Mead a niche brewing opportunity

1. Mead a niche brewing opportunity • An Introduction to Mead-Making • B.D.C. Professional Brewing & Distilling Technology Certificate Program • Winter, 2018 • Johnny Cosgrove

2. Summary • Goal: Give you, as future brewers, an introduction to a growing potential niche market in the alcohol industry. • What Is Mead? • Overview of U.S. Commercial Mead Market • Short History of Mead • Styles of Mead • The Ingredients • Equipment • The Process • Regulatory hurdles • Questions?

3. What Is Mead? • Mead is honey wine: yeast-fermented honey water • Mazer Cup definition: “Mead is made primarily from honey, water and yeast.” • Typically 3.5% – 18 % ABV (alcohol by volume) • Oldest fermented beverage? • Mead is not white wine with honey added (contrary to what you might have had in an old castle in Ireland) • For some mead-judging competitions, at least 50% of fermentable sugars have to come from honey. (not a legal definition) • There are almost endless possibilities for flavors of mead

4. The U.S. Mead Market 194 commercial mead producers 2014

5. Average U.S. Gross Mead Sales ($) Per meadery in 2012 & 2013

6. The high end of the mead market

7. History of Mead • The history of mead goes back thousands of years. • Archaeological evidence of fermented honey/grain/fruit beverage dating back 9000 years. • In Norse mythology, mead was the favorite drink of the Norse gods and heroes. • Found in the cultures and mythology all over the world • The word "honeymoon" in English is supposedly traceable to the practice of a bride's father dowering her with enough mead for a month-long celebration in honor of the marriage. • 275 commercial mead producers in U.S. in 2015 • Fastest growing segment of the U.S. alcohol industry 2014

8. Styles of Meadhttps://www.bjcp.org/docs/2015_Guidelines_Mead.pdf • “Traditional” Mead: Honey, Water, Yeast • Can be sweet or bone dry • Can be still or sparkling • Several styles of mead: • traditional (just honey) • melomel (fruit mead) • pyment (grape mead) • cyser (apple mead), perry (pear mead) • metheglin (herbs or spice mead) • hippocras (spiced pyment) • hydromel (lower alcohol) (now called “session mead”) • braggot (grains/hops) ** Can produce in brewery, ABV beer limits: TN (10.1%), NC (15), GA (14), AL (13.9, MS (10.1) there are about 300 floral sources of honey in the U.S. and every batch of honey tastes a little bit different. EXPERIMENT!

9. Mead Ingredients • Honey • Water • Yeast • Fruit or Spices (optional) • Grains/Hops (optional for braggot style) • Additives (Adjuncts) • Yeast Nutrient: Fermax, Fermaid ** • Acid Blend (optional) • Sulfite (Campden tablets) (optional) • Potassium Sorbate (optional stabilizer)

10. Basic Fermentation Yeast

11. Honey

12. Honey’s Flavor • Dependent on where the bees foraged / floral source. “Terroir” • 300 varietals in the United States. 3,000 types of honey worldwide. • Potential to develop complete product line with different varieties of honey.

13. About Honey • The predominant carbohydrates found in honey are glucose and fructose, the relative percentages of which depend largely on the floral variety. • Crystallized honey is normal and okay. • Good Reference: The CompleatMeadmaker, Ken Schramm

14. Carbohydrate Profile of honey Vs. Beer wort *Table 1 from National Honey Board

15. Buying Honey • Be wary of huge commercial producers: often heat-treated, some unscrupulous addition of corn syrup. • FDA Import alerts on Chinese honey for residues of animal antibiotics (2002, 2006). • Support your local beekeeper. • Most mead-makers recommend the use of raw honey that has undergone the least processing possible.

16. Honey Composition~78 weight % fermentable sugars Average Density of Honey ~= 12 lbs / gallon pH values in honey range from 3.4 to 6.1. Most honey will average around 4.0 pH

17. Water • Do not use chlorinated water in mead. Use water filter that removes chlorine or use non-chlorinated bottled water or well/spring water. • “Medicinal” taste…… ? Chemical reaction between chlorine in water and polyphenolic compounds in honey (chlorophenols).? Or possibly oxidation or yeast byproducts. • Taste eventually ages away but it could take a year or longer of bottle ageing. (BE PATIENT!) • Minerals ? • Honey naturally rich in minerals • Some use of calcium sulfate for yeast health

18. Yeast • Scores of yeast varieties available (see Yeast Strain handout, Appendix 1) • Characteristics • Temperature Tolerance: wider range better • Attenuation: Measure (subjective) of ability to convert sugar to alcohol/CO2; higher attenuation = drier product • Flavor neutrality • Alcohol Tolerance • The optimal pH range for yeast growth can vary from pH of about 3.6 to 6, depending on temperature, the presence of oxygen, culture, and the strain of yeast.

19. Yeast needs Oxygen! (initially)

20. Fruit / Spices • Fresh fruit: grind the fruit and either pasteurize or sulfite. Know the typical sugar content (http://www.enzafoods.co.nz/thecompany/technology/fruit-sugar-chart) • Fruit juice: Substitute for water. Know the sugar content and back off on honey accordingly • Fruit concentrate: Add like honey but know sugar content and adjust honey accordingly • Spices: most often added as a strong tea at bottling or late secondary.

21. Adjuncts • Generally, optional • Highly recommended: yeast nutrient • Matter of taste: acid blend • Sulfite (potassium metabisulphite) • Pros: helps prevent oxidation; longer shelf life; kills wild yeast and bacteria, particularly if using fruit. Reacts/removes chlorine and chloroamines. • Cons: Some people sensitive to sulfites; if trying to go organic, do not use. • Potassium Sorbate (“wine stabilizer”) prevents re-fermentation in a still mead.

22. Sweet or Dry? Mazer Cup Mead Sweetness Categories: Residual Sugar: dry: 0%-2% semi-sweet: 2.1%-5% sweet: 5.1%+ 10.8 %

23. Controlling Residual Sugar • How to control final sweetness (residual sugar) (i.e. how to shut down yeast)? • Choice of Yeast: e.g. For sweet mead, use a yeast with lower alcohol tolerance or lower attenuation. For dry mead, use yeast with higher alcohol tolerance and/or higher attenuation (e.g. Lalvin EC-1118 champagne yeast) • For drier meads, Don’t add too much initial honey – only enough to give you desired alcohol content. • For still mead (non-sparkling), Stabilize before sweetening back : Ferment to dryness, rack mead off yeast bed (may need multiple rackings) then…. • Stabilize with potassium metabisulphite and potassium sorbate before bottling (still mead only) • Experiment beforehand to see what sweetness level tastes good. • Good compromise, handle like a beer…. Bottle / cap with residual yeast and enough residual sugar to ferment in bottle to beer-like fizziness. • Filter : step-wise down to below 1 micron (expensive)

24. Determining dissolved sugars concentration: Calculation vs. Measuring • 3 methods: • On-line “Brix” calculator: https://www.brewersfriend.com/brix-converter/ • Converts between Brix (wt% sugar) and specific gravity (mg/L) and calculates potential alcohol-by-volume (ABV) at end of fermentation • **NOTE: Brix ~= Balliing ~= Plato • Chart/Table (See Appendix 2) • Read directly off Hydrometer Scale (will be used to measure specific gravity (*Caution: Hydrometer scale shows about 1.4 % less ABV than some on-line calculators) • Or just follow a recipe and adjust as needed: 1 gallon of honey diluted up to 5 gallons and fermented to dryness makes a fine mead at about 12 - 13% ABV. • BeerSmith and others have honey in their list of “grains” . Input trial and error. • Remember…. Honey approximately 78% sugar. Divide sugar needed by 0.78 to get amount of honey required for equivalent amount of sugar.

25. Equipment • For most styles of mead (except Braggot), most of the equipment is similar to wine-making equipment • No heat required, no mashing • Braggot* made like beer, mashing/sparging heat required • Cooling required to remove heat of fermentation: jacketed stainless steel fermenters and glycol chiller. • pump that can transfer suspended solids (fruit meads) and high-viscosity liquid (honey) • In-tank mixing: can use rim-mounted impeller • Secondary storage tanks: stainless or plastic • Filtration: plate-and-frame, D.E., etc. • Bottling equipment plus capper/corker. Or keg! • * Braggot basically an ale with honey as adjunct. Made under brewery license with typical beer brewing equipment.

26. Fermenters: Variable Capacity Stainless steel variable-capacity fermenter allows setting lid position according to fill volume to minimize head-space. One-way fermentation lock allows CO2 release. Jacketed for glycol coolant circulation Test ports, man-ways, sight-glass, drain valves

27. Filtration

28. Start a Fermentation Record • Decide what kind of mead you want to brew. ? What final alcohol content ? What final residual sugar • Calculate how much honey and other sugar sources (e.g. fruit) OR just find a recipe and follow it. • There are plenty of beer brewsheets online at places like https://www.brewersfriend.com/brewdaysheets/ that you could adapt to mead. Honey is already in list of ingredients in BeerSmith • See example Fermentation Record in Appendix 4 FermentationRecordBDCClassExcel.xlsx

29. The Process: Step 1 - Sanitize Home Brewers: Bleach 1 ½ teaspoons household bleach in 5 gallons = 25 ppm chlorine (30 minute hold minimum); Iodophor; Star San (phosphoric acid) Wineries: Sulfite (Potassium MetaBisulfite (K2S2O5), (“Meta” ); Iodophor Breweries: peroxyacetic acid (peracetic) (combination of acetic acid and hydrogen peroxide); Iodophor ; StarSan Cleaners: Alkali cleansers like PBW (Powdered Brewery Wash), Oxiclean

30. Process, Step 2: Dissolve Honey In Water Typical Honey-to-Water Volume Ratio about 1 to 4 for ~ 12 - 13% ABV mead. 50 gallons (~600 lbs) honey for 250 gallon batch Drum heater to heat honey for pumping (sometimes crystallized) 5 gallon buckets of honey easier to handle

31. The Process: starting PrimaryFermentation At this point we have added the honey, water and yeast nutrient (and in this case, pear concentrate) and mixed it really well to aerate. The quart jars in front each contain 5 grams of dry yeast in about a pint of cooled must.

32. Primary Fermentation: Day 3 CO2, foam, yeast blow-off

33. Primary Fermentation: 2-3 weeks, First Racking, continue secondary fermentation/Settling ~ 6 weeks

34. Fermentation Complete8-12 weeks • Little evidence of bubbling • Pull sample and check specific gravity with hydrometer • ~ 2 days later, check gravity again • If no change in gravity, fermentation complete (if making sparkling mead, a little bubbling a good thing)

35. Bottling (or kegging) • Small Scale: 5-spout bottle filler, gravity fed or Tee off pumped recirculation stream. • For wine, TTB only allows certain “standards of fill”: 12, 16 ounce not allowed but 18 Liters is allowed and is close to a cornelius (“corny”) keg volume (5 gal, 18.93 liters) • Braggot may be bottled like beer or kegged.

36. Mead: The Regulatory Issues • Federal Laws governing production, labeling and distribution of alcoholic beverage in the U.S: • Federal Alcohol Administration Act (FAA) • the Revenue Act of 1918 (26 U.S.C. 5381-5392) • Federal regulating body in charge of interpreting, defining and enforcing federal alchohol laws: • Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) (previously the BATF)

37. TTB Designations for Mead • Per TTB, Most styles of Mead are “Honey Wine” produced under winery license. • Until recently, Only honey, water , hops fermentation can be called “Mead” • Other styles with fruit or spices considered “Other Than Standard” wine and require pre-approval of formula and label. • No wine can be made with grains, BUT, you can make a braggot with grains and honey under a brewery license (honey as adjunct – malt or allowable malt substitutes must predominate in beer).

38. Practical Effects of TTB classification of meads as “Other Than Standard” wine

39. Artwork compliments of TTB

40. References • https://www.bjcp.org/mead.php • This Beer Judge Certification Program website is a great online link to mead and honey references • https://honey.com/about-honey/honey-varietals GENERAL MEAD REFERENCES (many more at bjcp.org link above) Brewing Mead, Gayre,R & Papazian, C. All About Mead, Andrews,S.W. Making Mead, Acton,B & Duncan,P. The Complete Joy of Homebrewing, Papazian, C. Zymurgy American Mead Association Mead Lovers Digest The CompleatMeadmaker, Ken Schramm Student Portal: “Brew Better With Honey”

41. appendices • Appendix 1: Yeast Strains Chart • Appendix 2: Table of Sugar Concentration Units • Appendix 3: Recipes • Recipe 1: Northern Brewer Artisanal Mead (4 versions) • Recipe 2: Northern Brewer Braggot • Recipe 3: BeerSmith Spiced Brown Ale 10ABV Braggot

42. Appendix 1: Yeast Strains Chart – 2017 • Saved as Word file: Yeast Strains Chart.docx

43. Appendix 2: Table of sugar Units • Saved as Word File: Appendices\Appendix 2(was3) -Table of Various Units Used to Express Sugar Content of Alcoholic Beverages.docx

44. Appendix 3: recipes • Recipe 1: Northern Brewer Artisanal Mead (gives four variations) • Hydromel Semi-Sweet Mead • Standard Dry Mead • Standard Semi-Sweet Mead • Sack Sweet Mead • Recipe 2: Northern Brewer Braggot • Recipe 3: BeerSmith 10ABV Braggot

45. Thank You! • Questions?? • Cheers and Good Luck!