Drake - 2009

Been a while since I tried this one, but there was a small bottle handy upstairs. It was corked - and the cork had dried to shit, so I had to pour it through a filter.

This is very distinctly strawberry! It's not too noxiously sweet, the fruit profile is quite distinct, pretty great actually. Of course with the cork situation it's hard to give this away or serve at a party..

Tasty list

Due to unforeseen travel plans this winter, I have decided to give mead as gifts. For that I need a little list of which batches I think are good enough to give away.Bold is what I'm happy to serve to somebody else.

Alexis plain: nice sack mead
Alexis with strawberry syrup: haven't tried yet
Brynn: need to taste this
Caelan: carbonated, bit dry. Nice
Drake: need to taste this
Ehle: still in demijohn
Fennah: spicy heavy/sweet mead [ran out!]
Gwyllion: elderberry port. Suppose I could pull open a bottle and see how this has turned out
Halle: Quince mead - very nice! [ran out!]
Imre: sourish fresh apple wine. Not sure about this as a gift.Maybe as a second bottle of 'hey, try this' and not as the main gift.
Jove: still in demi
Keir: recently bottled
Lisidh: still in demi
Merryn: heavy, sweet, not as spicy as I had expected. Very nice.
Nuggan: heavy, sweet, very nice

Actually Drinking The Stuff

Shared a small bottle of Fennah with my housemate last week. It was the first time she drank mead and she really liked it. Then felt encouraged enough to bring some mead to the Eindhoven AFPmeet this past weekend.
- bottle of Caelan
- bottle of Drake
- bottle of Fennah (figuring we'd at least have *some* tasty mead.

Caelan is carbonated and I expected it to be dramatic (it was very extreme when bottled, had to be rebottled) but actually it turned out exactly right - a polite pop and some mist from the bottle, and a very nice level of sparkliness. Taste pretty good - nicely honeyed scent and taste. A bit dry. What a nice surprise!

Drake was very clearly strawberry, but rather dry and not very appealing. I think I'll leave that one for a while before trying again.

Fennah was a success. It's strangely spicy for something that had mint leaves in it at some point. Tastes a little bit hot (you can tell it fermented fast) but otherwise yum. Heavy, sweet mead though - my parents keep wanting to try my homebrew but I know they won't like this one.

Overall this is nice - the proof that patience does pay off, and I haven't spent the past two years turning perfectly good honey into something good only to go down the drain.

Drake tasting

Got talking about brewing with a friend and realised I have not touched any of the brewings since half April. Got so desillusioned then that I went into a 'Fine! Be like that. Just sit there and suck, see if I care' sort of sulk.
I'm kind of curious to have a look now, maybe I'll get to racking and measuring tomorrow.

While I was in the mood I dug out a small bottle of the Drake batch. It was bottled on Juli 28 2009, so very nearly a year and a half of aging.
This is a strawberry mead, but it's mostly lost the pink colour. Small amount of sediment in the bottle. Very slightly fizzy in the glass. Smells REALLY nice, smells like something I want to drink bottles of.
Sadly the taste dissappoints - sourish and 'hot' - it's 16% alcohol and you can really taste that. I wonder if it was a too-fast fermentation. Looking back at my notes, I started it in the first days of june, and bottled it on july 28. The aftertaste isn't bad, you sort of get a hint of what it could be in the scent and the aftertaste, but.. no.

The D batch did not get opened or rebottled, which is what I thought was the cause of the sourishness in Brynn, so I really don't know what to do now. Does sour mean ruined, chuck down the drain? Or should I just put it away and see what it's like a year from now?

Readings

Brynn
Last reading: 1.008 / 13%
Today: 1.008 / 14% (I'm guessing a misread last time due to a tiny air bubble or something)
New: 1.020 (I sweetened it some.)
This batch is now completely flat, doesn't fizz even drawn up into the syringe. It smells nice, it doesn't taste nice. Yet. I hope. I really wish I knew a brewy person within tasting distance who could tell me "This is a normal pre-aging taste" or "This is a waste of honey, time and effort".

Caelan - wanted to take readings here to figure out if/why it built up pressure in the bottles.
At bottling: 1.000 / 14%
Today: 1.000 / 14%
OK. that's weird. That means there wasn't any sugar left, and pretty much nothing for fermentation to go on, and no fermentation happened, and it still built up pressure. If you can explain this, please do so in the comments :-)
It's still fizzy when agitated (like drawn up into the syringe). I put in some honey (up to 1.024) to either sweeten it or kick the stalled fermentation (?) back into life so at least something will happen. I don't much care at this point, I suspect it's ruined. We'll see.

Drake
I took the bottles out the fridge and opened one once it hit room temps. No pressure at all. Opened another one - turned out to have a moldy cork. Boo. Mold was on the outside but may have tainted the wine. No pressure though. Recorked and marked it (suspect it's ruined, though it didn't smell bad once I'd cleaned the bottle neck. Put 'don't gift' on the label to be sure.)
Anyway, I think I'm safe there as far as bottle pressure goes. They're back in the wooden chest now, which I have lined with plastic. If anything else goes, as least it won't be all over the floor.

Right then.

Instead of the sensible choice of going to bed, I checked up on one of the bottles that I took out of the fridge this afternoon with the intention of recorking. Cork was coming out, so instead of sleep I pulled corks. Couldn't be arsed to re-cork and it was fizzing fairly heavily, so dumped it all in a demijohn, plopped on a waterlock, and we'll see what happens to that later. It's been aereated so it may be ruined. No idea.

Drake was prepped and bottled under the same conditions as Caelan. The corks seem in a better state, but I'll open one at a later point to assess what needs to happen there. For now the Drake bottles are in the fridge to buy myself explosion-free time until I can deal with things, probably sunday.

I'm really quite miffed that I was accutely aware of this danger, thought I had taken all the necessary precautions, and STILL ended up with residual fermentation. Batches will be left in the demi's for a LOT longer from now on, even if they seem totally finished.

Bottling time

Yesterday I received the bottling supplies from the brew store, so it was bottling time for Caelan and Drake. Caelan had cleared further with the bentonite - actually in the photo I'd already siphoned it off the clay and in the process moved the demi just slightly, so it was even clearer at first. But I am clumsey, and I've learned to live with that.
Both batches had been stabilised and showed no signs of life in the windowsill of my bedroom, so I think/hope they can be considered sufficiently done to pose no danger of explosion.
Here are the bottles I used - 0.75, 0.375 and 0.25 cl. The middle size I bought as it seems a lovely size to give away. The smaller size are recycled screw-tops and mostly intended to serve as samples. The larger size are also recycled. I also have some 1 litre bottles but changed my mind about using them as they seem overly huge. My batches are small, if the stuff does turn tasty in time it seems a shame to end up drinking almost a quarter of it in one go.
With the autosiphon and the bottling cane (flows if you depress the little pin at the end, stops the flow if you lift it) the transferring the mead was a painless and largely mess-less process. The corking was something else entirely!
I had ordered 'quality 3 corks' which were said to be for bottling up to 5 years. I knew not to expect the world, but what I got were 50 corks were about 15 weren't waterproof by any definition, and 20 which crumbled. I had to seriously search the box for a good one, and even then I ended up having to filter and re-cork three bottles because there was cork in the mead. Grrr. I called the shop and they said they're not supposed to be like that and they're sending me new ones, but unless those are significantly better I'll know either to invest in Really Good Corks, or switch to screw- or fliptops. (The reason I prefer corks is... it's cheaper because I can recycle any old bottle, and it's easier if I give away bottles that don't have recycle value like flip-tops would have. Plus, it's kind of a fuss to get white-glass fliptops. They're not cheap.
After I managed to cork as well as possible I put shrink caps on, except for one of the screwtop bottles which was too wide and got a cap of beeswax. Then I went and made labels. And then I went "Heee!" a lot and stored them in the wooden chest that is my coffee table.

Drake Done!

Since it had cleared so completely I had my suspicions that Drake could already be finished fermenting. Today I got the measuring tube I needed to take readings, and after some faff about how to get it full without stirring up sediment I managed to get it done with the siphon and bottling cane that I had foresightedly ordered at some point.
Gravity 1.002 (no begin readings so no real idea how that compares)
Alcohol 16% (!)

It tastes pretty icky at the moment, but it's icky-with-strawberries, and will hopefully improve with aging.
I've added potassium sorbate to stop the yeast from throwing a party later on when it's bottled, and I'm thinking about clearing it with bentonite tomorrow. It's pretty clear already so not sure if that would really make a difference.

I shall also take a reading off Caelan tomorrow.

Flat :-(

Both Caelan and Drake are still flat and haven't restarted bubbling, and I'm a bit worried. Caelan seems to be building a veeeeery slight bit of pressure and has the slightest trace of white foam on the surface. Drake is just flat and still, and I think it's definitely too early for that one too be done yet.
I'm wondering if I should add some nutrient tomorrow if it hasn't started by then.

more moving notices

Racked Caelan and Drake as they both had a hefty amount of sediment going on. Drake is the most wonderful colour especially in sunlight. Goldish orange. Awesome.
Sadly my green 5l demi turns out to be too narrow-necked to use the autosiphon from, which is a huge pain. Had to get it tranferred to a better demi by way of pouring. *grumble*. Yes I know you can siphon using just a tube. You can, I can't, because I'm super clumsey.
Have ordered two new 5l demi's and some more rubber stoppers.
Caelan did some bubbling straight after racking, but they were both still when I closed the curtains (they're in the windowsill) an hour ago. Let's home they've restarted bubbling by tomorrow.

More racking

Yesterday it looked like the B, C and D batches were about due a racking. Drake dropped an enormous amount of sediment sludge in the few days it was in a demi, and seemed to be fermenting robustly enough that I figured it'd be okay racking it so soon.

They've since all started bubbling again. And.. Drake has dropped more sediment, almost looks like I didn't take anything out at all.

Moving Notice

Last time I had the bucket fermenter (home of Drake) open the strawberries were looking pretty pale (and, to be honest, disgusting). I figured it was about time to re-home Drake to a nice glass demi.

My auto-siphon is a godsent (not regretting that expense at ALL) because it went without a drop (of sticky smelly protomead) spilled. I made a little more than 5 litre so I just discarded the last bit with the strawberries and dead yeast and still have a nice demi full.

I wasn't sure if the strawberries had coloured it at all until I saw it in the demi - lovely reddish blush in there. It's already bubbling away like there's no tomorrow.

Drake

I drove down to the orchard outside town and bought 1.5 kg gorgeous strawberries. They made the car smell soooo good. (Oh, also half a kilo cherries for boozemaking, see other post)

The D batch is called Drake *. It's a strawberry melomel that's currently sitting in a plastic fermenter. Made it with supermarket honey and aforementioned really nice strawberries. First time I used yeast activator, which is supposed to kick it off, but so far hasn't. Only been a few hours though. Will see how it's doing tomorrow.

Using the plastic bucket fermenter for ease of getting the fruit out later, but damn it's annoying to not be able to see into it! I like the glass demi's much better, it's fascinating to watch what's happening in there.

*) a naming reference that only works if you're Dutch/English bilingual. And me.