Bottlings

 Sess came to help and we bottled Quasi, Moragh II, Ode and the 5 gallon All Rise Up Again. Basement is very full now!

...I have a lot of room for new batches. Also, i found a place that sells cheap honey by the 20 kilo bucket. So.

Plans!

 Uh oh, I have joined a mead brewing discord and now I am full of ideas

- cacao mead. I've been meaning to make another one of these. Since it takes forever (though not as stupidly long since last time I did not backsweeten from the start) this will be the next 5 gallon batch. If I have to wait 2 years for a result I might as well make a lot of it. 

- ...but I also want to make a cacao bochet. Wait I have done that. It's June? I think it's June. Which still isn't very cacaoish because the nibs just didn't work out well

- and a cacao with bengal spice, since the cacao aspect of Tai turned out so underwhelming

- heather honey! gotta so something with those 4 kg very fancy honey. 

- buckwheat honey. It had such a wonderful molasses-syrupy flavour. 

- hibiscus

 

On the go:

Yaffe (Lapsang souchon)

Never got a name so I guess it's stuck with this now Yaffe

Fermented dry. Definitely smokey! really cool. About ~15% alcohol

Sweetened to SG 1026

I feel like this will need an acid to counterbalance all the tannins and sweet, but haven't decided yet if I just want to do an additive or use lemon juice or something else. 

Xanthe (Pine Tips Mead)

...still waiting on my dining room table to be racked. Suspect this will also need an acid.

Rackings

 Some of these have been standing on my dining room table forever, hoping they would clear. A friend came to work on his own meads and that got me to get a move on all of my backlog. 

New ambition is to REALLY fine my meads beyond 'looks pretty clear' - I hate thinking I'm bottling something that's clear and then finding a bunch of sediment in the bottles half a year later.

Ode

Apple-strawberry. Fresh-sweet. nice but could use some tannin.

added ~15ml mellow oak extract  

Even with the superklar 24hr fining this is still a little hazy. Flavourwise ready to bottle.

Moragh 2

(subtle) Coffee mead 

very sweet. I do get coffee. Not bad but not moorish

Fined and ready to bottle.  

Not sure what this lacks flavourwise. Tannin or acid? I could try oak...? ....salt?

Quasi

Lemon zest and thyme honey 

champagne yeast not a success. Good scent, not a great taste imo. not very lemony or thymey

added yeast stop, 20ml yuzu juice, 200gr thyme honey

Fined and ready to bottle 

MEDEdeling

Mack's Hack42 mead. This is very light in colour. 

Fined and ready to bottle, but waiting for Mack to come and do that.  

vercopa

10 liter blackberry mead 

starting sg 1130

sg 1000

...no notes, that's helpful. I assume I backsweetened this. Maybe even stopped it, who knows.

All Rise Up Again

5 gallon quince bochet

very acidic! Applestroop Taste is coming, sweetness good? still gassy

5 gallon

1026 sg

17%

Added stopper

Fining added, clearing. I was hoping to bottle this weekend but the clarity is very hard to assess in such a big vessel.  

Whaitiri

tea with ginger, lemongrass and Kawakawa.

Interesting flavours - I'm not getting the ginger, but it was definitely kind of grassy.

1004

~17%

Added 500 gr honey