Townsend Hall Mead

Michael and I are back at it again, this time brewing the nectar of the Norse gods: mead. I guess it's technically a metheglin, which is an Old English term for a mead with spices added; we're adding orange peel and ginger. Apparently metheglin shares its etymology with medicine, and we'll certainly be chugging down this cough syrup as soon as it's ready.

For nostalgic reasons, I want to name this brew Townsend Hall. It is the name of a U of I dorm where Michael and I both lived, though half a decade apart. It was also the site of my first introduction to homebrewing. My friends on our floor brewed a mead in their closet using honey, orange peels, and crystallized ginger. It was a pretty rough set up; basically 2 liter soda jugs with balloons on top in lieu of airlocks. I'm pretty sure that they used bread yeast instead of brewer's yeast too! I remember helping vent the balloons and marveling at the fermentation in action.

At the end of the school year I tried some of the concoction. I remember expecting it to taste like prison toilet wine, and wondering if it would make me go blind like bad prohibition era bathtub gin. When I tried it I was amazed. It tasted like a nice dry white wine; no funk, no skunk. If someone served it to me in a restaurant, I would never guess that a bunch of college dudes whipped it up in their closet.

After this, I started reading Charlie Papazian's books. Several years later when I had the nerve to spend the money and go all in on what I have to call a lifestyle rather than a hobby, I bought my first 5 gallon setup and a pale ale kit. The rest has been history. I want to thank my college floor mates for sparking my interest in this. To Mike, Alex, Will, Jon, and Todd: Skal!

Michael and I brewed our mead a few days ago. What you see above is the mead must: 13 pounds of local wildflower honey aerated with five gallons of spring water. We are going to add sweet orange peel and ginger root to recreate the taste of the original Townsend Hall mead. We're also going to add golden raisins to the primary to hopefully add a Moscato-like finish, although I'm guessing the final product will be pretty dry. The recipe is as follows.

Townsend Hall Mead

Style: orange ginger metheglin

Water:

5 gallons of spring water

Honey:

13 lbs. of Sunny Hill Honey from May’s Honey Farms in Harvard, IL

Fruit:

1 lb. of golden raisins

Spices:
½ oz. of sweet orange peel
¼ oz. of dried ginger root

Yeast:

2 packets of Lalvin 71B-1122 (dry wine yeast)

Other Ingredients:

3 tsp. of Wyeast Wine Nutrient Blend (1 tsp. stirred into the must on days one, three, and five).

1 ½ tsp. of LD Carlson Yeast Energizer (½ tsp. stirred into the must on days one, three, and five).

Recipe:

First, rehydrate the two packets of yeast in four ounces of warm water (104 to 109 F). I recommend sanitizing a small pot and heating up some of the spring water to the desired temperature, and then pouring it into a small sanitized measuring cup. Add the contents of the yeast packets into the warm water and let stand for 15 minutes without stirring.

Add 2 ½ gallons of the spring water to a sanitized 5 gallon bucket. Add half of the of honey as well. It helps if you immerse the containers in hot water first; it really cuts down the viscosity of the honey when you pour it. Thoroughly incorporate the honey and vigorously aerate the mixture with a sanitized plastic paddle. This will take about ten minutes. You now have mead must. Pour the well-aerated must through a sanitized funnel into a sanitized 6.5 gallon carboy.

Add 2 ½ more gallons of spring water to the bucket and mix in the rest of the honey. Aerate once again and add then pour through the funnel into the carboy. Add the first dose of yeast nutrient and energizer to the must and stir thoroughly to fully incorporate. The total volume of the must in the carboy will be over six gallons, so be very careful when moving it. I use a brew hauler (shown above), and it's made transporting large quantities of wort and must much easier and safer.  

Take an original gravity reading; it should be around 1.079-1.080. Stir the yeast well with a sanitized spoon and pour it into the must. Gently stir the carboy again. Attach your airlock and put in a safe place to ferment.

Add the quantities of nutrient and energizer specified above during the first five days of fermentation. Stir the must to incorporate these additives and to degas it.

On day seven, boil the golden raisins, the orange peel, and the ginger in a quart of spring water for five minutes. Cool to room temperature in an ice bath. Gently muddle the mixture with a sanitized potato masher to break open the raisins, then pour it into the carboy and stir.

After one month in the primary, rack the mead into two sanitized 3 gallon secondary fermenters. Fill the carboys up as high as they can go without interfering with the stopper, ideally to the base of the neck. Avoid transferring the yeast lees, the raisins, and the spices. Put in a tight fitting stopper and airlock. Make sure it has a good seal, as the mead will stay in the secondary for at least 3 months. Also make sure to check your airlock and keep it filled with sanitizer or vodka to the appropriate level.

Bottle when the mead has reached its final gravity and cleared (approximately 3 months). I would estimate that this one will be pretty dry, so the FG will likely be around 1.000.

Good things are worth waiting for! I'll probably taste some of this shortly after bottling to bring in the spring, but most of it is going to get saved for the years to come. Time should add some pleasant complexity.

Nostalgia is bittersweet like this mead. I know that future sips of it will transport me back to the hall where its ancestor brew was conceived. Not your traditional mead hall, but a mead hall nonetheless.