Mead with Mint and Grapefruit AKA Slightly Citrusy Metheglin

I  decided to start making wines about a few years ago.  I regularly made a batches of something I called mint tea wine, which turned out to be pretty tasty.  I was planning on making another batch of the mint tea wine and bought some mint leaves for my creation.

When it came time to start the batch, I remembered that I had about 2.5 pounds of Trader Joe's Desert Mesquite Honey lying around.  Looking around my kitchen, I also saw a couple grapefruits.  Since you have already read the title of this post - I think you know where I'm going with this.

DISCLAIMER: I have read plenty of message boards online that express countless horrors involved with using citrus in meads, but I am a big fan of sour - so I will have to try and fail on my own (hopefully not).

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Ingredients:

For one gallon

• 2.5 lbs honey - I used the Trader Joe's 100% Desert Mesquite Honey 
• 1 ounce of mint leaves (de-stemmed) 🌿
• 2 ruby red grapefruits 🍊
• 1 Packet of yeast - I used Lalvin D47 (a whole packet is not needed for 1 gallon, but I figured if I open it - I might as well use it!)
• Whole lot of luck

I started by heating the water and pouring the jar of honey in.  I kept the water at 180 degrees F. for approximately 20-30 minutes.  This heating method is better for preserving the flavor, the bringing your honey to a boil.

After taking the pot off of the stove, I added the grapefruits to the mixture.  I squeezed the juice out of the grapefruits and added the entire peel.  Next up was the mint leaves. I rolled the mint leaves between the my fingers to bruise them (to extract the oil) before dropping them into the pot.

I then put the pot in an ice bath to help speed up the cooling process.  I let it cool down to 75 degrees before adding the yeast packet.  I hydrated the yeast by following the directions on the back of the packet.  

To finish it all up, I removed the grapefruit and mint with a strainer and I put the mead in the sanitized carboy with the airlock for primary fermentation (I sanitized using STAR SAN).

I forgot to take a specific gravity ready at this time.  It is really helpful to take the specific gravity reading when you bottle it, so that you can calculate the alcohol content in the end.  In this case, I calculated the theoretical specific gravity to be 1.105.

1 day in it and it was bubbling heavily (releasing CO2).

11 days in and the mead had really started to clear up.  There is a thick layer of lees on the bottom of the bottle.  I have added a picture of the mead next to another mead that recently started fermentation.  You can really see the difference in the clarity.  The bubbling in the airlock has also begun to slow drastically.

13 days in I racked the mead.  It seemed that the fermentation is really close to completion at this time.  I measured the specific gravity to be 0.990.  Looks like it fermented very quickly and I have a dry mead.

17 days in and I racked a second time. It was caustic (which should go away with age) and had a strong soury minty flavor.  It's dry and fermentation seems near completion.  

Around a month in, I bottled the mead in flip-top bottles. It still had a harsh taste. Since the mead was very dry it was very easy to taste the alcohol and it was off-putting and not what you want your mead to taste like. I've made quite a few dry meads and I knew that this taste would go away with time.  After about 6 months in bottles, this taste really mellowed and became quite drinkable. Because of the mint and citrus, it tasted a lot like a dry bitter digestif. It was really refreshing! - if you're into that sort of thing.

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