Well, that was unexpected.

I just couldn't resist, so I started a second batch a few days ago with a different recipe. I'll get to that later, but first, let me tell you about the first batch. As I mentioned before, I have no access to homebrew shops of any kind, but I wanted to try my hand at making some mead. I live in Vietnam and there are several craft breweries here, but they import their supplies directly from Europe or America for their own use. There are no homebrew shops as far as I know (although I think there are a group of Germans who have their own homebrewing club around Saigon). I searched online for recipes for "mead without yeast" and found the 17th century cookbook of Sir Kenelm Digby (available on Project Gutenberg). Nobody knew about yeast in the 17th century. They just knew that if you let the wort sit exposed to the air, it would start fermenting and then you could seal the barrel and let it go. Wild yeast seemed the answer to my problem. Considering that there are bakeries on every street and enormous macrobreweries cranking out millions of liters of lager downtown, I suspect that Saccharomyces Cerevisiae is everywhere here.

I looked through Sir Kenelm's recipes and put together something that I thought would work. It did. I was just hoping to get something as strong as beer (around 5 or 6% ABV), but it went well beyond that. I can't tell exactly because I don't have the proper instruments to measure it, but I can estimate that it's about 16% ABV. I had about 200ml left after bottling and didn't want to leave it in a mostly empty bottle, so I put it in a coffee mug and drank it. Comparing the numbness in my face to the 300+ varieties of beer I've had in past few years, I'd have to say it ranks up there with a barleywine or a particularly strong Belgian quadrupel.

Here's my recipe:

Mangled Honey
Into a 5L bottle, I poured two 650mL bottles of honey produced by bees that collect nectar from wild flowers in the U Minh jungle (the name means something like "Deep Dark"). I also chopped up a sweet almost-overripe "xoai cat" varietal mango from the "9 Dragons" region of the Mekong river delta and dumped that in there too. Then I added a couple handfuls of golden raisins that I had let sit in a dish overnight on my balcony. I filled the bottle to within a hand's breadth of the top with water (to leave room for foaming and frothing yeast) and put the cap on. Then I shook it vigorously for 5 minutes straight to mix and aerate the sweet solution. Then I took off the cap and attached my super high-tech sophisticated airlock mechanism: a balloon with a pinhole in it. I wasn't sure if it would even work, but after about 20 or 30 minutes the balloon was inflated and the liquid was fizzing. I started it last week on Monday and it was almost completely finished fermenting on Wednesday this week. I had to wait until today (Friday) to bottle it. The mango chunks were soft lumps and the golden raisins (which had served as yeast nutrient and a possible source of wild yeast) were big squishy zombie grapes. I siphoned the cloudy brown liquid off and bottled it in several empty resealable beer bottles (like Grolsch makes) that I had been saving. I also had a sample mug with the leftover bit that wouldn't fill a bottle.

It tastes great already. It's very full-bodied and smooth, but with a definite alcoholic warming sensation in the back of the throat. It has a spicy, yeasty character that makes me think of Belgian ales, like a sweeter version of Kwak. I can't wait to see how well it ages.

The second batch which is still brewing now (and still audibly hissing) is a bit more of a departure from traditional meads. I used the same honey, water, and raisin base, but I also added 1L of pomelo juice that I got from a street vendor with a juicing machine and some black peppercorns from Phu Quoc island. That one smells pretty good, but I don't have a clever name for it yet.