As Lughnassad approaches, I am excited to harvest my favorite fruit for mead making: wild plums. The fruit heavily loads down the branches of a tree behind my house as I wait in anticipation until they have ripened to sweet perfection. Which is perfect timing for giving thanks at the first harvest festival feast, and I do save a few plums for making gallettes to share, but most go into the making of my wild yeasted lemon verbena plum mead!
For many years I watched my coven sisters making mead and for some reason I could never find the will to do a batch on my own. It just looked too complicated. Fortuitously few years ago I came upon a chapter in The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz which changed all that. It turned out that I just needed a simpler and closer to nature way of making mead! Instead of buying the laboratory produced yeast strains that most mead makers now use to ensure consistency of their finished product, I rely on the natural yeasts that live on the skins of the fruit and in the raw honey. I do not boil anything, which would kill the yeast. Instead I just wash the fruit to get the city grime off it and then pit the small plums with a cherry pitter. Though I in no way disparage other methods of making mead, I do find that for me this more natural, albeit less controlled way of making mead works for me. There is no recipe, just the ongoing process of getting a feel for what’s important and what can be left to chance.
This year I ended up with about 9 pounds of pitted plums which I put in a 5 gallon food grade bucket. I then dissolved the 8 cups of honey I was able to harvest from last years abandoned bee hive into 4 parts filtered water (32 cups) and poured it over the plums. It is important to use raw honey so you get the added wild yeast. I also added 8 handfuls of dried lemon verbena to the bucket since I find the scent uplifting and euphoric, but in the past I’ve used fresh lemon balm leaves as well so feel free to experiment. I then covered it with a pot lid that fit pretty well but a cloth or some other way to keep the fruit flies out would work too.
Every day I stirred it, first in one direction and then in the other, mixing the fruit in since it tends to float to the top and watched for the beginning of effervescent bubbles, letting me know the yeasts were doing their job. In my warm kitchen it took about a week and the smell of plums became deliciously strong as well.
It was time to stain out the fruit and put it in a carboy! With a giant funnel atop the carboy and a cloth bag in the funnel I began to pour the liquid through the cloth, catching the fruit in the process. I then wrung out the bag as it got full and emptied the contents into my compost, though I have read that it can be saved and used again to make a batch of vinegar which I might try next year. The liquid filled up the carboy about 2/3rds of the way and at this point was very concentrated.
One thing I learned the hard way is the importance of filling the carboy close to the top so that it’s less likely to get moldy or end up with other weird results. So, I then added more honey water and this time added less honey to more water at a ratio of 1:7 or 4.5 cups of honey to 32 cups of filtered water. Because I had so much fruit this year and had some room to add more honey water and I guessed the plums were sweet enough to cut down on the honey which is why I changed to ratio to 1:7. But then I like my finished mead dryer than sweet so the ratios are variable depending on how sweet you like it.
That filled the carboy to the neck. I finished by adding an airlock to the top, which is very important to mead making since it allows the carbon dioxide to be released while not letting in other critters that might spoil the mead. Though a mead made in this more natural fashion is far from sterile to begin with, in my experience the yeast wins out if you make the conditions right, but there’s no need to push your luck. Plus fruit flies will turn whatever they touch into vinegar and you don’t want that!
I will now leave it to brew until the bubbles slow to a stop (which is usually around a month or so depending on how warm it is) and will then siphon it into a new carboy, leaving the yeast sediment behind, and top it off with more honey water which should start the fermentation again for a bit longer. Once it stops again it’s ready to bottle and drink!
I have found this particular mead is great young or aged but I haven’t ever had it around longer than a year to know how it might be after that. Ultimately I have done it slightly differently every year for the past three years that I have made mead from my plums but it has always come out really tasty. I’m sure this process could be done with different kinds of fruit, as long as they are fresh with skins that will carry the yeast into your brew.
Yeast herders, we.
Bless Our Mead by Alane Crowomyn, track 24 on our album Crow Magic
We brew the mead.
Sharing ancient craft, we honor the yeast.
The magic of you brings forth the sacred brew.
Yeast, wee beasts, bless our mead
I appreciate knowing that I am participating in a long tradition of people making alcohol with what they had, and I give thanks for the bees who make the honey and tiny yeast critters who turn my honey water into wine! I give thanks to Demeter for the fruit harvest and make a toast with the last of last year’s plum mead, with a wish for a another good batch to come.
Blessed be and happy Lughnassad!
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