Last June, we began the process of making mead for our upcoming wedding. The plan was to create two desert meads that would be very sweet, but not cloying. Meads that would have strong flavors, and be very full bodied.

The first issue in the process was to acquire honey. Making sweet desert meads requires lots of honey, between 15-20 lbs per 5 gallon batch. We looked around locally, but found that Miller's Honey offered the best quality honey for the lowest price. We ordered two 5 gallon pails of honey. One pail was orange blossom and the other was clover honey.

The last time that I made mead was back in 2004, and since then I have read more about the process. The main modifications that I made to my mead schedule was to eliminate boiling all together, sanitize everything rigorously, and use a different blend of nutrients for the primary fermentation. I did notice the fermentation starting faster, and running longer with the new nutrient blend. Eliminating boiling made the entire process quite fast.

Sweet Orange Mead:

• Starting gravity: 1.138
• After one week: 1.058
• After two weeks: 1.032 (racked to secondary)
• After three weeks: 1.022 (racked to tertiary)
• Final gravity: 1.020
• Approximate ABV: 15%

Sweet Clover Mead:

• Starting gravity: 1.148
• After one week: 1.068
• After two weeks: 1.042 (racked to secondary)
• After three weeks: 1.035 (racked to tertiary)
• Final gravity: 1.035
• Approximate ABV: 15%

After racking to the tertiary fermenter, the meads spent the next three months at 67^o F in darkness. Then, I racked the meads on to french 1lb of oak chips per 5 gallons. One more month spent on the chips, and then the meads were racked to their final fermenter. Four months later, I bottled the two batches along with a third batch of mead that was not oaked:

After setting the corks, we used boiling water to shrink white caps on the bottles and added our wedding labels.