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.

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

All Rise Up (Again) - update

 I actually did the degassing and feeding for this batch in the first weeks! It's much less scary in a bucket with some headroom, if I do that in a carboy I get a fountain. 

The batch has been ticking along and SG was at about 1008 this morning, which is definitely too dry and it's likely to still be fermenting a little. So after some calculations I caramellised  another 2 kilo of honey and mixed it in - we're now at 1030. That's usually about where I like it, but we'll see how that turns out. If it ferments off a bit more it may need more backsweetening. 

It can stay in the kitchen until I start tidying up before christmas, then hopefully it'll have dropped the worst of the lees and can go into the carboy

All Rise Up (Again)

 All Rise Up (Again)

In january 2017 on the day before the US inauguration we dreaded, bestie Sess and I made a mead and called it All Rise Up. A quince bochet. It turned out a lot better than all the political stuff. 

Now on the day before the 2020 US elections I am making that mead again. Maybe the yeasties will eat the stress and the dread and make something beautiful again. 

5 gallons. 

8 kilo well-caramellised cheap-ass Lidl honey
~16 liters quince juice, part from last year and part new
mead yeast. 

It's going to be living in the bucket on my tiny kitchen counter for a week or two until it's dropped a good deal of its sediment (bochet has a lot). I made a little extra to account for the loss.

All Rise Up B, Chai, Dale

All Rise Up B 

(2.5 liter overflow batch of the quince bochet)

SG 1012 - dryer than the A batch

15% alcohol

Dry ish but very drinkable, quite wine-like, good! Try giving this to Ank

Chai

Made with Bengal tea

SG 1004

16% alcohol

Oof, you can definitely smell and taste the tea. It's quite sharp-peppery on the tongue. I don't think it's bad at all but a bit sweeter this is probably going to work better

 

Added yeast stop

Added ~500 gram forest honey

Dale

SG 1020

18% alcohol

Pomegranate. Yikes, this is a hit of sharp-hot-sourness on your tongue for the first taste. You can taste the pomegranate but this is very acidic and because of that (and the alcohol), harsh tasting.

 

Added yeast stop

Added ~200 gram forest honey - it was all I had in the house.

May need to consider blending this with something or try whatever acid-lowering things they have in the brewshop

 

Whoa, it's a real one!

and infection, I mean.

It's a bit of a joke in the mead reddit that 9/10 things that people post as 'help, is this an infection?!' is nothing, but the yeast in Floral had trouble getting started and the elderberry flower syrup must not have been completely sterilised. I heated it up but did not boil it beforehand, so.

I removed the ick and am now boiling the must, and will then repitch with champagne yeast. All will be well.

My 20 ordered bottles arrived (I realised I didn't bottle a lot of my batches because cleaning labels off wine bottles is such a pain; a lot of times they're not glued but printed as stickers). I think I still have 2.5 liters of All Rise Up to bottle and Chai might also be ready, or should at least be racked. Maybe tomorrow. 

Mead adventure!

I went to Wasteland Weekend (Mojave Desert in California) and have brought a bottle of mead for my tribe for the past years. This year there was going to be a Mead Contest so I brought All Rise Up (Quince bochet) for the contest and Jove (apple mead) for the tribe.

I've never before had the opportunity to drink other people's homebrew mead, or share mine with experienced drinkers, so I was excited about it. I generally like my own meads, but it was fun to see how they weigh up against other people's mead. Which turned out to be pretty good, at least to my palate. I feel like my stuff balances flavours well; there were a bunch of things others were happy with that I would have considered too sweet or too acidic (notably coffee mead and Earl Grey mead - both smelled amazing but were too astringent. Good thing I got to taste them because beforehand I was considering bartering for bottles)

Sadly in the contest the judges were apparently looking for 'the most typical mead' and the prize went to a decent if to my taste over-sweet sack mead. Would've been good to know the brief beforehand; I figured plain was too plain for experienced mead drinkers and brought something to show off with. One of the judges told me he vehemently disagreed with the pick and really liked mine, and everybody I poured it to love it, so eh.

....Now what do I want to make for next year. Or rather, since it's unlikely anything that young will be good, what am I saving to bring. I was tempted to bring the Sage or Thyme honey mead for the contest and I think in hindsight that would have been a better choice, but next year there will be categories, so... 

Vuvalini, All Rise Up

Vuvalini
Bochet with chai tea
SG 1022
alc 16%

Oh, this is INTERESTING. Kind of dark and spicy but not spices-spicy. Not sure if this is very accessible for novice mead drinkers (it's meant to be the one I take with me to Wasteland to share) but I am very happy with it

All Rise Up
Bochet with Quince
The 3 liter overflow batch: 0.995 & 13% alcohol - watered this one down a bit too much. The quince is VERY clear, but this is too dry for me. Added some honey and yeast stop.

The 10l batch: SG 1018 / 15%
This is great, very fruity and gentle. Very pleased with it.
Racked into two demis and added yeast stop

Zephyr, Vuvalini and All Rise Up

Zephyr (bottled)
Dry quince mead
SG at 1010. Alcohol at 15%
Too dry for me, but Karen loved it and since not all mead needs to be to my specific tastes, bottled it like this.

Vuvalini (racked)
Bochet with chai tea
SG at 1010. Alcohol 16%
Dry but with a present caramellized flavour. I didn't really get the chai though. Added yeast stop and backsweetened with more caramellised honey.

All Rise Up (started)
Revolutionary bochet with quince juice
2.5 kilo of honey cooked down to medium brown. Rest is quince juice. Port yeast and energiser.