

I have 50g of dried elderflowers and was thinking of making a gallon of mead with them.

(By the way, would this be a melomel or a metheglin?)

I was planning on adding 25g to the primary fermenter together with the honey and filter it out once I rack it into the demijohn. I have seen several different ways of using the elderflowers though:
- As I said adding them to the primary
- Making a tea with them and adding the tea to the primary instead of the flowers themselves
- "Dry hopping" them in the demijohn after the primary fermentation in a muslin bag

What different results would each method achieve? Has anyone tried?

Last question, how does 1.5 Kg of honey sound for this? Too much? Need to use more?
It would be bog standard country honey, no particular blossom honey. And I won't be boiling it, using it as is.

 

[Tom Bick]

I have some lovely elderflower mead (I would say that ) maturing right now. I use fresh flowers picked on a nice warm day. I mix the flowers honey and mineral water together along with a quartered lime in a fermenting bucket for four days before removing the flowers and then add the yeast and nutrient and from then on standard fermentation. I always thought it was a melomel but understand metheglin is correct. The elderberry mead I make is a melomel. I generally use about 3-4 lbs of honey per gallon but also use a hydrometer so it can vary.

 

[Zante]

Damn! Now there's a fourth way to use the flowers!


... but, seriously, that too is an idea. I still wonder what difference each method makes to the final product. Has anyone tried?
I'd experiment myself, but for the moment I am seriously short of space and I wouldn't be able to have four gallons of ageing mead alongside the other stuff. Maybe when I manage to move to a bigger place.

In the meantime, if anyone has any input on this, please come forth.

 

[Erichalfbee]

You can make it with elderflower cordial too.
You add cordial to the honey, reducing the water, instead of the flowers

 

[Zante]

You can make it with elderflower cordial too.
You add cordial to the honey, reducing the water, instead of the flowers

Wouldn't that be pretty much what Tom Bick suggested? I mean he doesn't make the cordial separately, but uses pretty much the procedure to make cordial in the fermenting bucket before adding the yeast and starting fermentation.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Elder blooms in June? Maybe you don't have any honey till August? Well not enough to make mead anyway. You can make your cordial and keep it for when you do have.

 

[Zante]

Elder blooms in June? Maybe you don't have any honey till August? Well not enough to make mead anyway. You can make your cordial and keep it for when you do have.

I won't have any honey of my own probably until 2018
I don't have bees yet, so I will be buying the honey for the time being.

And I have dried flowers now

I had bought the dried flowers a short while ago with the intention of making wine out of them, I had some health issues which stopped me from doing anything with them. Now that's sorted I decided that an elderflower metheglin would be interesting to try, and my research brought up those three ways of using them. I was hoping someone could explain the difference in result from each method, so I could choose which to use myself.

For the moment I'm more leaning towards adding the flowers in the first demijohn and leave them in until that gets racked, unless someone convinces me otherwise...

 

[Zante]

Ok, quick update:

What I did was to ferment the honey by itself in the bucket for the primary as a normal mead, then when the must was racked into a demijohn for the secondary fermentation I added the elderflowers. They stayed in there for a week to 10 days (I'd need to check my notes) and they were removed.
Fermentation continued for about a month and a few days ago I racked the metheglin off the lees in a clean demijohn with a campden tablet.

Now I'm waiting to clear, and I have to decide whether to age it in a demijohn or buy more bottles.

I might have got the calculations wrong, but it looks like it turned out at 19% APV

 

[deanrpwaacs]

Age it in bulk . Wine ect ages better that way then bottle when finaly done .

 

[Zante]

Age it in bulk . Wine ect ages better that way then bottle when finaly done .

True, but it makes a difference only for larger quantities, say 5 gallons and upwards. A 1 gallon demijon amounts to a large bottle as far as ageing goes. It's more of a question of storage convenience.

 

[Zante]

Just bottled the mead. There was a glass left over after filling six bottles and I gave it a bit of a sip.

Even clouded with that bit of yeast that was sucked up it tasted quite nice. The elderflower is there, but not overpowering, and I'm surprised how quickly it is blending with the rest.
It's by no means a complex wine, by any stretch of the imagination, but I think that is mostly due to having used the cheapo crappo honey from Sainsburys.

I will repeat the experiment with better honey as soon as I have the possibility of acquiring some. I must have a word with those in the local association...

 

[yeogi75]

if you use hive honey instead of supermarket honey it will be harder to clear, if it does seem cloudy as told to me by my mother who was a ace at brewing anything from the hedgerow, when you have cleared the Meade in the demijohn and has finished fermenting take of airlock put hand over and shake for five minutes then leave over night see how much silt comes out and repeat two or three times till perfectly clear enjoy

 

[Zante]

Time to clear isn't a problem, nobody's giving me a schedule and I am patient.
I have a rice wine that's been going for the best part of two months and it's still fermenting!