The Bottling

Sess came to help me and we bottled 40 liters of mead. Go us! My basement storage is suddenly full again.

Hild - 5L - bochet

SG 1040
Alc 15%

Very dark and beautiful colour. Good sweetness with enough complexity. Fruity caramel aftertaste.

bottles:
4 x 0.75
1  x 0.5
3 x 0.33
1 x 0.25

June - 10L - Cacao/Maple

SG 1034
Alc ~19? I think that's probably not right.

Beautiful dark red-brown colour. Currently not tasting the maple.  Right now it has that 90% cacao chocolate aftertaste - the acidity needs to mellow out and then I think this will be wonderful. I might try a little bottle by Christmas, but I think this needs at least a year. It tastes of potential, so I have hope and will make patience.

Bottles:
1 x 1L
8 x 0.75
2 x 0.5
5 x 0.33

Edain - 5L - Lemon Vanille

SG 1052
Alc 17%

Surprisingly not acidic at all - the tannin must have done its job slowly. I wish I had waited to backsweeten until I'd given the tannin some time because I would have liked this better a touch less sweet. It's a little on the over-sweet for me now, the vanilla comes out more and surprisingly the lemon mellowed way down. It's unexpectedly flowery with lemon aftertaste. Very summery.

Dale - 5L - pomegranate and vanille

 SG 1052
Alc ~20%? I don't think that's right

Same thing as with Edain - the tannin must have done more than expected, because the acidity is way down and it's lost that typical sour-dry-bitter mouthfeel.  Very sweet (a bit too much, again) fruity, very drinkable.

Idria (Gaia + Idris) - 13 liter - apple bochet

SG 1030
Alc 13%

Beautiful deep dark colour. And oh, this is GOOD. There's a bit of appelstroop to it, caramellisation is noticeable but not overpowering. Sweetness is just right. Very very drinkable and I'm excited to have 13 liter of it. 

Bottles:
4 x 1L
8 x 0.75
1 x 0.5
8 x 0.33

Ruby - blood orange mead

Ruby - 10L

3 kilo honey
3 liters blood orange juice
port yeast
bit of tannin
bit of enzym

Orange rind (lots!) to be added in secondary to hopefully get a good orangy flavour to it.

10 liters so may end up splitting this out for secondary and do half with cacao and half with rosemary

Quasi - Lemon & Thyme mead (to be)

Quasi - 5L

1150 gr honey
Champagne yeast

Intending to add lemon zest and backsweeten it with thyme honey 

Might be a good candidate to try carbonating?

Mead to-do list

 Fix in primary:

• Bengal spice and cacao - again, long aging
• Bochet with vanilla
• Blueberry juice. Like, a LOT of it. I just finished a bottle of Yngvi and that had no colour at all.  Shame
• Lapsang Sauchong tea mead
• Nettle-rosemary tea mead

  Fix in secondary:

• Lemon (just zest, not juice) and thyme (honey? Or herb?)
• Orange (rind, not juice?) and cacao - note long aging time
• Dates. Or date syrup?
• Rosehip. I have a bag of dried rosehip
• Speculaas spices. 
• Mint? Lemon and mint?
• Cinnamon and mint? 
• Something something rosemary
• A fizzy mead!

Free right now:
5 L  Plain primary, add lemon zest & backsweeten with thyme honey
5 L  Lapsang tea
10 L Bengal spice tea
10 L - orange: split later into half + cacao and half + rosemary
19 L - something accessible. Plain with spices in secondary

Paloma ?

Paloma

~1 kilo of raspberries. End-of-market-day-sale stuff so carefully picked out the bad ones and the bad pieces, but decided to cook to mush and then juice just to make sure I'm not putting in any Ick
1 cup of brewed black tea. Forseeing the tannin issue again with such an acidic fruit so seeing if the tea will help me get ahead of that.
~1650 gr honey
port yeast

Starting SG 1105

Ode

Ode

This looked completely inactive once in the carboy so I checked it this afternoon.

SG 0.999
Alc 12%

No wonder the yeast wasn't doing anything anymore. I added about 400gr honey. Wanted to add more but no more headroom. There's gonna be a lot of sediment so next racking I'll lose some volume and add more honey.

Ode de-bucketing

The worst of the fermentation storm has passed (it has been really hot here so I'm expecting this will need a lot of aging) so I put this in a glass carboy. Couldn't seem to siphon it off the strawberry pulp so ended up pouring it through the funnel with a filter in it. More aerating than I wanted to, but ah well. It's early enough that maybe the yeast will like that. Who knows.

Ode - apple-strawberry mead

Ode
1 kilo strawberries, because it's the season
3.5 l homemade apple juice
Sherry yeast (I think it's the same strain as mead yeast anyway)

Starting gravity ~1080.
Cooked the strawberries to mush in the apple juice. The whole thing is in a bucket to avoid repeating the foam disaster I had with Noon.