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Christof Makes Home Brew! Yummy

Christof specializes in mead (honey wine), but brews beer as well.


Mead

Meads tend to take a long time, but they are the ideal type of brewing for people who like to procrastinate! The longer you leave each stage - the better.

I never boil my meads. I shoot for a temperature around 140F -- it helps dissolve the honey and work the juices or extracts from the other ingredients. Honey doesn't need, or benefit, from a boil.

Most of my recipes are individual - done on a case by case basis. I generally put in 1.5-2.5 pounds of honey per gallon of mead. If I'm adding a heavier juice like grape I'll go 1.5, with about 1.5-2 gallons of grape juice in a 5 gallon batch. Mulberry and pomegranate are a bit lighter, generally 1 gallon of juice in a 5 gallon batch with 2 pounds honey per gallon.

Smoked Mead Recipe:

I do a smoked maple mead that's deservedly quite in demand among my friends. The general - and it can vary from batch to batch - recipe is:
8-10 pounds honey
2-4 pounds grade B maple syrup
4-6 pounds of smoked finished grains
for 5 gallons. Once the honey and maple syrup is up to a good warm temp, I steep 4-6 pounds of smoked finished grains (beermakers know what this is) - alder smoke is my favorite, but whatever you have. Steep for about 15 minutes and then really squeeze the steeping sock out.


Beer

well, I do beer when I don't have mead ready! I generally use the Charles Papazian brewing bible, or buy kits from Northern Brewer or Folsom Brewing. There's no need to go crazy, a very good beer can be had with basic steps and ingredients.

Yeast- Once I get down to temp (under 80 degrees) I pop everything into a primary fermenter and pitch the yeast. I always double pitch Red Star Premier Cuvee and Montrachet yeasts. It works and I never have a problem, so I let it go as is.

Primary fermenting is best done for 6 weeks to 3 months- you *can*
leave it for a year or more, but one racking to get off the lees is a
good idea. I am purposefully a bit sloppy in racking since I want to
make sure I have good yeast culture still present and it's not as
critical with mead. In fact, one traditional mead recipe is to just
dump the honey and water into a barrel- not even stirring- and pitch
yeast, then leave it for 7 years!!

Secondary fermenting is the critical stage- longer is better, with no
practical uppoer limit. I hate to bottle meads before 9-12 months has
passed, and 24 months is even better!

Bottling- in general, larger bottles age better. That being said, I do
bottle into 12 ounces sometimes, or with some of the meads. But I
prefer to bottle in 22 ounce beer bottles with oxygen absorbing caps.
I'd like to switch to a cork and cap method, but haven't got the
materials yet. A wax dip isn't a half bad idea once things have
settled for a few weeks. NEVER drink bottled mead in the first 3
months, and if you can wait 6 months before cracking the first bottle,
even better. After a few years the stuff is getting really good.

If you make a batch of mead every 6 months, and you can keep your
consumption down to 5 gallons a year, in 2 or 3 years you'll have a
never ending supply of really good meads to share and enjoy.