How can I make maple bacon mead?

Question

I never made a beverage with meat in it so I'm a little scared. I think I can bake the bacon to make it crispy, then crumble it into the mead. Will it be safe to sit for a month of fermenting? Is that the best way to make a bacon flavor mead? (I will also put a quart of maple syrup in it.)

Answer 1

I would wait until you have at least 5% ABV before adding meat into the mix, at ~5% anything pathogenic should be killed off. Cooking the meat before had I would also recommend as rubbing beer/mead/wine with raw meat although I trust the alcohol to keep me safe... I don't.

I would also weight it down so it does not float on the top. Tie it to a stainless bolt or similar to hold it under the surface so mold can not form on exposed meaty bits.

My personal preference would be not to do it. But, if you are going to do it stay safe :)

Answer 2

So there is the safe way and the dangerous but interesting way. If you are lucky enough to have access to ancient recipe books that include things like meads wines and beers, occasionally you will run into references of floating a piece of meat in the container. Although they didn’t know it at the time, the protein was simply the source of nitrogen the fermentation needed, but I don’t think they knew why other than that anecdotally it helped. I think however, it probably just as often spoiled.

So it can be done but with some risk.

Mr_road recommends weighing down the meat to keep it submerged. I don’t know if I would want the meat down in the bed of the yeast, however punching it down as one would with a crushed grape must or when adding fruit in the secondary would be a great idea. I think keeping it wet with the alcohol as it develops and it being blanketed by CO2 is probably enough.

That said....

You might be better served by fully fermenting your maple syrup mead, then slowly introducing an essence of or flavoring of bacon.

Alternatively, you could just serve your mead with breakfast 🤗.