Wild Fermented Elderflower Mead - Making Mead Like a Viking!

[@1Oliveiraa]

This one deserves a Give away!

[@TonyNeedsHobbies]

I'll give you a bottle!

[@Daud76]

Good to see you again, my friend! Great upload as always. 😊

[@TonyNeedsHobbies]

Thank you 😀

[@Daud76]

@TonyNeedsHobbies My pleasure. Hope you are your family are well that side of the world. 🤙🏼

[@MatthijsvandenHoven]

looks great :)

[@TonyNeedsHobbies]

Thanks!

[@jturn4646]

In Romania, Socată is a drink that is typically a tea, but can be let ferment. I would make it every year with my father. If you rack into beer bottles or swing top so it will handle carbonation. This low abv is a refreshing for Summer.

[@TonyNeedsHobbies]

Is it similar to Kombucha? I tried that once, without much succes 😉

[@Zaharijametohija]

Ik kom net van je short waar ik op had gecomment maar deze video is letterlijk topkwaliteit, je zou een keer moeten proberen ze te promoten via KZbins algorithme, denk dat je kanaal echt enorm zou groeien😊

[@TonyNeedsHobbies]

Hey, dankjewel voor je positiviteit 😊 Ik denk ook dat het te maken heeft met de upload-frequentie van

[@kb2vca]

Delightful video, Tony. Technically, the key nutrient that yeast need is missing from honey and that is Nitrogen. Sadly, raisins have virtually none - even those who make wine from grapes and typically, we use about 15 lbs (about 7 kg) of grapes for every gallon of wine we still need to add nutrients. As you note, indigenous yeast is not usually as robust as lab cultured yeasts and so wines made with "wild" yeast may not ferment as fully, so you are left with a sweeter rather than a more dry wine.. BUT not all indigenous yeast are equal and the flavors that they can produce may not always be to OUR satisfaction. In my (limited) experience, when I use indigenous yeast in my wine making (fruits, flowers, vegetables or honey, about 1 in 4 batches are good to drink. So, if you have found a colony of yeast you like, I would harvest that colony and reuse it as your own special yeast colony. BUT be aware that while a colony of yeast may work well for you once, the make up of that colony may change over time and you may find that the kinds of yeast that were dominant in one batch are no longer as dominant in subsequent batches and so the flavors and aromas of your wines and mead change... and not always in ways you prefer.

[@TonyNeedsHobbies]

Thanks for the insightful reply! I guess I was lucky this time 😊 Normally when I make beer or wine I use package yeast but wanted to try this after reading Zimmerman's Making Mead Like a Viking. What I understood is that the vikings kept using the same "magical" stirring stick once a batch was good. That stick was then presumably touched by the gods to help them create good (= alcoholic) mead, not knowing anything about yeast yet. So they were basically reusing the same yeast every time because of using the stick. Not sure if this is making any sense, it's difficult for me to explain it in English 😉 Cheers!

[@kb2vca]

@@TonyNeedsHobbies Your English is excellent, but note those Norse folk who made wine or mead were making this frequently, (over generations) and the sites in which they made their mead were saturated with yeast that were preferred. When you or I make mead "like a Viking" we have no such access to HUGE colonies of preferred yeast (think, Belgian brewers of Belgian beer) where, they argue that even the cobwebs are covered with yeast that will make their desired beers.

[@TonyNeedsHobbies]

@kb2vca thanks for yet another great explanation 😀

[@kb2vca]

@@TonyNeedsHobbies Last thought: by my calculations, given the amount of honey you used, the starting gravity would have been around 1.126 (assuming 5 liters) and so with the 20 points of unfermented honey, the final gravity is around 1.106, or just over 13% ABV. The fact that it may have taken as long as 9 months from pitching to bottling is likely because of the lack of nutrients - and not because you were using indigenous yeast. The problem with indigenous yeast is that they have not been "engineered" to tolerate higher concentrations of alcohol - alcohol is toxic to ALL yeast but lab cultured yeasts can tolerate higher concentrations. You yeasts (from the three sources) could tolerate what is essentially the same level of alcohol as most wine makers want, but that they quit with about 7 oz of sugar still unfermented MAY be due to the lack of nutrients in solution