Melomel flavored mead with elderflower.
First, I have to admit to this is my first attempt at this but have made a good bit of mead and elderflower wine so its not rocket science to merge the two. After all, its basically flavoring the mead with the elderflowers and its elderflower wine made with honey instead of sugar.
Ingredients per gallon
3.5 – 4 lbs of honey, ripe honey is not needed but just a guide as its best to get the right starting gravity with a wine hydrometer. Or simply guess it.
Approx 25-30 flower heads of elderflower picked on a nice sunny day.
One lemon or a lime
Wine nutrient
Wine yeast
Equipment
Fermenting bucket (ideally two)
Demijohn (I use the 5l water bottles after using the water to make the mead)
Airlock
Sieve
Hydrometer (optional)
Place approx 3lb of honey into the fermenting bucket and add approx three quarters of a gallon and mix together. Check with the hydrometer. I like to start my mead off at 1.1 and find this gives me a nice mead. I adjust the water and honey to get to 1.1 idealy when you reach the gallon. The hydrometer is optional but will help to give a consistent result, but if you think you have approx 3.5-4 lbs of honey in a gallon it will work out ok. Higher or lower may result in a dry or sweet mead.
Wash and cut your lemon or lime into quarters and add to the must.
Using scissors, try and remove the individual flowers from the green stalks trying to remove as many green stalks as possible. Cut enough to fill a pint glass three quarters full after light tamping down, then add this to the must and stir it all together (boy things start to smell nice at this point)
Leave for five days covered and stir it once or twice a day.
After five days sieve the must into a 2nd fermenting bucket to remove the flower heads and quarters of the lemon or lime.
Add one teaspoon of yeast nutrient and one teaspoon of wine yeast, stir and leave for 4-5 days stirring each day. You can use fancy yeasts, but I just go with the standard wine yeast. If I was making more than one gallon I would use one teaspoon for the first gallon then half for any other. Also ideally you are supposed to have the must at 23* to add the yeast, but I find at this time of year a warm room or boat works just fine to get thing going.
After 4-5 days when the initial vigorous fermentation has eased you then place in your chosen demijohn with an airlock and wait for fermentation to almost stop and start to clear. At this point is is good to rack off the mead into a 2nd demijohn leaving as much of the sediment behind. You can top up with water and then refit the airlock.
When all the waiting is over and there is no sign of fermentation and it looks wonderfully clear you can decide to add a campden tablet or other additives to kill off any yeast that may still be active, but dormant and could start a 2nd fermentation in the bottle when the conditions are right that could result in exploding bottles. In the past I never bothered and never had any problems, but now worry as I seem to have bottles stored for longer and it worries me slightly so I now give each gallon a campden tablet but understand better additives are out there.
