Mini-Mead: A Lesson Learned

Last month, I took care of Forrest and Kierston's cat while they were away for a week. As a thank-you gift, they gave me this amazing "redneck wine glass," which is in fact a mason jar attached to a stem. I decided to use it to pursue a little side project, Oak Barrel's "mini-mead" recipe. It's two parts clover honey to one part water, with a little acid to liven it up. I used some leftover yeast and yeast nutrient from our plum wine.

Here's what it looked like when everything was mixed together. The mason jar has a tight seal, which prevents contamination but builds up pressure easily. Unfortunately, I didn't have the luxury of an airlock, which meant I had to vent every day, then seal it again, shake to mix up the yeast and gas, then vent again for good measure.






After keeping up that protocol for a few weeks, the foaming kept getting stronger every time I shook my mini-mead. That's a good sign--it means the fermentation is working--but it also means the vessel was getting more pressurized. So when I took a trip to Boston to visit Steph, I had to choose between sealing the container and risk breaking it (and getting a mead puddle on my carpet) or leaving it open a crack and risk contamination. I decided losing a batch of mead was worse then losing my awesome redneck wine glass...

...and when I came back, it was brown and nasty. My glass was intact, fortunately, but my batch of mead was sadly ruined. Lesson learned: buy an airlock for your fermentations.