Chaga Mead

[Brian_S]

Since there is currently a bad ass Nor'Easter passing through I thought today might be a good day to make mead.

5 Gallon batch

Og: 1.083
Yeast:  Us05 (yes it will do the job)

Ingredients:
2 fist size peices of chaga smashed into itty bitty pieces (about 1 lbs dry)
11.5 lbs of unpasturized wild flower honey
135 ml of concentrated lemon juice
325g of raisins (simmer at 180F for 15 min)

Directions:
First smash the chaga into bits, place in a large pot with about 10L of water and simmer (or very very low boil) for as long as you can.  The longer the blacker it becomes.  I simmer for ~30 hours and even after topping up with water it was black black.

Once simmered dump into sterilized fermentor with the rest of the ingredients and top up to 5 gallon mark with cold water (mine dropped to about 80F)

Pitch US05 and wait.  I'll most likely rack to secondary when fermentation slows.

I'm looking for a jet black mead that will hopefully allow the mild flavour of the chaga to come through.

[Brian_S]

So six weeks after pitching S05 I've still got air lock activity....perhaps its because I'm fermenting at 12C...I dunno.  The light ring of yellow bubbles is  getting  smaller by the day so hopefully I can bottle/keg soon.

Someone....John Q maybe suggested the lower temp and based on my last batch which was awesome after 1.5 years (21% abv sack mead) I would tend to agree.

B

[willcarter]

Process of making seems to be difficult

[JohnQ]

Process of making seems to be difficult

Making mead is dead easy, making good mead, that's another story.

JQ

[Kyle]

fermenting low is key otherwise, while it will still taste good, the fusels generated will create epic hangovers

[Cuba]

I'm quite interested in this. I'm taking a non timber forestry products class at university; the other day we were talking about chaga.

Are you adding it to the mead just for taste? Or is there a possibility that you can get some antioxidants into your brew? Or both? Very interesting.

[Roger]

I usually use it for flavour and colour. I like to think I'm getting some of the health benefits from it. But I don't know what the fermentation process does to it. It would be interesting to have some samples tested though.