This page is dedicated to realizing Viking recipes and documenting results. Recipes used on this page can be found in The Viking World Cookbook .
Brewing
Ragna-Rock Mead
The recipe for Ragna-Rock Mead can be found here.
Ingredients:
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12 pounds of honey, warmed
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5 gallons of water
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Yeast and Yeast Energizer,
mixed in water
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Step 1: Mix water and honey
I let the honey sit in warm water for about 10-15 minutes so it became runny and poured much more easily. After the bottles were empty, I took a bit of water and shook it around in the honey jars, making sure to get all of the precious sugar out.
Step 2: Add the energizer
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It is important to add the yeast energizer (or nutrient) before you add the yeast. When the yeast is finally added into the mixture, it needs to have something to feed off of.
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Step 3: Stir well
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Stir the water, honey, and energizer together. I don’t know why this is an important step. Perhaps having ingredients mixed together thoroughly increases the desired result in yeast.
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Step 4: Bring on the yeast
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“Pitch” the yeast much like the energizer. Important note: pitching means slowly pour the yeast as close to the center of the mixture as possible. Again, I’m not exactly sure of the reason for this, but it probably has something to do with the reactivity of the yeast. To make sure I got all of the yeast, I left a bit of water in the bottom of the cup and swirled it around before adding it, too, to the mixture.
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Step 5: Store and wait
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After all ingredients are added, stir the mixture for about two minutes to make sure the yeast is activated and spread completely throughout. The fermentation took a little less than two months total. I decided not to filter the mead (mostly because I couldn’t wait to drink it).
I found the mead did not bubble (showing signs of fermentation) as much as the original recipe said it would. This made me nervous, but it turned out to be fine. The mead fermented and was mighty tasty.
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In general, the mead was well received. I, for one, thought it was much better (and much different) than I was expecting. Before I tried my first glass, I tried to smell the mixture, but the only scent coming off of it was yeast. The taste was much sweeter than that—I could hardly taste the yeast at all. I expect filtering would further decrease the yeast. Most people who tried it gave the thumbs up, which I suspect means success.
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Comments (2)
Robert Wordhoard said
at 12:48 pm on Dec 18, 2009
Awesome job Cari. It's helpful to see a stp-by-step picture-driven explanation. Thumbs up!
Skallagrimssonr said
at 1:06 am on Dec 18, 2009
The mead rocked, thanks for sharing! Nice pictures; that's a lot of honey.
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