Honey Ale 3 - February 29th 2003
Recipe Source – The Compleat Anachronist #120, Summer 2003.  Making Medieval Mead or, Mead Before Digby.  Page 34 recipes from Scandinavia and Poland 1555.  Olaus Magnus, Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus.  Polish or Lithuanian Mead [mead with hops].
A synopsis of the recipe.  Take a quantity of honey in the proportion of ten pounds of honey to five gallons of water, dependent on the strength required.  Boil and skim.  Separately boil hops, up to one pound dependent upon the amount made.  Following boiling mix the two liquids together and let them stand.
Ingredients
4.5 lb honey
¾ oz fuggles hops
1 teaspoon yeast nutrient
Yeast – Danstar Nottingham Ale Yeast
Method
The honey was put to boil with 1.5 gallons of water and ¼ oz of the fuggles hops, this mixture was boiled for 45 minutes, after which time a further ¼ oz of hops were added.  After another 15 minutes the scum and hops at the surface were skimmed off and the liquor passed through a sieve containing ¼ oz of hops to remove any particles and to add a hop aroma to the brew.  This hot liquor was then added to 1.5 gallons of cold water in a pre-sanitized 3 gallon carboy to which had been added 1 teaspoon yeast nutrient.  The temperature of the brew was tested and found to be 80 degrees, the specific gravity was tested and the temperature corrected original gravity was found to be 1050. While the liquor was boiling a package of yeast was activated in ½ pint of boiled and cooled (to 85 degrees) water containing 1 teaspoon sugar.  This yeast was used for 3 ferments on this day
One half cup of activated yeast was added to the brew, an airlock was affixed and the carboy was moved to a warm cupboard to start fermentation.
Monday, March 01, 2004
Brew shows active fermentation.
Saturday, April 10, 2004
Liquor has fully fermented, racked off sediment and 1 cup honey boiled with 1 cup water added to racked portion.  Bottled into 1 pint flip top bottles and retained at RT for 5 days then moved to basement to finish aging.
NOTE - do not follow instructions for carbonation, this produced bottle bombs.