Wasteland mead contest

 6 month late update but I brought Hasufel the pear mead to the Wasteland weekend mead contest last year and it won the melomel category!

mead weekend 24/25 February 2024

 Sess came over and we did SO much. 

Racked:

Doriana: 4 liter, cacao & cristalised ginger
This was the overflow of Dorian (cacao mead) at the first racking from bucket to carboy. At that time we added cristalised ginger but didn't add further sugar. Update: SG 1000, completely dry. dusty ginger smell. Chocolate nose. Surprisingly little flavour at this point. Back sweetened with 500g honey to SG1040

Dorian: (20 liter, cacao)
Ohhh, this is going somewhere. SG 1060, very nice. Light but present chocolate flavour. Yeast stopped and super cleared, though uncertain if this worked.
Could definitely use more time, but promising and already quite good. Smells less like chocolate than Doriana, but tastes more chocolate. Might want to bring this to Wasteland depending on how it develops.

Fennah II: (5 liter, mead with mint leaves)
SG 1022. Racked off the mint. It was on there too long and there's some serious flavour, but this was always Sess's thing and they like it. Back sweetened 250g.

Fern: (10 liters, heather honey)
Much heather. Slightly bitter aftertaste. SG 1008. Racked. I gotta go pick up about a kilo of heather honey to backsweeten this.

Eglentine (18 liters, apple/ginger/hibiscus tea)
Nice acidity/sweetness balance w ginger notes. SG 1018
Backsweetened with 2kg honey to 1055

Hasufel: (5 liters, pear juice)
 Smooth pear, slightly acidic. SG at 1065. Less young tasting than Gwahir. Perfect at this sweetness, so yeast stop added.

Bottled:

Gwahir: (5 liters with apple juice)
Fizzy, young, very apple-y. Cider smell. SG 1080 but carries it well. Shockingly drinkable at only about 4 months since pitching. I guess sweetness covers a lot of sins? It was still active so we put in champagne bottles to hopefully get a sparkling sweet apple mead.

Yaffe (3 remaining liters, lapsang souchon tea)
I like this one a lot, evidenced by it having been kept in the dining room and occasionally pouring a glass straight from the carboy. Unfortunately it never fully cleared
 

Pitched:

Imrahil:  (5L)
plain honey 2.5 kg , w/nutrition. Mead yeast. Starting SG 1150

January:  (5L)
plain honey 3 kg, w/nutrition. Mead yeast. Starting SG 1180. Will it start? (answer: yes, by evening it's bubbling away)

Kiryandil: (5L)
2 kg honey, 500 ml elderflower syrup (~335g sugar) Starting SG 1155

Landroval:  (5L)
Plain honey 2.5kg. spices to be added after racking.

Uhhh

 Sometime at the start of november? First half, anyway? I started an apple and a pear mead.

3 liters juice, 2 kilo honey, mead yeast, nutrients. 

yeah they don't have names either. oops

Gwahir (apple)

Hasufel (pear)

Lots of workings

 Sess came over to help and we did loads of racking and final prep for bottling. 

Aella - rosemary honey mead
Nice rosemary kick! Good mid sweetness. I might bring some to wasteland. Bottled

Xanthe - pine mead
This was already done and we drank some at christmas. It has since settled to be less of a slap in the face with a wet pine branch and more mellow piney woodsy. Pretty strong in alc but hard to measure with all the rest sugar. I'd guess at least 15%. Also might bring this to WW. Bottled. 

Zaqar 

Previously backsweetened with ~450 gr thyme honey. Good sweetness and the thyme flavour has turned up. Planning to make this fizzy and bottle it in champagne bottles. It's ready to go for that

Whaitiri

tea with ginger, lemongrass and Kawakawa. A bit more astringent than I enjoy but Sess likes it a lot. Was already done with bentonite but did not clear, so trying it with superclear. Prepared for bottling and ready as soon as it falls clear. 

Yaffe  (lapsang souchon tea)
Pretty nice. Mellowed out a lot. The orange zest really works for it. Added superclear. Ready to bottle as soon as it falls clear

Calliope (cacao bochet)
There's a heavy bochet flavour going on, that specific kind of acidity. Definitely nowhere near ready for bringing to wasteland. I'm not sure if it needs backsweetening or mainly just time.

Bronwyn (Coffee bochet)
The Tia Maria effect is gone. Vanilla pods helped balance it out some but this still has the heavy acidity of the bochet process. 

 

Fern - heather honey mead

Coming along. The heather honey is noticeabe, very nice spicy nose to it. Planning to sweeten this up with about 1 kilo heather honey. 

 

Dorian - chocolate mead

Not fermented completely dry but too dry anyway - sg about 1010.  Backsweetened with 3 kilo honey.

New: Dorian, Eglentine, Fern

 Dorian

On the principle that chocolate mead takes so long that by the time it tastes good I am forever regretting not making more, a 20 liter chocolate mead.
Well, started at 24 liters in the big bucket. You tend to lose a bunch as the cacao drops, and I can put excess in a separate demi.
starting gravity  1130 (!)

10 kilo honey
600 gr cacao
Mead yeast
Yeast activator
Fermaid o

Eglentine
18 liter apple/ginger/hibiscus mead
Had a box and a half of this now sadly discontinued tea and figured I should use it before it goes stale. Brewed the tea to bring out the ginger (This is the third time I make this one; first was seeped tea, the second just had the tea put in in secondary and that doesn't work, you don't get the ginger heat)

~30 teabags seeped in near-boiling water
~7.5 kilo honey
Mead yeast & activator

No starting gravity because we made it directly into the demijohn and I could not be arsed to stir sufficiently and then draw up a sample. Laziness

Fern
Ten liter Heather honey mead
Received this honey as a gift after an unpaid internship years ago and I've been doing the 'what if I ruin the good art supplies' thing. I could probably make it go further if I used some plain honey to start with, but decided to Just Go For It.

3.9 kilo Heather honey
Yeast activator
Mead yeast
Fermaid o

Again, no starting gravity because we made it directly into the demijohn and I could not be arsed to stir sufficiently and then draw up a sample. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Meadings / tastings

Whaitiri
Bit of a mystery because it's made from a New Zealand tea containing ginger, lemongrass and kawakawa, and we don't know what that tastes like. I really wish I'd thought to save a little tea to drink in comparison!
Mead has good sweetness, not much lemongrass, ginger-warmth without much ginger taste. Hint of pepper. We don't really know what kawakawa is or does but this mead turned out quite nice. Sess is a fan
Added yeast stop and bentonite. When it's clear it's ready to bottle

Xanthe
The pine tip mead!
Rejoice, rejoice, the bitterness is gone! Good sweetness. Tastes of pine forest not pine sap. Very nice and rounded. Fascinating. I might take this to wasteland purely for the interest factor.
Added yeast stop and bentonite. When it's clear it's ready to bottle

Yaffe
The Lapsang Souchon mead.
Ohhhh very smokey nose on this, maybe even a bit much. This is good lapsang, good sweetness. I think the orange zest rounded out the back end with a hint of fresh.
Was previously yeast stopped, newly added bentonite. When it's clear it's ready to bottle

Bronwyn
Coffee bochet. Clear and dark. Ohh coffee. Taste has balanced out.  No more heavy acidity. Doesn't really taste like mead though, or even particularly like wine. More like watered down Tia Maria. Or sweetened watered down cold brew. I don't hate it but it doesn't taste anything like wine.
I think I'll put some vanilla pods in there in the hope the pods leave enough tannin. Possibly more Oak extract if the pods don't do enough

Calliope
Cacao bochet. Sweetness is good now. Some chocolate but at this time the bochet flavour (with acidity) has taken over. Time time time. I am hoping to bring this to Wasteland in 2023, let's hope it's aged enough by then.
Was previously yeast stopped, added bentonite. When it's clear it's ready to bottle and be put away for a long long time.
 

Calliope chocolate bochet: 

0,990

Alc: high.  > 17%?

Racked, backsweetened with 500 gr honey, Yeast stop added

This might just need two years to mellow

Brownwen Coffee bochet: 

1,074

Alc: high.  > 17%?

Racked, Yeast stop added

Even at this sweetness still very very acidic. Not sure what to do with this

Yaffe - Lapsang Souchon

1,030

17% 

Racked, Yeast stop added

smell is really good. taste has mellowed. Unsure if to take this to WW

Vercopa update: it's gone

 neglected this blog and the mead lately, so a belated update that the in-bottle carbonisation worked very well, it was beautiful and fizzy and delicious, and it's now all gone. Woe.

 Vercopa

10 liter blackberry mead 

 This is surprisingly light. I think it might be nice fizzy, but I don't know if I'll get enough fermentation kicked off to get it carbonated

 

Got some old champagne yeast to kick off so I bottled six (champagne) bottles of this with a bit of the yeast and a squeeze of honey. Uh... that's probably less calculated than I was meant to, but I could just open one every month and see how it goes? 😏

Put the remaining five liters into a 5 demijohn. I am looking at buying a 2nd hand carbonation machine/sodastream. You'd only be able to carbonate a bottle just before you drank it, but I want to give that a go - it tastes good, and the yeast/bottle process will have altered the taste by the time I open it - I want to see how it tastes now, but fizzy.

I didn't really do anything with the mead I just racked

 Calliope (cacao bochet)

What with big renovation and all, this stayed in the bucket far longer than intended. Finally racked it and it's acidic as fuck, but there's more chocolate taste to it than anything made with nibs has ever given me, so there's hope. There's no headroom to add honey right now so I figure I'm letting it clear more first. 

 

Bronwyn (Coffee bochet)

Heavy sweet coffee, drinkable but kind of on the oversweet side. Not quite sure yet how to fix that. Oak extract?

Zaqar 

Previously backsweetened with ~450 gr thyme honey. Not a very distint flavour unfortunately but otherwise drinkable. I could make this one fizzy? 

Aella: 

backsweetened with 900 gr rosemary honey. Not as distinct a rosemary flavour as all-rosemary-honey attempts have been, but pretty good, and drinkable.  

Fennah II: 

Just acceptable plain mead right now. Gonna add fresh mint  

 

Whaitiri

tea with ginger, lemongrass and Kawakawa.

Xanthe (pine tips)

This one is tricky, I think the sweetness is right, there is pineyness, but man that bitter slash isn't gone. I added some pine honey, even though that is definitely not the same. I might be stuck adding honey and acidity until this loses that note. I hope the nose doesn't disappear though.

Yaffe  (lapsang souchon tea)
Smokey! Pretty nice? Good nose and front end, a bit meh on the back end. Thought a fresh note might help and added a tiny bit of orange zest

 

Vercopa

10 liter blackberry mead 

 This is surprisingly light. I think it might be nice fizzy, but I don't know if I'll get enough fermentation kicked off to get it carbonated

 

Upkeep

It was fun having a whole bunch of new batches going at the same time - the sounds of the airlocks were really nice. Like I had a jacuzzi in my living room :-D

Today I slightly belatedly added the thyme honey to Zaqar and the rosemary honey to Aella. Since there wasn't enough headroom, I combined their deplaced volume in a 1 liter bottle:

Diminutive - which I added a couple of spoons of yuzu marmelade to, a splash of yuzu juice, and a big spoon of the pine honey that has that surprising same-sensation-as-date-syrup flavour. Not for any real reason than that it was the only easily accessible jar of honey I had around, the rest of my current stash is in the bucket.

Bronwyn (5L)

Coffee bochet. Rather than reproducing the previous I thought I'd see how this works out with caramellised honey.
2.5 kilo honey cooked down to medium toasted.
Cold brew of 60 gr fancy coffee grounds. (possibly a bit on the strong side? figured I'd need to up it slightly to weigh up against the bochet flavour)
Mead yeast. 

Seems off to a good start.  No starting gravity because I'm a dope

Calliope (5L)

Cacao bochet. I'm also going to make a 20L batch plain cacao mead, but I wanted to give this a try. 
2.5 kilo honey cooked down to medium toasted
150 gr Dutch cacao
mead yeast

This is more likely 6 liter or even 6.5 - it's in a bucket now and I wanted to make sure I'd have enough volume left once it comes off the primary sludge. I'll leave it in the bucket for now to avoid gross foamy disaster, but it's blopping away enthusiastically

No starting gravity because I'm a dope

 

Given that the honey cooked down to about half volume I figure both of these will need serious backsweetening, potentially with more caramellised honey, but I can see about that later. 

New brewings

 I seem to have lapsed on actually naming batches - the lapsang and pinetips batches still don't have names. Lots of plans to start new things this week so I really should think of some.

New:

• Zaqar 1750 gr honey / mead yeast / to be backsweetened with the ~450 gr thyme honey I've had standing around for the past century
  
  
• Aella: 1500 gr honey / mead yeast / to be backsweetened with the 900 gr rosemary honey I've had standing around for the past century
  
  
• Fennah II: 2000 gr honey / mead yeast / to be flavoured with fresh mint in secondary.  

Here's the rest of the planning list: