Norse Ritual for New Moon included the making of Mead...so here are some recipes:

Basic Mead

Source: Scott James (scojam@scojam.Auto-trol.COM)
Mead Lover's Digest #18, 16 October 1992
Ingredients:

10 lbs honey (clover honey, processed. From local super market chain)
1 can concentrated white grape juice
(condensed for reisling wine; from homebrew shop)
5 gal. water
5 grams dry "Pasteur Champagne yeast"

Procedure:

Let it ferment for 3 months in primary (70F), then bottled; priming
with 1 lb honey disolved in 4 cups boiling water.
Traditional Mead and Maple Wine

Source: John Gorman (john@rsi.com)
Mead Lover's Digest #19, 17 October 1993
Ingredients:

5-6 qts honey or 7-8 qts maple syrup (bulk grade B dark)
5 tsp yeast nutrient
15 gm white wine yeast

Procedure:

Relax, don't worry, have some mead.

Hydrate the yeast and dissolve the yeast nutrient _separately_ in warm
water for 30 minutes. Mix the honey, maple syrup, or both with first
hot and then cold tap water in a large open container to almost 5
gallons at your target specific gravity. Splash or spray the water to
oxygenate the must so that the yeast will multiply. Pour the must into
a glass carboy, then pitch in the hydrated yeast and dissolved yeast
nutrient, dregs included.

Use a blow off tube for the first few days and then switch to a water
trap. In a month or so, the alcohol will kill the yeast before it runs
out of sugar. If not, and the mead turns out too dry, add some more
honey. It is ready to drink as soon as fermentation stops.

Maple wine becomes crystal clear with a beautiful sherry color within 60
days. Mead will sometimes clarify in 90 days. If you choose to bottle
the mead before it is clear, it will clarify in the bottles, leaving an
unsightly but delicious sediment.

Use Bentonite (clay) to quickly clarify a mead anytime after
fermentation stops. Boil 12 ounces of water in a saucepan. While
simmering, slowly sprinkle and stir in 5 tsp of bentonite. Cover and
let stand for 24 hours. Add during racking. It may be necessary to
rack and bentonite twice. The result is crystal clear.

Comments:

Traditional Meads and Maple Wines have an alcohol content of 12-15%.
Always use yeast nutrient and plenty of yeast for a strong start. The
fermentation will take off with a bang and the rapidly rising alcohol
content will quickly kill off any wild yeast. There is no need to
sulphite, heat, or boil the must. Why ruin good honey?
Citrus Mead

Source: Michael Tighe (tighe@inmet.camb.inmet.com)
Mead Lover's Digest #211, 21 September 1993

Ingredients:

10 lbs. honey
Citrus peel
sliced ginger
yeast

Procedure:

Make a basic mead with 2 lbs of honey per gallon. Use a clover honey or
a light wildflower honey for this recipe. Just before taking the must
off the boil, add a small amount of sliced ginger (about the size of
one's thumb for a 5-gallon batch) and then add the thinnest peel of
orange skin (about 3/4 of the skin of the orange). Be careful not to
get the white pith of the skin, it leaves a bitter/soapy after-taste.

Let it cool naturally about 3/4 hour (longer for larger batches) and
then remove the ginger and orange peel. Put in a carboy to cool, then
add yeast and let it go for three to six weeks (I usually let it go till
it starts to clear). Bottle, let sit for another week or two (to charge
the bottles) and then chill and serve.

Comments:

I've made this with lemon peel, grapefruit peel as well as orange peel,
and all taste great! If you use orange blossom honey, use orange peel
rather than some other citrus fruit - it really enhances the flavor!
Grapefruit is the strongest flavor, and the most likely to be
bitter/harsh, so use less of it than for orange or lemon. Leave some of
the ginger and the skin in the must during fermentation for stronger
flavor.

Use less ginger and less citrus skin for the first batches, and then
increase the amounts till you get the exact flavor you want. (One friend
used a pound of ginger per gallon! And he LIKED IT!)

The slow-cool method (rather than using a chiller) is supposed to be
part of what makes the flavor great.

I prefer mead yeasts if possible, but champagne or general purpose wine
yeast works fine.

This should create a slightly sweet mead with an alcohol content of
three or four percent.

Earl Grey Metheglin

Source: J. Hunter Heinlen (STBLEZA@grove.iup.edu)
Based on a wine recipe by Tom Gressman
Mead Lovers Digest #171, 10 July 1993

Ingredients:

4 gal. grape juice
8-10 lbs. honey
4 largish oranges, sliced into eigths or sixteenths
other citrus fruits usable to taste
8-12 packets of Earl Gray tea
Your Favorite Wine or Mead Yeast (I use Montrachet)

Procedure:

Simmer juice and honey together until honey is dissolved (skimming
dross, etc.) If you normally boil, then, by all means, boil. When you
turn the heat down, add the oranges and tea in a clean hop bag or
something similar (I used a clean cotton sock). Let them steep in warm
must for five minutes. Transfer into carboy, let cool to a comfortably
warm temp, add yeast, and lock the carboy. Let ferment as a normal wine
at a cool temp.

Comments:

Needs to age at least 6 months. Should not need additional sugars or
yeast nutrient. Before cutting fruit, dip in sulfite solution or
similar to sanitize, and then rinse. Can ferment out fast (11-14 days).

I've tried rasberries with excellent results (though it was a bit
beerish until about six months), and cherries, apples, or grapefruit
with mixed results.

Lavender Mead

Source: Leigh Ann Hussey (leighann@sybase.com)
Mead Lover's Digest #5, 1 October 1992

Ingredients (1 gallon):

4lb honey
1/4t citric acid
1 pint lavender flowers
1/2t tannin powder
1/2t champagne yeast
1t yeast nutrient

Procedure:

Boil together honey and 1/2gal water for 5 min. Put flowers with citric
acid and tannin in a gallon jug and pour the hot liquid over. Let cool
in a sink of cold water to room temperature, then add yeast and nutrient
and further water to make a gallon plus a pint. Add the airlock. Let
ferment 1 week, then strain out flowers. Set the lock on again and
ferment until all quiet. Bottle and age.

Second Ferment: 112 days

Based on H.E. Bravery's Rose Mead, from HOME BREWING WITHOUT FAILURES.

Nutmeg Metheglin

Source: Ken Schramm, communicated by
Daniel F. McConnell (Daniel_F_McConnell@mailgw.surg.med.umich.edu)

Ingredients:

15 lb honey
28 gr whole nutmegs, freshly ground and infused in the boil
2, 3-inch cinnamon sticks
2T ascorbic acid
2T citric acid
1/2T yeast nutrient
1/2t Irish moss
water to make 5 gallons
10 gr Epernay II yeast
5 gr Pasteur Champagne yeast

Procedure:

Boil 35 minutes, chill to 80F, then pitch yeast. When fermentation is
complete, prime with 3/4 c dextrose.

Comments:

Use FRESHLY ground whole nutmeg.

This requires at least 2 years in the bottle to be at its best. After 2
years the mead is vinous and semi-dry, pale yelow in color with a good
sweet/acid balance. Cinnamon appears first in the nose, followed by the
nutmeg. There is an almost citrus aftertaste. Spices are balanced and
subtle rather then assertive.
Best served at 45-50F.

Vanilla (Float like a butterfly, Sting like a
bee)

Source: Microburst Brewery (Forrest Cook (cook@stout.atd.ucar.edu)) and
Jon Corbet)
Mead Lover's Digest #123, 1 May 1993

Ingredients (7 Gallons):

9 Lbs of mesquite honey from Tempe, AZ
2 Tbsp gypsum to harden up the water a bit
1 4 ounce bottle of Madagascar vanilla extract

Procedure:

Vanilla extract added after the must cooled. I think the yeast was a
Canadian champagne yeast with a french name.

The unfermented beverage tasted great, it's been bubbling away for over
a month. I don't know how many vanilla beans are in one bottle, but I've
heard that they are rather potent.

Comments:

The inspiration for this recipe came from a mead that was poured at the
"Beer and Steer", a large outdoor homebrewers party held in Colorado
occasionally.

As this mead has aged, the vanilla flavor has become more pronounced.
For the next batch, we will probably increase the vanilla extract to 6
oz. At 9 months the flavor is still improving, I project that it will be
incredible at 18 months if there is any left :-)

Blackberry Mead

Source: Chuck Stringer (cstringe@nickel.ucs.indiana.edu)
Mead Lover's Digest #289, 10 April 1994

Ingredients (2 gallons):

1 gallon ripe blackberries
4 1/2 lbs clover honey from Kroger (grocery)
acid blend and yeast nutrient according to package directions
Montrache wine yeast

Procedure:

We picked about a gallon of good ripe berries, rinsed and froze them.
Since the patch wasn't huge, we picked some every few days freezing a
pint or two at a time. During this time I started a simple mead with 2
1/2lbs of clover honey from the grocery and enough water to make a
gallon. I used Montrache wine yeast and added yeast nutrient and acid
blend according to the directions on the package. Fermentation stopped
after three weeks. We defrosted the berries in a small wastebasket I
use for a primary, then mashed them with a sterilized wine bottle. The
mead was then added. Two weeks later we racked the liquid off of the
fruit and into a carboy. Another 2 lbs of honey and enough water to
fill it up to 2 gallons. It was bottled a month later and now at eight
months, it's perfect. The only thing I would do differently is leave
out most of the acid blend.

Comments:

Up through six months of aging, it wasn't very good, but at eight it was
wonderful. It turned out like a really good red wine with a blackberry
nose and aftertaste.

Blueberry-Jasmine Mead

Source: Alan Derr (aderr@BBN.COM)
Mead Lover's Digest #122, 1 May 1993

Ingredients:

10 lb clover honey (basic, grocery store variety)
2-12oz bags of frozen Maine wild blueberries
1/4 c jasmine tea (dry)
3 tsp. pectic enzyme
3 tsp. yeast nutrient
1 pkg. Red Star Champagne yeast

Procedure:

The honey, blueberries, pectic enzyme, and yeast nutrient were added to
about 2 gal. of water and raised and held at 170F for 25 minutes. I
squished the blueberries and strained them about halfway through the
heating process. This mixture was then poured into a carboy with water
to make a bit less than 5 gal. I then boiled about 2 cups of water,
steeped the tea for several minutes and strained it into the carboy.
When cool, I pitched the dry yeast (I know, I should know better than to
use dry yeast...).

OK. Time passes. Fermentation happens. It stops. I taste the result. The
jasmine was a bit too heavy, but I figure it will probably mellow with
age. The blueberry smell, flavor, and color was kind of underwhelming.
The main problem was, the resulting mead was thin-bodied and dry as a
bone. Now I want a fairly dry mead, but this WAY too much so.

So next, I heated:

2 lb clover honey
12oz of frozen wild blueberries
1 tsp. yeast nutrient
1 tsp. pectic enzyme

in a quart or so of water, squished and strained, and added this mixture
to the carboy.

Fermentation started again (slowly) and has continued for the past
couple of months. It is now crystal clear, has a beautiful purple color,
nice blueberry and jasmine aromas, and a very nice mouth feel (not to
mention a fairly high alcohol content!).

Brew 4: Mead

Source: John E. Abraham (jabraham@acs6.acs.ucalgary.ca)
Mead Lover's Digest #143, 1 June 1993

Ingredients:

7 cloves (cracked)
2 sticks cinnamon (broken)
12 lbs clover honey
2 pckgs champagne yeast (saccharomyces beyanus)
1 L Just Pikt(tm) frozen florida grapefruit juice (NOT from concentrate)
2 tsp Diammonium phosphate (yeast nutrient)

Procedure:

Spices simmered for 20 min, honey and Nutrient added. Much later, full
boil for 15 minutes (partial boil for about 40 min), some scum and
spices skimmed off. Bunch of cups removed to brew vessel to make room
for grapefruit juice. Grapefruit juice added, held @ about 90degC for
15 min to pasteurise grapefruit juice. Thrown into brew vessel, water
added to 26L (about 5 gallons). At 75degF, SG 1.073, pitched yeast

Comments:

93 04 19 SG 1.054 man, this stuff is churning
93 04 27 Racked, SG 1.007, cloudy peachy colour, kind of like
honey&/or grapefruit. Lots of CO2. Champagne taste.
93 05 30 SG 0.996 clear, delicious smelling, a little strong
tasting, needs to smooth out a bit in the bottle.

The mead changed significantly (for the better) between 6 months and 8
months after it was first started.

The grapefruit is hardly noticeable at all, but the cinnamon and cloves
can be tasted.

The fermentation speed was very high - the grapefruit probably provided
a good pH and additional nutrients.

Jamaica Blue Mead

Source: Guy McConnell (guym@exabyte.com)

Ingredients:

6 lb. Cover Honey
1 lb. Orange Blossom Honey
1.5 lb. Corn Sugar
2 oz. Fresh, minced Ginger Root
3 tsp. Ground Cinnamon
3 tsp. Yeast Extract
1 gal. Fresh Blueberries
2 ea. Lemons, halved
WYeast #1214 Belgian Ale Yeast
0.5 cup Orange Blossom Honey (bottling)

Procedure:

Put honey, corn sugar, and yeast extract in brewpot with water. Simmer
for 10 minutes, skimming foam with kitchen strainer. Add ginger root
and simmer for 10 more minutes without skimming. Remove from heat,
squeeze in lemons, and throw into brewpot. Cover and let stand for 15
minutes. Strain out lemon halves and ginger, add blueberries, chill,
pour mixture (blueberries and all) into primary fermenter, and pitch
yeast. After 7 days, rack off of fruit into secondary and age for 1 - 2
months. When fermentation is complete, prepare a "tea" by simmering
cinnamon and honey in water for 15 minutes in a covered pot. Cool, add
to bottling bucket, and quietly siphon in must. Bottle and age for a
couple of months or so.

Comments:

This makes a nice, light, sparkling beverage that is a brilliantly clear
rose-purple color. The flavor is of blueberries kissed with cinnamon.
A wonderful change of pace for a summer drink at about 5% alcohol by
weight.

For more recipes: http://www.hbd.org/brewery/library/beeslees.html#Chap1

Contributed by: Jaymie of Pagan Day Festival