Ingredients
Wet
- 2 lbs 8 oz honey
- 1 gallon bottled drinking water
- 2 gr bread yeast
- 2 oz fresh ginger
- 3 sticks cinnamon
- 30 whole cloves
- 4 oz freeze dried raspberries
- 2 oz raspberry syrup
Hardware
- fermentation vessels (I used 3 bottles of drinking water)
- funnel
- fermentation lock (I used a balloon with a pin prick)
Instructions
Note: aside from the honey, water, and the yeast amount, this is a fast and loose recipe. I did not have champagne or brewer’s yeast so I used bread yeast. The accompanying flavors are what I had on hand for use.
- Pour 1/2 water into stock pot and heat on high.
- When barely simmering, add in all honey.
- Mix honey until fully dissolved.
- Turn off heat and let cool to 90F.
- Peel and roughly chop ginger.
- Crush freeze dried raspberries to a rough powder.
- Distribute ginger, cinnamon, and raspberries to fermentation vessel(s). I used 3 1-1/2 liter drinking water bottles, discarding excess water beyond 1 gallon and an additional 4 cups to account for the honey.
- Distribute water and honey mixture evenly between fermentation vessels.
- Put on lids and shake to incorporate.
- Distribute yeast to each vessel then shake again.
Work log
This is the first time attempting this recipe and is an experiment. I do not know if this recipe produces a quality product or I am going to end up with hootch. For this reason, I am keeping a log of observations.
- April 25th 2020: Recipe came together easily. I shook the bottles to redistribute the raspberries which kept floating to the top. Short of 2 hours, the bottles started to bubble lightly. The raspberry seeds were going on a fermentation bubble ride up and down the bottles.
April 26th
Still bubbling lightly like it was yesterday.
May 8th
Not really bubbling any more. Half of the remains from the berries was sitting on the top as a scummy substance. I didn’t take any pictures because the bottles looked almost the same. It didn’t seem like it was mold, though. The smell was very floral and the cloves make their presence know. I’ll probably go with 10 next time instead of 30. I also took the opportunity to transfer the meade (straining out the particulates with a muslin-like filter) over to a glass gallon fermentation jar with a water lock.