I turned a Bucket Of Honey Into Mead & Distilled It

today we're going to make mead and then distill it mead you know the stuff that you make from honey the stuff that bees work insanely hard to make so gwyneth paltrow can steal it and sell it for suckers that stuff how's it going chases i hope you're having a kick-ass week i'm jesse and this is still it and i have always wanted to make and distill a mead but up until now i have not done it this is the closest thing to me that i have ever made and we're going to get you caught up on exactly how i made this in just a second but to be honest uh i don't know exactly what i'm doing when it comes to making mead because like i said i've never made it before so i thought it would be a good idea to get in touch with someone that did know what the hell they were talking about when it comes to me we're going to be talking to this guy right here no really that's billy mullins from method to the meanness from what i hear you're the man to talk to about need a few things i've been worried about is i hear a lot of talk about me taking a long time to ferment it really depends on your brewing techniques the thing with uh mead is that it's almost pure sugars uh there's not usually a lot of nitrogen content or other things in it do you suggest i do like nutrients over time or just whack it all in at the beginning whack it all in at the beginning it's fine cool uh and dosing rates for that a half teaspoon of furmaid for mid k uh per gallon or if you're feeling adventurous 25 chopped raisins generally for distilling i kind of aim for the 8 to 10 abv is that high low it's low uh it's pretty low for mead you can get a complete fermentation to absolute dryness at 13 14 what uh yeast selections would you suggest going for it it would always be a wine yeast narbone yeast uh lalvin 71b 1122 it really pulls a lot of fruity flavors out of the honey all right uh thanks a bunch man uh really quickly can you tell us about your youtube channel my channel is called method to the meadness for the most part i uh make meads based off of pop culture based on billy's advice that it decided to go with 15 gallons or 56 liters of water and 39 pounds or 17.7 kilos of honey [Music] the yeast was three packets of lalvin 71b nah bone and this one i have to say guys a wee bit excited while hydrating i couldn't get my hands on firmed k so i went with 60 grams or 2.1 ounces of furmaid o i bet you guys would like to know what honey i'm using and honestly i can't tell you true story about two three years ago the beekeeper from manoa two hives gave me literally a bucket 20 kilos of honey to mess with that's the stuff here it was so freaking long ago i forgot it existed dude i am sorry if you're watching this get in touch with me i can't find our correspondence but i just i honestly can't remember what that guy told me the honey was what i can do is taste this stuff which is generic supermarket i don't know just honey or some description there's nothing wrong with that it's sweet it tastes like honey not a lot much else going on to be honest with you this on the other hand [Music] it has a awesome rich deep grunty bottom end to it lots of caramel through to almost kind of chocolate and coffee which is weird for me in a honey i'm not an expert honey taster but it has a great floral fresh light thing up front as well there you have it anyway like i said earlier in the video i have never done this before so i don't really know how long it's going to take to ferment out now uh all i've got to go on is barely said less than two weeks so let's hope it's less than two weeks i guess do you know what i do do just about every single day is wear and into the am shirt thanks for sponsoring this show it's the am what oh i should be wearing it into the am shirt for the sponsorship well like i said guys i'm always wearing these shirts seriously go back and look through my thumbnails you'll see what i mean honestly guys uh it surprises me how often questions about where these shirts come from pop up in the comments but i get it they look awesome uh you guys seem to love the designs especially that one of the uh the bottle with the aliens in it you guys are always asking about that thing and you know what they're insanely comfortable using the link in the description down below gives you 10 off pretty much everything on their website if you want to sign up for this shoot club choice that's 10 off maybe you want to get their shirt packs and save a little bit more money well you get 10 off there as well this bad boy fermented out in about two weeks uh and it got down to almost almost one so it's close but not quite there and i've left it sit for uh four days maybe now i honestly i can't remember exactly how long since it stopped doing anything and it has cleared out a bit it's actually a pretty interesting flavor like this obviously as a mead it needs a whole lot more time to turn into anything delicious but as a wash i think it's pretty much ready here's the thing guys i had an awkward amount of liquid in this bucket uh so i can't exactly do one run because i've got 60 liters i can't fit it in my big still i can't really do stripping runs because i'm going to end up with almost nothing to put back into the still so what we're doing today is what is known at least with home distillers as a one and a half run step one fill the still up with roughly half of the wash step two run a stripping run so we're running hard we're running fast and we're just cutting down on volume step three empty that still out again and of course step four fill it back up again with the remaining wash and the results of the first shipping run which are the low wines so double distillation is where you take everything in the fermenter and you distill it once the results of that are the low wines we often call this the stripping run and then you take all of those load wines from the stripping run or the first distillation whack them back into another still or the same still distill it again double distilled a one and a half run as we've only distilled half of the wash you distill half of the wash into low wines and then add those low lines back into the wash itself and then distill it simple right yeah except i'm going to make it a little bit more complicated i want to clean things up just a little bit more than a one and a half run for this specifically i want it to be quite clean and delicate so i'm gonna add one plate into the column so it's gonna be i guess kind of like almost two and a half times distilled but not quite 2.4 i don't know i'm making this up as i go you guys tell me what i should call it [Music] so we are on the bench this is the whole run laid out before us to give you a quick idea heads up here as it was coming off the still i knew this stuff wasn't great right around here it sort of started to change so i figured the transition point would be in here somewhere but what i noticed is that although this was relatively clean i wasn't getting a whole lot of anything that really tasted like much this is where the flavor started to come in i was still wasn't sure if i really wanted to keep it so i kept it in small jars delicious hearts that are straight up taste like the original honey which is crazy i can't believe how much this tastes like honey this jar here i started to wonder if it was getting tailsy but it still tasted like honey this was very dark rich grunty honey that was really really delicious and this jar here i've decided isn't tailsy it is just honey-ish although that is similar to the tails that came in right after it and this stuff down here is um just absolutely nasty i've decided that i'm gonna keep these three but not these three these three are clean but they're not really adding much to it um and there's just a just a slight amount of jagginess in them still but these ones on the other hand are floral and really approachable delicious honey so i'm keeping all of this so from here to here is all going in the pot i have measured the volume and the abv and it is 3.12 liters uh i don't know what that is in freedom units can't convert it in my head this much and it is 73 abv i can do that that's 146 proof and using the calculator on chasethecraft.com you get these two there we need to add 1.098 litres of water to get me to my 54 abv or what's that 108 proof that i'm aiming for why i'll tell you in just a second i cannot believe the amount of honey that's coming off this i really thought that we were going to lose most of the honey flavor as honey i thought that random little parts of the honey would sort of jump out off the still in different parts but no we got honey straight up across the board and it smells just like the original honey it really does why did i proof it to 54 because i'm going to treat it like whiskey i know what a surprise jesse is distilling something different and pretending it's whiskey i get it i get it i get it this jar here is getting second use american white oak and i am going to do uh let's actually go with quite a lot to start with so it's four pieces i'm gonna put that in for about a month and then check on it it was the oak that was used in the t501 uh next step whiskey made in the t500 that i bottled recently check it out up here i did however save a little bit i'm gonna put it in here for now i'm not gonna do anything to this i'm gonna let it sit because i want you guys to be able to have your say oh i need a gasket but i want you guys to be able to have your say and tell me what you think i should do with the rest of this should i just bottle it white to compare to this later on should i put it in french oak perhaps i don't know you tell me why did i pick 54 exactly i'll tell you in just a second right after that's a huge huge thank you to the patreons thank you so much well thank you patreons you guys help me pay for uh the new hydrometers when i break them [Laughter] the reason i've picked 54 specifically is i think that is going to give this the specific flavors that i think it needs so i'm going to lean in towards that honey side of things i'm going to try and pull more sweetness and softness over a decent amount of time and head towards the softer almost sort of pastry slightly sweet side of second use oak rather than heading towards more spice and you know barrel flavor all in all i'm extremely happy with how this turned out i really really really can't believe how much honey came through and i can't believe how whisky like it is which is a big compliment for me this is annoying to hold and talk hold on i'm also really interested to see what you guys want me to do with that other bottle the one that i kept separate off oak i'm interested let me know in the comments what you want me to do with it i'll check it out in you know a week or so and kind of tally up the uh the general consensus we can go from there if you've done something like this please please please put your comments thoughts hints tips tricks what you think i've done wrong put them in the comments section as well for other people that are going to watch this video after you so they can benefit from your experience as well and do all the youtube things for me team if you enjoyed the video give it a thumbs up hit the like and subscribe button down below and of course drop some comments in the comment section share this video around to anyone that you think might like it and and most importantly i'll catch you next time guys keep on chasing the craft see ya you

Channel: Still It

Views: 692,078

Keywords: distilling, mead, mead spirit, distilled mead, mead brandy, honey brandy, honey vodka, honey spirit, distilled honey, Jesse, Chase the craft, still it

Id: htOVMa-_4WA

Length: 13min 52sec (832 seconds)

Published: Fri May 14 2021