Bottling Mead

You may recall that I started brewing a batch of mead way back at the beginning of August, using local honey from one of the organic farms on Sauvie Island. I finally had time to bottle it this weekend, even though it's been done fermenting for about a month.

Bottling is even easier than brewing the mead. You just gather up 10 or so large liquor bottles (I like handles of Seagrams, so that's mostly what I used) or 9 2-liter soda bottles. Sanitize all the bottles and caps with bleach, plus a plastic hose and racking cane. Our hose has a fancy shut-off valve that only opens when it's depressed on the bottom of a bottle, so the flow stops whenever you need to switch bottles.

It was a super-fast process, and now we have 10 big bottles of mead! It needs to age for about a year, but a couple always get consumed before then. ;)

I can't wait to share this at Thanksgiving, and to trade Leah for a bottle of her hard cider!