Brewing Mead & Simple Wines

Vital information for almost any fantasy campaign!

The following is for informational purposes only. Please obey all local, state and federal laws. I bear no responsibility or liability for injuries, property damage and so on resulting from the use of this guide.

The Quick & Dirty on Mead & Primitive Wines

Brewing your own Mead and Wine is Stone-Age simple! It is so easy and rewarding, that the practice tends to be addictive.

In a nutshell, the brewing process involves taking a sugary, potable solution, and introducing yeast to it. Yeast is a microscopic fungus which eats sugar, and poops out Ethyl-Alcohol and Carbon-Dioxide gas. The production of alcohol by yeast is called fermentation. This is the same sort of yeast which is put into bread to make it rise.

Ethyl Alcohol is that sort of alcohol which a human can ingest without going blind, as opposed to rubbing alcohol or methanol or denatured alcohol. The production of Ethyl Alcohol is the essential object of brewing. Carbon Dioxide is a harmless gas. In fact, you poop CO2 just like the yeast does, except you poop it out of your mouth and nose every time you exhale.         

 

Homebrewing can have an interesting effect on your perspective on life and stuff.

When the yeast is happily active in the sugary solution, it will go about eating and pooping and reproducing and dying until the environment is so full of its own excrement (the alcohol) that the yeast all die, and their micro-corpses flocculate to the bottom of the container. Much like humans, but on a very tiny scale. At this point, you separate the yeast-corpses from the alcoholic solution. Then you can imbibe their excrement and get drunk.

Again, homebrewing can give you an interesting perspective on things.

 

To Make Mead (1 gallon) 

1. Get about 2 or 3 pounds of honey to make a gallon. Using more will result in sweeter, thicker mead. Using less will make it dryer and lighter on the palate.
2. Add water. (good water, not city-water if you can help it) Heat it and mix it together until the honey dissolves. Let the mixture steam. Some people like to let it boil, and skim off the scum which rises to the top. I find this destroys some of the flavor of the honey and does nothing to clarify the end-product.
3. Get a 1-gallon jug. I find that the big, 5-liter jugs of table-wine work well for this. A jug used for fermenting wine in is called a “carboy.” Sanitize the Carboy! Wash it with dish-soap and scald it with hot water. This is important. Sanitize all the stuff your mead touches! The carboys, the funnels, the siphon hose, your own grimy hands, EVERYTHING.
4. Let the honey mixture cool some; like to about 90 to 100 degrees (Farenheit. the metric system isn’t period.) 
5. Get some yeast and wake it up. They make fancy yeasts just for brewing. These can be found at brewing-supply shoppes. Lalvin D-47 is an ideal yeast for mead. But seriously, plain bread-yeast from the grocery store works great. Some people complain of a bready taste, but I have never had a problem with this.
6. To wake up the yeast, pour the dry, inactive yeast into a cup of warm water with some sugar or left-over honey. Stir, and let sit for about 15 minutes. When it gets frothy, that means the yeast is alive and active. This mixture is called “must.” Probably because it smells musty.
7. Pour the must into the carboy with the honey solution. The yeast is like you or me: it likes warm water, but not too hot. Hence step 4.
8. At this point, you can put other flavoring agents in with the must and the honey. Some people like to put little bits of diced apple or orange into the carboy to serve as extra nutrition for the yeast. But I find that this makes for a funny taste later. Nobody else seems to mind though.  So mostly, I leave it as-is. But I have had great success adding elderberries, or rose-hips, or a few sticks of cinnamon.
9. Now add mild water until it all comes to about a gallon. This is not an exact science. Shake it up to mix.
10. Now you affix a fermentation lock. A fermentation lock is a device which lets the Carbon Dioxide gas escape the carboy, while keeping bugs and germs out. You can buy these at a brew shoppe. But you can also improvise them. A balloon with a tiny, tiny hole poked in it will work, just stretch it over the mouth of the jug…er, the carboy. You can also take a patch of cheesecloth and tie it over the mouth of the carboy. Also, you can make a loop of tubing, and drop some water into the bottom of the coil. Use some tape and cellophane to bung one end of the coil up to the mouth of the carboy. The water-trap will let the CO2 bubble through, and keep bugs and crap out.
11. Great. Now put this in a place where it can hang out at about room temperature. If it gets to cold, say into the 60s or lower, the yeast will start to hibernate again and you want it to stay awake. If you didn’t mess up, you will see signs of life. The next day, the fermentation lock will be bubbling, or the balloon will be standing upright. Also, any fruit or bits of stuff you put in the mixture may float up and down in the carboy.
12. Let it sit for two or three weeks. A month tops. Then you are ready to rack the mead. That means filtering the dead yeast and bits of fruit or whatever out of the mixture. You will need a second jug, the same size as the first one, some cheesecloth, and a funnel (Sanitize). If you have a bunch of junk like berries or fragments of cinnamon, use a strainer and pour the mixture through the strainer, down the funnel into the secondary jug. If you don’t have big chunks, just siphon from the carboy into the secondary. Siphon off the top of the liquid, and try to leave behind the gunk at the bottom. That is dead yeast, and it is not the good part. Rinse out the original carboy. Then, stuff a loose wad of cheesecloth into your funnel and carefully pour the mead back through the funnel into the original carboy.
13. The dead yeast at the bottom is not a good thing. If the mead sits on it too long, it will start to hurt the flavor. Also, imbibing the dead yeast will make you gassy.
14. What you have is drinkable, but far from ideal. I like to sample a tiny bit to determine if it needs more of something or another; more sugar, more water, more berries. Whatevs.
15. Let it sit for another few weeks. It is still fermenting, but more slowly. After a few weeks, rack it again. Don't let it sit too long on dead yeast, as explained in step 13.
16. Now, it is just a matter of time. It’s drinkable now, and probably a good deal better than most meads you can buy at the liquor store. Nonetheless, patience is good for your brew. After a few months, you might consider bottling it.

To make wine, just substitute the original honey mixture with fruit-juice. If you are using fresh-harvested fruit or raw juice, be sure to pasteurize it. You may want to add some sugar or else the result may be way too tart. Everything else is pretty much the same.