The Grey Wizard AKA Lemon-Earl Grey Tea Mead

We stumbled upon an old one gallon jug in the house so we decided to make Lemon-Earl Grey Tea Mead.

As I’ve learned and read more about making mead I’ve discovered that many people add some lemon juice and tea as a matter of course in every batch. Whatever kind of tea you like works; sometimes folks mix two different kinds of tea in one batch of mead.

The lemon juice adds acid which makes for a happier environment for the yeast. The tea adds tannins which act as nutrients for the mead. Also, the acid and tannins make for a more flavourful mead.

In this case I also wanted to capture the flavour of the tea and the lemons in the mead. I read a great many lemon mead recipes online. Some add as few as one lemon some as much as a couple of litres of lemon juice. Here’s the recipe I’ve decided to create.

The Grey Wizard Recipe (Lemon-Earl Grey Tea Mead) – 1 gallon

2.5 litres of spring water

1 1/3 kg (3 lbs) of honey (store bought this time)

zest from 1 lemon (repeat in the secondary)

juice from 1 lemon (discard the white pith; repeat in the secondary)

1 cup of very strong (2 tea bags) Earl Grey Tea (from Harrods in England, add hot water and let steep until lukewarm; add 2 more tea bags in the secondary)

1 teaspoon yeast nutrient (I may replace this with a handful of raisins in the next batch)

1 package of yeast (Lalvin EC-1118)

NB: Wash the whole lemon well. Sanitize it with the rest of your equipment. Rince well again in clean water.

There’s a trick to juicing a lemon. Cut it in half and use a teaspoon. Squeeze the lemon around the teaspoon as you saw it back and forth to get all the pulp and juice out of it.

Mixing it all together

First I boiled spring water in a clean kettle. I used that to make the strong Earl Grey tea.

I used some of the boiled water topped up with room temperature spring water to make some warm water. Then I prepared the yeast and yeast nutrient in two seperate glasses.

Take the remaining boiled water in a large pot. Add the honey. Mix well. Add the tea. Zest the lemon right into the pot then cut it in half and add all the juice. Pick out any pits you find in the must.

This is what the must looked like before I added the yeast:

Pour it all with a funnel, or syphon it over, into the gallon jug.

I took a hydrometer reading. SG: 1.120 or 1.140; ach, let’s call it 1.130; it was hard to read in the gallon jug.

Reading lots of online info about making mead paid off tonight big time. The stopper I bought for my airlock turned out to be too small for the gallon jug I’m using. I didn’t want to leave it open or cover it up because it could explode. So, having read the low-cost way other folks make airlocks, I used a balloon. I’ll get a proper stopper & airlock in a day or two; it’s a holiday weekend.

Here’s the result:

For The Flavour

In about a week I’ll rack this into another gallon jug. At that time I’ll also add the zest and juice of one lemon and throw in two Earl Grey Tea bags.

From what I’ve read I’ll probably always add the juice from one lemon and some tea to my future batches of mead. Since, in this case, I really want to capture the flavours of the tea and lemon I’m including the zest and more tea bags in the secondary as well.

The tea and lemon provide nutrients for the yeast. It turns out, so do raisins. As I make more mead I may wean myself off of the yeast nutrients and replace it with lemon juice, tea and raisins.

A Word About Sanitizing

I had to keep going back and sanitizing more equipment (spoon, glasses, knife, zester, etc.) because I forgot to include everything I’d need when I was sanitizing everything. Next time I’ll think it all through a little better and sanitize everything in one go.

A Word About Gallon Jugs

Unfortunately the gallon jug I’ve got is an American Gallon. Canadian Gallons are different.

1 US Gallon = 3.79 Litres

1 Imperial Gallon = 4.55 Litres

I’m disappointed that I’ve got a US gallon because the must smells and tastes awesome! I’ll likely only get 4 bottles out of it. An imperial gallon would have given me 5 or 6 bottles. 😥

Lesson learned.