Here is a lemon mead recipe. We had it at our wedding.
While mead normally is made with honey, the Finnish mead is different. If I remember right, they used fruits for added sugar and flavor when fermenting honey, and now Finns make mead only with lemons and no honey. So it tastes more like a shandy (50/50 beer and lemonade) than true mead.
A couple notes of warning. One person I know thought that by adding extra sugar before the fermenting process it would taste sweeter but it ruined her whole batch. So make sure to follow the directions at least the first time and then experiment later once you know what it is supposed to taste like.
Another word of warning, it often becomes heavily carbonated and can spray with explosive force when opening a bottle. Always open it for the first time above a sink. If you use a screw top, open it a little at a time like a shaken pop bottle seeing how much fizz will come out, screwing it closed and open as you let out some of the fizz. It can get a little messy.
If the drink has no fizz at all and tastes like a flat nasty lemonade, it means it needs more time in the warm. My aunt had a flat mead once and I hopped on a bus on a hot day with two bottles of her flat mead in my backpack. I carried it around bouncing it around in the heat all day throughout Helsinki and by night it was a very fizzy and fermented mead.
The bloated raisins may be ugly when the mead is done, but they’re actually edible.
It is works better with glass bottles than plastic. The glass deals with the pressure of fermenting better.
There might be other recipes out there on the internet, the Finnish word for mead is “Sima” and that’s the name this type of mead recipe would be under. This recipe is in The Finnish Cookbook by Beatrice A. Ojakangas from the Crown Classic Cookbook Searies by Crown Publishers, Inc. The general editor was Charlotte Adams. The alcohol content can be expected to be between 0.7% ABV and 3.0% ABV depending on various factors.
Sima—Finnish Lemon Mead
Sima is the May Day drink of Finland. […] Finns serve this refreshing drink throughout the summer. Its tangy characteristic taste comes from the yeast that is added in the beginning.
4 quarts water
1 cup brown sugar
1 and 1/8 Cups (approximately) granulated sugar
2 lemons, washed and thinly sliced
1/8 teaspoon active dry yeast
1 tablespoon raisins
Heat the water to boiling and stir in the brown sugar and 1 cup of granulated sugar. Add the lemon slices. [Squeeze the lemon juice out of the lemon slices into the mixture and then add in the rest of the lemon skin and flesh once squeezed.] Cool to lukewarm and transfer the liquid to a non-metallic container. Add the yeast and stir (but do not add the yeast until the liquid has cooled, or it will not work. To test for the correct temperature, place a few drops of the liquid on your wrist; if it feels neither warm nor cold, it is the right temperature). Let this water-sugar-lemon-yeast mixture stand overnight or at least 8 to 10 hours in a warm place. There should be tiny bubbles around the edge of the liquid after this length of time.
Sterilize 8 pint bottles, 4 quart bottles, or 1 gallon jug, and place 1 or 2 teaspoons granulated sugar per quart of liquid into each container, as well as 3 or 4 raisins. Strain the liquid and pour into the containers. Cork tightly. Let stand at room temperature until the raisins have risen to the top of the bottle (this indicates that the Sima has fermented enough and is ready to drink). In the winter, this may take 2 days or more; in warm weather, only 8 hours. Chill and store in the refrigerator or a cool place. Makes 1 gallon.
