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

Dale & Edain tartness issues

Got recommended to add tannin (bitter) and honey to balance out the tartness. I THINK we're ready to bottle & age in terms of flavour but of course adding honey has made it hazy again.

Missed chance: should have sweetened the lemon mead with thyme honey. I feel like that would have worked well.

Change of plans

Dale: pomegranate
SG: 1038.
Alcohol: 19%
Honestly,  this one has to be among my most frustrating batches. It's sweet enough, but also very, very tart, and it has the kind of wry-bitter aftertaste that reminds me of sweetened cranberry juice. It is beautifully clear and ready to bottle, but it is Not Good and I am out of ideas. Unless somebody on r/mead has a clever suggestion I am considering offering this one up to the still.


 Edain: lemon & vanille mead
 SG 1030
Alchol 15%
This tastes of potential, but just a bit too tart for pleasant drinking. Also still a big pectin haze.
Mixed in the ~500 ml very dry mead I had made (though was planned for Gaia). Added 250 gr honey and yeast stop.
Theory is that the dry addition would dilute both the acidity and the sugar level to a good acidity level, and I could then sweeten it again to drinkablility. Let's see how that turns out.

June: bochet with cacao nibs + maple syrup
Should have added that yeast stop. Fermented to 1022 and 17% - the nibs give a type of acidity that I know ages out eventually. I  sweetened it with 400 gr maple syrup, added yeast stop, and once it's clear enough it goes to bottle for a long rest.

Hild: bochet + maple syrup
SG 1042, Alcohol 13%

The plan was to add maple syrup to Hild, but the sweetness is perfect and the taste honestly pretty damn good, so I added yeast stop and bentonite and it'll be ready to bottle with some more de-gassing.

Instead I added the maple syrup to June, which needed the sugar

Lane

Lane - the 2.8 demijohn
1 kilo honey (lidl)
Steeped tea of 8 bags of ginger-hibiscus-apple tea
The new brand mead yeast (Mangrove Jack's) - then standard brand sherry/mead yeast.
Yeast activator
little bit of pecto-enzyme 1

I'm beginning to think that Mangrove Jack's yeast just isn't much good, that was the stuff I couldn't get the Kearney batch started on either and it wasn't doing anything in the starter I made to prep for this batch. Added the sherry yeast and they can battle it out in there.
Was curious what that tea would do and this demijohn was standing empty in my kitchen. Hibiscus should give a nice colour.


I put Edain (lemon) and Dale (pomegranate) in the fridge to cold crash. Dale has been clearing slowly but Edain is still hazy as hell, so I hope this will help.

Chalk!

Apparently you can use a type of chalk powder to knock some acid out of wine, so I'm trying that with the pomegranate and lemon meads. also added some bentonite hoping to clear it. I have in the past bottled things before they were perfectly clear (or rather, they seemed clear, and then dropped sediment in the bottle) so I'm hoping to be more thorough about that in the future.

Racking

Dale (pomegranate)
SG 1036
Alcohol 21% ?!
The vanilla balanced it out a bit, but it's still pretty fresh. Maybe some time will mellow it? I put the vanilla beans back in.
Added gelatin to clear it - never worked with gelatin for fining before, so curious how that will work. If it does work, this can be bottled next time. 

Edain (Lemon)
SG 1030
Alcohol 19%
Wonderful lemon scent now, the zest did a lot of work there. The taste is good, but again, pretty fresh. I put the vanilla beans back in.
Also added gelatin

Floral (elderberry flower syrup)
This is the one that got infected and I have earmarked for destillation - I do not want to taste it since there is some small risk it would make me sick.
Smell is quite strongly floral. Very fizzy, too much to get a SG reading. Alcohol reading said 10%, which seems low.
Added gelatin.

Chai, Dale, Edain, Gaia

Chai
Mead with Bengal Spice tea
SG 1030
Alc 17%

Ohh! Backsweetening was just what this needed. It's a well-rounded, medium sweet with a peppery backtone. Very nice and interesting but not a 'stunt mead'. Bottled this.

Dale
Pomegranate mead.
SG 1034
Alc 19%
Slight backsweetening has improved the taste a bit, but it's still very acidic in a way that further sweetening won't balance out. I had planned to bottle this but have added 3 vanilla pods instead. It was suggested to me that oak extract would help balance it, but I've run out - the pod of a vanilla bean might take on that job though. Let's hope so.

Edain
Lemon mead
SG ~1030
Alcohol 15%
Has the yeasty smell of fermentation-in-progress, but is probably well along the way to being finished. On the acidic side, which is to be expected of lemon. I don't taste the lemon though. Hmm. Added two vanilla pods hoping to counter the acidity a bit, and then we'll see. Maybe some zest after all?

Gaia
Apple mead
SG ~1050
Alc 19%
Oof. This is obviously Not Done but the alcohol percentage has to be pushing it even for the champagne yeast. I added back a bit of the yeast cake and gave it some new champagne yeast. It seems to still be alive, so we'll have to see how this goes.

Edain - lemon mead

At the mead contest at Wasteland somebody had an amazing lemon mead. He'd gone through some super convoluted process with it (apparently it had been infected, they boiled it to sterilise it and boiled it down to a syrup, diluted it again and pitched it with champagne yeast?!)

That's clearly not repeatable but I figured I'd give lemon mead a go.

Edain

• 2000 gr flower honey
• 500 ml organic lemon juice (was gonna do 1 liter but figured it'd be too acidic for the yeast to work; might still be, we'll see)
• Mead yeast, because that's what I had
• Bit of yeast energiser to kick things off

Overnight update: we have liftoff! Nice steady bubbling