Buried Treasure (Orange-Cranberry Mead)

In the spring of 2006 I was inspired by Charlie Papazian's story in New Joy of Homebrewing about burying some of his Prickly Pear Mead which he digs up once a year. My friend Mat liked the idea as well, so we decided to brew up a mead. After we dissolved the honey in some warm water we used orange and cranberry juice for the rest of the liquid. If any brewers out there haven't done a mead yet, it takes about 30 minutes including clean up... makes extract brewing seem like a colossal pain.

Sadly 6 months after we brewed it I got a new job and moved down to DC from Massachusetts. We decided to bottle the mead before it had adequate time to settle, and as a result it dropped about 2 inches of sludge in each bottle. It took us two years to get around to transferring the mead off of the goo and into fresh bottles. We took the added step of waxing the bottles so the caps won't rust while they are underground. We also embedded a coin into the wax for some added visual appeal.


My friend Sarah was nice enough to knit us some nylon nets so we can fish the bottles out with a hook without having to actually climb down into the pit. We are hoping that the nylon stands up to the next 8+ years underground.

For the box we used an old tank shell case from an army surplus store. We painted it with some black paint and lined the edge with rope caulk to give it some water resistance and put a eye bolt on the lid so we can open it without pulling it out of the ground.


Mat and I dug a 5 foot deep trench in my parents' backyard on the Cape. It should be down far enough that there isn't much chance of the bottles freezing (the alcohol and sugar should help as well), and won't get that hot in the summer.



Two years later we unearthed the crate of mead for the first time. The bottles survived, and the mead inside the one we opened was worth the wait.

Mike and Mat's Melomel (3M)

Recipe Specifics
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Batch Size (Gal): 3.60
Total Grain (Lbs): 24.00
Anticipated OG: 1.100
Anticipated SRM: 5.8
Wort Boil Time: 0 Minutes

Grain/Extract/Sugar
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6.00 lbs. Honey
2 gallons Orange Juice
1 quart Cranberry Juice

Extras
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0.25 Oz Sweet Orange Peel @ 0 Min.(boil)

Yeast
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WYeast 3184 Sweet Mead

Notes
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4/6/06 starter made with 3 oz honey, 1 pint water, 1/4 tsp yeast nutrient and 1/4 tsp yeast energizer.

4/9/06 "Brewed" with Mat, heated 1 qrt water with rounded half tsp yeast nutrient and 1/2 tsp yeast energizer. Mixed with honey that we warmed in a hot water bath. Pitched decanted starter, oxygenated, threw in zest of one Valencia orange. Measured OG 1.110.

4/23/06 Racked to 3 gallon fermenter, down to 1.010, topped off with 6 cups of water (volume adjusted up and gravity down to include this).

Racked 6/7/06 Down to 1.005, some sludge on the bottom, mead is now an orange/brown color. Taste is pretty good, but still a bit "hot." I'm surprised the sweet mead yeast fermented it that dry.

8/6/06 Fined with 1 tsp Benonite in .25 cups warm water (got lumpy and didn't seem to do much) followed by .5 tsp Sparkloid in .5 cups boiling water (seemed to do more) . Some clumps formed and the sediment layer seems to be increasing. 12 hours later put into fridge at 60 degrees.

9/5/06 Bottled 10 champagne four 12 oz, primed two of the 12's with 1/2 tsp corn sugar (these never carbonated). The taste is coming along, smoother with more honey. Still pretty cloudy despite the finings and cold.

Within a few months of bottling ever bottle dropped a few inches of gooey sediment, we should have given it longer in the fermenter.

8/14/08 Re-bottled to get it off of all the sludge that fell out in the original bottles. The process cost us 1.5 bottles, but we still have seven 750's, a bomber, and a 12 oz'er. We waxed the bottles to ensure that the caps the flavor has really improved with the orange flavor in particular getting very nice.

8/17/09 Buried the mead.

8/16/10 Retrieved one bottle from the pit, complex, tasty, I'll have to brew more.