Mead
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Introduction to Alternative Fermentation of Mead
Most modern mead is currently fermented using clean yeast strains, but like many other alcoholic beverages its history is filled with wild and spontaneous fermentation as clean fermentation practices didn't start to become known until the 1800's. Mead's can range quite widely on alcohol content, which is primarily affected by the amount of honey added. Mead can also be broken down into different categories such as Melomel(fruited mead), Metheglin(spice/herb mead), Capsicumel(meads with chili peppers) etc.
Alternative Fermentation Techniques
Like most wild fermented beverages, a wide variety of techniques can be used to make alternative Meads. Below you'll find a list of ways you can use to ferment your wild Meads but feel free to experiment.
Spontaneous
Just about anything can be spontaneously fermented, which of course includes Mead. For the most part its very similar to spontaneous beers as far as capturing ambient microbes, the big difference is the controlling of microbes by types of carbon sources as well as acid contributions from hops. Hopping can be used of course but is not used in normal Meads. Also unlike spontaneous beers, you normally wouldn't be heating must(unfermented mead) up to a boiling temperature so the cooling process is a bit different. To add a bit of control you could add things like maltodextrin or fruits/vegetables with complex sugars.
Being that raw honey can have a host of microbes within it, the only way to do a true spontaneous mead fermented with ambient microbes is to use a pasteurized honey with water that has been pasteurized or boiled. Outside of this technique, it would be considered a wild Mead. You could also pasteurize your own honey by holding the must at 170 F but you may also risk loosing some of the honey's attributes and flavors.
The concept of catching the ambient microbes is very much the same as beer however. For large batches you can use coolships, in which case you can refer to the Coolship wiki page for proper dimensions. The dimensions matter less for the cooling rate as you won't be bringing the must to a boil but will work for volume to surface ratio for inoculation surface. As mentioned on the coolship page if your doing smaller batches it's best to just use your kettle as a coolship vessel. If your looking to imitate cooling rates of Lambic you could use external heating sources in your coolship vessel to keep temperature from dropping to quickly in colder temps.
See Also
Additional Articles on MTF Wiki