This is my first tea-based mead, to go with Patrick's lovely chai meads. This batch was just a little something we threw together while brewing beer. This batch was named after Monty Python's Four Yorkshiremen skit.

Ingredients in this batch

  • 6 bags of Thai tea from Taste Nirvana
  • 40 oz of Kirkland clover honey
  • ½ tsp each of yeast energizer and nutrient
  • ½ pack of Lalvin K1-V1116, rehydrated in 94-degree water for about an hour

Yield: Looks like a 1-gallon batch from over here.

Instructions

I boiled 1 gallon of filtered tap water and steeped the tea bags for approximately 10 minutes, then removed them and cooled the tea to room temperature. I added the honey, yeast energizer, and yeast nutrient to a sanitized glass carboy, added the tea, and aerated for approximately 10 minutes by capping, shaking, and uncapping the carboy repeatedly. Pitched the yeast and done. Starting gravity was 1.099.

I bottled this batch on 12/26/16. The total yield was four and a half 12-oz bottles, two 22-oz bottles, and one 500-mL bottle. The final gravity was 1.000, for a calculated ABV of 13%.

Observations

  • 2016-10-23T12:00:00: The mead is still fermenting away vigorously. It's a striking orange-amber color from the Thai tea.