![]() Auto Siphon ~ Optional, but highly recommended.Keep in mind the opening on a 5-gallon demijohn is larger and you’ll need a bigger rubber bung if you’re using a 5-gallon setup. A water lock is a one-way valve that allows CO2 to escape, but doesn’t let contaminants get into the mead. Water Lock ~ Often the demijohns will come with a rubber stopper and water lock, but if not, you’ll need one to seal the jug.It helps to have two so that you can siphon the mead into a clean container for secondary. For larger batches, you can also use a 5-gallon demijohn or a plastic brewing bucket. Fermentation Vessel (x2) ~ Generally a glass one-gallon jug known as a demijohn.If you’ve never made any type of homemade wine or beer, let me help you understand basic mead making equipment: Don’t overcomplicate things and you’ll be a happy mead maker! Equipment for Making Mead Sure, I don’t make it in plastic soda bottles capped with a balloon airlock anymore, but it can be done. Believe it or not, it’s easier than you think. There are more than 200 bottles aging down in our basement, and we’ve learned a lot about how to make truly exceptional mead at home. My husband and I made a batch of dandelion mead on our first date just over 10 years ago, and we still enjoy a bottle of it every anniversary. I was hooked, and now we’ve been brewing our own homemade mead for well over a decade. But I learned that mead is spectacular, and like pizza, even bad mead is still pretty darn good. Was it a 10-year oak barrel-aged mead? Nope. Bearded men and buxom ladies filled my glass with long-aged high-quality meads that had been started back when I was in grade school, plus plenty of experimental meads with everything from chili peppers to fennel.Įven after being spoiled with exceptional meads for two weeks straight, our hacked together batch was still darn good. That, of course, was after sampling high-quality mead from some of the best mead makers in the country all week long. They attached a balloon with a pinhole to the top of the bottle as a water-lock, and two weeks later on the last day of the festival we celebrated with our own hacked together batch of quick mead. One part raw honey, three parts water and a lot of shaking made the “must.” Since it was raw honey from a local farm, it already contained wild yeasts and began bubbling before we arrived. One of my friends started a quick mead in a soda bottle, literally on the ride down. ![]() A bunch of us piled into the car and drove 10 hours to Western Pennsylvania for Pennsic, an elaborate medieval camping festival featuring more historical nerdery than you can shake a mead horn at. The first time I drank mead was just after my 21st birthday, at a two-week-long medieval reenactment camp run by the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism). A bottle of our homemade chamomile mead from 2011…opened in summer 2019.
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