Welcome back to Food 101 with Riley. Today
I've got one of my favorite poolside recipes
for peach mead.
Why don't you mead me in the kitchen and we'll
get started.
Audio:Riley's Food 101 theme
Mead is an alcoholic beverage made from honey.
The point of this recipe, besides making a
great poolside cocktail, is to learn about
alcoholic fermentation. Take two ripe peaches
and cut them into chunks. Go ahead and set
these aside for later.
Measure out a half cup of honey. The flavor
of your mead will be heavily dependent on
the type of honey
you choose. I recommend using wildflower or
orange blossom. Combine the peaches and honey
in a pot and cook over medium heat until the
peaches are soft. The peaches and honey together
smell SO GOOD but you have to resist eating
them.
Make sure to stir frequently to prevent burning.
Next, mash the peaches to release
all the juice then remove from the heat.
Measure out 2 and ½ cups of un-chlorinated
water and
pour it into a sanitized mason jar then add
in the peach mixture.
Check the temperature to make sure it isn’t
above 100 degrees.
We do not want to boil
our yeast alive. Now add in ½ tsp of red
wine or champagne yeast.
These have been specifically
bred for high alcohol fermentations and will
give you the best results.
Now set up for fermentation.
Store the brewing mead
with its jar of sanitizer in a warm, dark
place such as a cupboard or closet. Carbon
dioxide will travel through the tube to the
jar of water and form bubbles. Once you stop
seeing these bubbles the mead is finished.
This should be around 5-7 days. If you are
looking at this contraption and feel really
confused check out my video on how to build
a micro fermenter and come back.
Now, let's go over what is actually happening
in this
jar.
If you have ever taken a high school biology
course, you have probably seen this equation
for glycolysis. Not to give you PTSD but we
have to understand a few things about this
equation before we are ready to talk about
fermentation. Focus here on these two products,
pyruvate and NADH. When oxygen is present
these will move on to create more energy.
When oxygen is not present, they are forced
to move on to fermentation. Yeast does fermentation
because it wants to regenerate NAD+ and do
glycolysis again. However, as biproducts it
creates ethanol and carbon dioxide, which
is the stuff we are after. But Riley, I have
not taken a biology class in ten years and
that was really confusing. Here is the simple
version:
hungry yeast, consume sugar, what goes in
has to come out, Alcohol!
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