Honey wine: taste, interesting recipes, cooking features and ingredients

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

In the vastness of ancient Scandinavia, alcohol made from honey was called "the drink of the gods". And not in vain, because properly prepared honey wine is actually famous for its noble taste. Such a drink can become a real gem of any alcohol collection.

Among other things, homemade honey wine retains many healing qualities. It is a very extraordinary drink that combines a delicious caramel taste and an unforgettable floral aroma. Ready honey wine has a beautiful golden hue. By the way, you can drink it both cold and hot. Boiled wines with the addition of all kinds of fruits have been considered the most popular for many years.

Useful properties

Perhaps it is no secret to anyone that both natural honey and homemade wine have many healing qualities. So, the bee product contains dozens of useful substances, such as potassium, sucrose, sodium, glucose, phosphorus, fructose, natural acids. All these components are beneficialaffect the state of the body. Honey is allowed even for diabetics and allergy sufferers. With its help, infectious and catarrhal pathologies are often treated. In addition, it is also often used to heal wounds and minor burns.

Homemade honey wine has been successfully used to prevent respiratory viral diseases. In addition, it strengthens the immune system.

Cooking technology

Even in the times of Ancient Russia, honey wine was popularly called mead, and was in demand both at various feasts and for treatment. This drink has always been on the menu for a reason.

How to make honey wine with your own hands? The technology for preparing this drink is not particularly difficult. In fact, wine from honey is made exactly the same as from berries:

1. First the wort is prepared. To do this, honey is almost half diluted with plain water. The result is a sweet liquid that must be boiled over low heat until it becomes clear.
2. Then, yeast sourdough must be added to the resulting wort.
3. For several days, the drink is fermented to a state of complete readiness.

Due to the fact that there are not so many natural acids in honey, experienced chefs often add fruit and berry juices to the must. So the wine gets a richer, brighter taste.

For the same purpose, all kinds of spices with a pronounced aroma are often added to the drink. The quality of the finished meaddepends, as in the case of a simple grape wine, on the aging time.

Sweet and semi-sweet honey drinks are obtained by additional mixing with diluted honey into ready-made alcohol. If you want to make fortified wine, you need to add quite a bit of alcohol to it. The more you add it, the higher the strength of the finished drink will be.

Recommendations

Before you start making honey wine at home, you should definitely know a few key factors:

1. To get a really good, tasty drink, you need to use linden or meadow honey. It is better to refuse to purchase a bee product of dubious quality, since it may contain harmful animal and vegetable fats. In addition, bad honey will certainly affect the final taste of alcohol.
2. Mead is incredibly he althy, but only in small doses. This is especially true for the elderly and people suffering from various chronic pathologies.
3. Pure honey has an extremely low acidity of approximately 0.4%. That is why, in the process of making wine, it is desirable to add natural fruit juices to the must, such as pears, currants, apples or gooseberries.
4. Honey is not as sweet as sugar. So for the preparation of wine it will take a little more than the usual for this product. There are approximately 140 grams of honey per 100 grams of sugar.
5. All the tools you will useshould be sterilized with boiling water.
6. When choosing the right honey, be sure to pay attention to its smell and shade. The best product is a bright golden color, without foam and turbidity, with a pronounced floral aroma. Candied sugar is allowed.

Required Ingredients

So, if you decide to use the honey wine recipe at home, prepare in advance:

• 0.6kg natural bee product;
• 3 liters of plain water;
• 0.5 kg raisins;
• a glass of fruit or sugar syrup.

And a simple sequence of actions will help you in the process, which can be called a classic mead recipe.

How to make honey wine at home

First of all, you should prepare a starter based on raisins. There is no need to wash it. Pour dried grapes with one liter of warm pre-boiled water and leave it like this for a couple of hours. Once your starter is cloudy and starts to foam, you can move on to the next steps.

Add prepared honey to the remaining water (2 liters). Thoroughly mix the ingredients together.

Put the resulting honey mass on a slow fire and cook for an hour. Be sure to remove the foam that appears as it occurs.

Wait until the cooked wort cools down and pour it into a glass container, for examplebank. Then add fermented raisin starter to it. This should leave about a quarter of the free space in your capacity.

Now, put a special water seal on the neck of the jar, if available, or an ordinary rubber glove with a small puncture. Place the workpiece in a dark, but warm enough place. Honey wine should ferment for about a month. The drink will need to be regularly poured into another container, separating it from the resulting sediment.

Determine when the fermentation process comes to an end, a deflated glove will help. The absence of a cloudy sediment on the bottom of the jar also indicates the completion of cooking. At this stage, fruit or sugar syrup should be added to the container. After that, mix the contents of the jar thoroughly and send the container to a cold, dark place, such as a basement.

Made of honey wine can take 1-6 months. The longer the process lasts, the tastier the drink will turn out. Ready wine is desirable to bottle.

Recipe for honey wine with lemon

Unsurpassed aroma and low levels of carbonation give this wonderful drink hops. Many winemakers believe that even those who have never made anything like this with their own hands can do this method of making mead.

This wine contains:

• 2 kg natural honey;
• 10 liters of water;
• 9-10 fresh lemons;
• 20g hop cones.

Cooking method

As always,first you need to make the wort. To do this, honey is diluted with water and boiled at minimum power for a maximum of an hour. At this stage, only one thing is important - to collect the emerging foam, which contains pollen, in time.

After the mixture becomes transparent, it is necessary to add prepared hops to it. Now the mass should boil for another couple of minutes, after which it should be removed from the stove.

The chilled wort must be poured into a glass container. Here you should also send a lemon cut into large slices. Now close the jar with a nylon lid and put it in a dark, cold place for 2 weeks.

After the specified time, the wine can already be bottled. But at this stage, his fortress will still be quite small. So, if you want a drink with degrees, be patient.

Mead with raspberry juice

Ripe berries give the wine not only a pleasant sweetish taste, but also an unsurpassed aroma. To make this drink you will need:

• 4, 5 kg of honey;
• 10 liters of water;
• 2L raspberry juice;
• 1L yeast starter.

How to make wine

First of all, as always, the wort is prepared. And after it has cooled, prepared sourdough and juice should be added to it. All this must be placed in a tightly sealed jar and shake well to thoroughly mix. Now the future wine must be sent to a dark place for infusion and fermentation.

After 2 weeks, the resulting mixture should be filtered and bottled. True, experienced winemakers recommend letting the drink stand for a few more months to make the taste more expressive and refined.