Winemaking Techniques: How to make a single brew with honey. Many people have never heard of making junmai with honey. But as more and more people are making junmai, more and more people are making innovative junmai such as tea wine, bitter melon wine, Huai Shan wine, etc., various fruit wines and grain wines. Honey can be used as an ingredient to make dry mead. Fermentation can also be stopped before the main fermentation is completed, so that some sugar can be retained to make a sweet wine. After fermentation, additional honey juice can be added to increase the sugar content. Let’s take a look at the detailed steps.
1. Selection of honey
(1) Honey mead is usually a mead made from natural honey that has been fermented. But here’s a word of caution: choose a variety of poor quality honey. After heating and melting, strain to remove wax shavings, bee legs and other impurities.
(2) Auxiliary Materials. Auxiliary materials should be corn husk, wheat bran, grain bran or sorghum bran that are free of mold, insects and odors.
(3) Yeast. For mead yeast, we recommend using Yakult fruit yeast. This produces a better tasting mead with a higher yield.
(4) Water. Regardless of the type of sake, special attention should be paid to the choice of water. Spring water or soft water should be used. The water should be colorless, precipitate-free, transparent and free of heavy metal ions.
2. Process Flow
Honey → ingredients → pre-distillation → cooling, cooling → fermentation and distillation → distillate → secondary cooling → fermentation and distillation → distillate → cooling again → fermentation and distillation → distillation.
3. Operation steps
1. Ingredients. Use 1.1 parts of spring water to dilute 1 part of honey into honey. Spray the honey juice into the crushed and prepared auxiliary ingredients and stir well. Each kilogram of honey can be sprayed with 3 kilograms of accessories.
2. Pre-steaming. Place the ingredients mixed with honey juice on the steamer for half an hour. Keep the temperature above 90℃ without lid for sterilization and deodorization.
3. Cooling. Take out the pre-steamed ingredients from the pot. When the temperature drops to 25-30℃, add 5-6% of curry, stir well, and add appropriate amount of sterile water to mix the auxiliary materials into balls. When the temperature of the auxiliary material drops to 17℃, put it into the tank for fermentation.
4. Fermentation. The auxiliary materials should be placed in the jar flat and covered with plastic film. Fermentation conditions (temperature, humidity and sugar content) should be measured every 24 hours. Fermentation time is 6-7 days in winter and shorter in other seasons. Fermentation at low temperature is easy to control contamination by bacteria.
5. Distillation. After fermentation, crush the wine material out of the tank, add appropriate auxiliary materials and distill it in the steamer. The temperature in the steamer reaches 100-120℃. After the wine is served, it is kept warm for a period of time. After distillation, the lees are mixed with spring water for a second cooling, and then a second fermentation is carried out with the addition of currants. The fermented material is distilled again and the sake is produced. According to the above method, one cycle is the finished product.
