Congratulations! You've got your hands on a genuine Valkyrie's Choice Clone Kit from Groennfell Meadery!
Whether you're brewing with a one gallon kit or a five gallon kit, the steps for your brew day are all the same, so this guide will cover either size batch.
If you need equipment to brew, you can snag an equipment kit right here.
TL;DR for folks that want the DL ASAP on the QT:
- For every gallon of water, add 1.3 pounds of honey, between 1/2 and 1 packets of D47 yeast, and one teaspoon of yeast nutrient.
- Ferment at 86 degrees Fahrenheit until bubbling stops
- Add priming sugar.
- Bottle and drink.
What's in the Box
All of the ingredients included are the exact same ones that we use for brewing Valkyrie's Choice at the Meadery.
Honey
This is a hand-selected wildflower honey from the volcanic mountain slopes of the Plateau of Altiplano Central where we work with five farms to produce the honey for all of our meads.
In fact, we bottle the honey ourselves from the 3,000 pound totes we use before we brew a batch, so you'll get the same, cool seasonal variations in your batch of Valkyrie's Choice.
Your kit includes the exact amount of honey you need to brew your batch.
Yeast
We use D47 yeast for many of our products because it's such a clean fermenting yeast without being boring. While many recipes call for one packet of yeast per five gallons, we believe that a little more yeast at the start of fermentation is better.
If you have the five gallon kit, we've included three packets of yeast, and if you have the one gallon kit, use the whole packet!
Yeast Nutrient
While raw honey has a lot more nutrients than filtered and pasteurized honey, it's still mostly sugar, so this yeast nutrient will go a long way to helping us have a clean, healthy fermentation.
Corn Sugar
This will be used on bottling day to carbonate your mead in the bottles. You can also use white sugar or honey, but corn sugar is traditionally used by homebrewers since it dissolves so readily, even at lower temperatures. This means that all of your bottles will get the same amount of sugar and carbonate to the same level.
We've included the correct amount of sugar for your batch size, but if you end up getting less mead, please reduce the sugar accordingly so that your bottles don't over carbonate.
Bottle Caps
These are pretty self-explanatory. They're for capping your mead. Most folks reuse clean and sanitized beer bottles. Just make sure the top of the bottle has no chips and that the bottle really has been cleaned and sanitized correctly.
Your Brew Day
Almost all mead brew days are the same, whether you're making one of our clone kits or using your own ingredients.
Step One - Clean and Sanitize all Equipment
Remember, you can't sanitize dirt, so make sure you clean everything really well, ideally before you put it away. For cleaning, we highly recommend PBW, which should have come with your homebrew kit.
Following cleaning, use your Iodophor as directed to spray down all of your equipment (including the spoon you'll be using to stir.)
Never rinse after sanitizing since that would undo the sanitization. For more on how to clean and sanitize your equipment, check out our article on the subject.
Step Two - Start Warming Your Honey
The honey should be about 92 degrees Fahrenheit when you brew with it. We recommend simply placing the jars in warm (120F) water and checking it periodically. Depending on how cold your honey is, you may want to do this a few hours before you plan to brew.
Or, possibly, you live somewhere warm enough that you can skip this step!
Step Three - Mix the Honey, Water, and Nutrient
Warm water and warm honey love to mix, but if it gets too warm, you start to lose aroma molecules and you have to cool it down before you can pitch your yeast. If it's too cold, you can stir for ages and still not get it to mix and then you have to figure out a way to warm it up so your yeast can get to work.
We like to ferment Valkyrie's Choice on the warmer end of the spectrum (more on that later), so our goal is to mix the honey and water together so the mixture ends up between 76F and 82F.
You know the temperature of your tap water, kitchen, fermentation closet, etc. better than we do, so use your judgment.
No matter what, make sure your water is good for brewing. Generally, if it's good for drinking, it's good for brewing. If you filter your water before drinking it, make sure to do that before brewing with it.
Combine your honey, water (4.75 gallons for a 5 gallon batch or just shy of a gallon for a one gallon batch), and one teaspoon per gallon of nutrient in your sanitized brewing bucket to reach the desired volume. Make sure to splash it up really well with your sanitized spoon to oxygenate the must (which is the technical term for the honey and water mixture).
Step Four - Take a Gravity Reading, optional
If you're going to take a gravity reading, you should do it now! It should be right around 1.050. A little above or below isn't a problem. If it's way too high, add some water. If it's way too low, this means you probably didn't get the honey and water to mix properly.
Step Five - Pitch the Yeast
"Pitch" is just the fancy word for "add." Sprinkle all of the yeast included in your kit on top of the must and let it rehydrate. No need to stir it in!
Wait fifteen minutes to give it access to atmospheric oxygen in addition to the oxygen in the must.
Step Six - Close Up the Fermenter
Put on the lid and double check that it's sealed all the way around. Insert the bubble lock and make sure that it's filled with water or sanitizer to the proper level.
Now put it somewhere warm but where it won't get too hot. Our target fermentation temperature is 86 degrees. This is warmer than most recipes call for, but at those higher temperatures, you get more of the fruity secondary metabolites folks associate with Valkyrie's Choice. You likely won't need to have it in a space that warm, since the yeast will generate its own heat as it goes to work on that honey.
Step Seven - Wait
Now it's time to wait for your must to turn into Valkyrie's Choice! You should see bubbling through the bubble lock within 12 hours.
As we just mentioned, remember that your yeast will generate heat as it ferments, so check the temperature regularly for the first few days to make sure it doesn't get too hot.
Fermentation should finish somewhere between four and eight days, depending on the temperature.
You'll know fermentation is done when the bubbling stops. You can confirm this by taking a gravity reading. The reading should be somewhere between .996 and 1.000. For Valkyrie's Choice, lower is better.
Step Eight - Package Your Mead
Congratulations! You officially have mead! If you want to take the last step and make it craft mead, we need to carbonate it.
Since bottling and carbonation are such a big topic, they have their own guide right here!
