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Put the pan on the stove top. Put one gallon of the spring water into the pan. Heat the water until it almost boils. Turn off the stove burner temporarily. Slowly pour in the honey. Swirl the water around to mix the honey well. Turn the heat back on to bring the water back to steaming temperature, but DON'T let it boil once the honey is in there. Some white froth will probably come up to the top of the honey-water. Remove this froth by repetitively touching the back of a steel dipper to the foam and rinsing it off at the faucet.

Add the tea bags and Your Optional Ingredients to the honey-water (or "must" as this mixture is called). Remove the tea bags after ten minutes and discard them. Cook the must for about an hour, adding enough extra spring water near the end to replace whatever evaporated from the pan.

At the end of the hour, powderize the multivitamin tablet and dump the powder into the must. Stir the pan to dissolve the vitamins. Then turn off the stove burner and wait for the must to return to luke-warmness. Then strain the must into two large, squeaky clean jugs, filling them only about half to 2/3 full, filtering out all the chunky stuff.

Note: at this point, the spicy must makes a reasonably good non-alcoholic drink, like Russian tea but with more vitamins, with no further modification. You might call this "children's mead," which you can bottle in sterilized bottles, so the kids can think they are partaking in the tradition, and still stay on the right side of the law. That doesn't mean you should tell the sheriff what you're up to, though, since it doesn't matter to him what you're really doing if he thinks he can arrest you anyway in order to make a name for himself as a tough guy.

You should put a cap on each jug and shake the liquid to get some air into it. Then remove the lids, and to each jug, add the contents of one package of brewer's yeast, the same kind that you'd use if you were baking bread. There are other kinds of yeast that you can use, but some people can't get anything but bread yeast. Fortunately, bread yeast will do. Let the yeast work in the jars for one or two days, then screw on the lids.

IMPORTANT: Don't seal up the fermenting must immediately in airtight glass vessels. The yeast produces carbon dioxide gas and the pressure will eventually cause the glass to explode, creating a huge mess and maybe hurting somebody. (A jar ready to explode is called a "glass grenade.") It is better to use plastic jugs for the fermentation during the part when the fermenting mead is airlocked. Glass jars can be used during the first 24 hours, provided that jars are left open to let the CO2 gas escape. To keep flies out of the open jars, a clean cloth can be loosely draped over the top.

This is also important because during the first 24-48 hours of fermentation the yeast needs air. After you put the cap on it, it converts over to anaerobic fermentation to produce alcohol. The first phase where the yeast gets air is the yeast's main reproductive phase, which is important because you need lots of yeast cells to be produced to overcome any competition from unwanted microorganisms. With enough yeast in your jug, enough alcohol will be made later to kill any germs that might have crept in.

After the first or second day, put the caps on the jugs loosely and set them aside in a warm place in your house. Leave them be until you notice that the mead has cleared. (It will have become cloudy shortly after you put the yeast in.) When the mead is clear, a protein precipitate called "lees" or "gunk" will settle to the bottom of the jar. Siphon the mead into new clean jugs using the siphoning tube, being sure to leave all the gunk behind. The gunk is to be thrown away when you wash the fermentation jars or jugs.

Be sure to clean and sterilize the old jugs, so that you can use them again a week or two later, when you rack the mead back into them. I'd definitely rack (siphon) at least twice during fermentation, and once more when the mead is placed into the aging jugs for storage in your refrigerator.

When fermentation is concluded, and you've siphoned the mead into the jugs for aging, top each jug with a little fresh spring water because this helps mellow the mead. Use about one tablespoon spring water per quart of stuff in the jug. Seal the aging jugs and put them into the refrigerator. You must let them stay there for at least two months, and three months is better, and some say that the mead just keeps on improving for several years. If you can wait that long.

When you decide to drink some of your mead, siphon the amount you want into a bottle. You might want to have several corked bottles in the 'fridge waiting to go, for convenience. Drink mead slowly and in moderation. It has been known to cause hangovers.

Here's a ZIP file containing a short program to find the specific gravity of a solution of honey and water. It assumes that these are the only two things mixed in the solution, so if you add fruit and such to your must, this might be off a bit. Download "mustsg.zip"

If you would like to calculate a honey-water specific gravity from a page on this site, click here.

If you want to convert volume or weight measurements, click on one of these links.