Herbal Mead - advice?

[eponym]

Hi All,
I would like to make some medicinal herbal meads of the kind described in The Art of Fermentation. I'm planning on starting with nettle/lemonbalm/mint.
I am planning on adding raw herbs (well, boiled nettle, raw mint and lemonbalm) to the primary fermentation, so that the wild yeasts which should be present on them may work their magic on the anti-microbial honey.
My main questions are:
What amount of herbs should I use for a 1 gallon batch? I was thinking 1 quart of each (fresh, not packed).
How long should I leave the herbs in the brew? Remove them after fermentation has commenced, when I move the mead into a carboy? Or leave them longer?
Any advice at all would be much appreciated - I haven't found much useful information online so I'm sort of flying blind.
Thanks!
Mary

[Tim Hall]

A quart each sounds like it might be a little overwhelming...especially with the mint. You might try making a tea first, measure the water and the herbs, and see what tastes right that way...then scale up your recipe. I wouldn't overdo it with the mint...you might get something tasting like mouthwash. Lemon balm and nettles you can probably dump a lot in. Maybe a quart of lemon balm and quart of nettles would work, but a quart of mint sounds like minty overload.

Keep in mind: 1) if you're putting the herbs straight into the fermentor, their flavors may get stronger over time as the alcohol extracts more stuff from them, but herbs (especially delicate herbs like lemon balm) start to lose their flavor if aged too long, and 2) if you plan on making a sweet mead, you can use more herbs to balance the sweetness, but a dry mead will need less herbs.

[eponym]

Thanks, Tim. I'll definitely make some tea first (I make this tea a lot this time of year, it's what gave me the idea for the mead) and measure the amounts of each herb.
For this batch I'm just going to use 3lbs of honey/gallon. That seems to be the standard recommendation - but I'm not sure if it will yield a dry or a sweet mead.
Do you have any thoughts on how long I should leave the herbs in the brew? Will smelling/tasting give any indication of when it's appropriate to remove them? I am thinking I should just remove them when I switch to the carboy for the secondary fermentation.
M

[Tim Hall]

Is this a wild fermentation, or are you using wine yeast?

[eponym]

A wild fermentation, hopefully. It's worked for me in the past but all the advice on the internet has me nervous about it!

[Tim Hall]

Whether it comes out sweet or dry will also depend on when you decide to drink it...but if you let it ferment out fully, off the top of my head it seems like 3lbs/gallon will probably end up toward the dry side.

If you put the herbs in right at the beginning, it'll help you get yeasts. If you put them in the carboy, you'll obviously get more flavor. And you'll get the most by putting them in the secondary, not only because they'll be in there longer, but because you're not losing volatiles once it stops bubbling.

You could always put some in each phase of the ferment too. Also if you freeze the [fresh] herbs, that'll break up some of the cells/tissue and help release even more flavor.