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

tastiness

I took a few bottles to the Queen's Day barbeque for my guinea pigs friends to try.

Alexis (plain): I did a few bottles of A in champagne bottles with added strawberry syrup, but this was a plain bottle. Very pleasant sack mead. I'm curious about the other bottles now!

Halle: Quince mead. Very pleasant surprise because this completely regained its quince scent and flavour. Turned out lovely.

Imre: apple wine (not mead). I never had a preconception of what apple wine would or should be like, so this was interesting all along the way. It had lost the Apfelkorn flavour and you could really smell and taste the demerera sugar. Quite fresh/sour but not in an unpleasant way. I'm the least sure about this one, though I still drank a few glasses of it and so did a few other people, so it's certainly not bad.

Bottlings

Long overdue!

Alexis
It's weird, this is (obviously) the A batch and it was still bubbling, all be it veeery slowly . I got leery about bottling things that weren't completely quiet, so I just kept this one on the shelf all this time, long after later batches were in the bottle. Interestingly enough this is the only batch that I heated, way back when - after this one I switched to a cold process. Coincidence?
In any event I wasn't unhappy with the taste now - it smells really good, taste doesn't quite live up to it. I'd give it a 6 now - drinkable but not moorish.
Since I had champagne bottles anyway, I decided to mess with it some more and add about 25ml of strawberry syrup (sugar+strawberries set in the fridge for a couple of days, then strained) to each of the 4 bottles. I probably shouldn't leave these for too long before I drink...
SG 1012
Alc 17%

Halle (quince mead)
This had cleared beautifully and has been quiet for months.
Smells good, taste interesting, sweet but a bit sourish. Maybe it'll improve on the bottle..

SG 1020
alc 16%

Imre (apple wine)
Last time I tried this I was disappointed because it was ciderish, and I think I messed with it. Still kind of sour but definitely not ciderish now - in fact it's much closer to Apfelkorn!
SG 1014
alc 16%

I intend to continue tomorrow to bottle Fennah, make a chuck-or-bottle decision about Gwy, and I think Ehle needs another racking.

Retcon updates

I did this in the weekend of 10/11 April, just haven't posted it here... to be honest things are kind of depressing on the brewing front, that's why I put it off.

Imre
Alc 15%
SG 1014
Still murkey though maybe starting to clear a little. Smells and tastes ciderish. I'm really sad I lost the sweet apple scent and taste I was after.
Racked and added a sugar syrup of 50gr white sugar with 100ml water.

Halle
Alc 12%
SG 1014
Racked. Doesn't smell 'gone bad' just not good. May need time? Doesn't taste outright bad either, but.. I don't know, hard to believe this could get drinkable, it's nothing like mead. Sourish aftertaste.
I am really starting to regret using the quince juice right off the bat, it smelled SO good and the fermentation has just killed that. Then again I don't think I could have frozen it, not enough space...

Gwyllion
Alc 18%
SG 1010
Racked. Smells good - sweet wine. Tastes drinkable (not spit-out stuff) but not nice. Oh I don't know. If I had the space I would just wait it out, bottle it and see what it's like in a year or so. As it is I'm not much inclined to bottle stuff that's likely just going down the drain in a year's time.

Pectin enzym

After some advice from the people from the homebrewing group on livejournal I ordered a pectin enzym for Halle and Imre. You're supposed to add this stuff when you first mix the protowine, but some say it'll still work afterward, so we're trying that now.

Racking

Gwyllion: 0.990 / 17% (racked)
Much too dry like this. Added about 150 gr sugar. Hope that wasn't too much, but I dissolved 100gr and that only brought it to 1.004. Wait and see.

Halle: 1.018 / ?% (didn't write it down apparently) (racked)
I don't know. Not appetising. Maybe it'll turn into something?

Imre: 1.010 / 14.5% (racked)
Lovely delicate apple taste/scent gone. Damn! Smells/tastes like dry cider now. Have added some demerera sugar.

Gwy / Imre

Gwyllion: fed more sugar, I think about 50 grams
Imre: added bentonite. I'm not sure if bentonite is going to do it for fruit haze (have a vague recollection of pos charged and neg charged clearing methods but.. meh. I figure it's going to take ages to get this one cleared as it is super cloudy because the juice was super cloudy, so I might as well start from bentonite and see how that turns out. The next step would probably be gelatine. Will see how that goes.

I'm super curious about Imre because I think it might turn out really nice, sweet apple wine, not at all like cider. If it works out well I will be making one with orchard pear juice as well. These fruit wines also satisfy my urge to make something I can drink soonish, because they should be reasonably drinkable around when it's bottling time, not take ages to age.

Measurings

Fennah: 15% / 1.022
Still cloudy, still quite fizzy. It's been bubbling, so that seems to want more time. The drop I tasted seemed rather sweet, but it's hard to tell with the yeast taste still in, we'll see.

Gwyllion: 12% / 0.990
Hungry, hungry yeast - I fed it about 50 gr cane sugar and it foamed so hard it spilled over. Oops! Mead doesn't react that hard when I add new honey, so that was a surprise. Added a small piece of lemon peel to help keep the foam down. I'm going to try to get it to ferment out by alcohol level without oversweetening it again, so sugar in small increments I guess.

Halle: 16% / 1.020
Very cloudy and fizzy. It smells of heavy fermentation, but the drop I tasted seemed to suggest it could turn out quite nice when the yeast is done.

Imre: 15% / 1.010
Still cloudy, but hardly any fizz when agitated - this seems to be going toward finished. Underneath the yeast taste it was quite nice and appley. I Will Be Patient (for once!) and let it run its course - I'm very curious how this one'll turn out though. And I'm now thinking of doing a similar wine but with the orchard pear juice..

Rackings

Alexis: super dry and starting to fall clear (added bentonite last time). I'm thinking about keeping this one to correct too sweet mead with.
SG: 0.995
Alc. 15%

Halle: Just ticking along - I think it's mostly fermented out now though. This one is going to be a pain to get clear.
SG: 1.015
alc. 15.5%

Imre: I had hoped this would hang on to some of the apple scent, but sadly not. Very ciderish. I added a syrup of 100gr demerera sugar to hopefully sweeten it some.
SG 1.000 (before I added sugar, didn't measure after. 'cause I'm smart like that)
alc. 14.5%

Halle & Imre

Halle was racked and measured:
SG 1032
Alc 12%

As expected, Imre dropped massive amounts of sediment in the first few days (it's that cloudy apple juice) and I also wanted the sultana's out of there to stop them from overpowering the apple.
SG 1045
Alc 9%
Racking lost a fair amount of volume (as expected) so I topped up with the good apple juice (about 750ml) and added about 150gr sugar. No idea about the new SG because I didn't dissolve the sugar, just poured it in - if previous experience are anything to go by, it will simply be eaten from its layer on the bottom.

Brynn is ready to bottle, I think. Will do that sometime this week.

Imre

Oh dear, I just couldn't resist the sight of the two empty demijohns in the windowsill, so I filled one of them..
I'd been reading about making cider and apple wine and thought it sounded pretty interesting. I'm not a huge fan of cider, but apple wine.. hmm.

IMRE is:

• 3 litres of very nice cloudy orchard apple juice. This stuff tastes amazing, not at all like the processed juice from concentrate. It's been pasteurised, but nothing else. Tastes like real apple, liquid form.
• 1.5 litres cheaper 'normal' apple juice (I had decided the total cost should be under 5 euro)
• 500 gr demerera sugar
• 150 gr sultanas
• some lemon peel
• doux yeast

It looks kinda unpleasant right now - the sugar gave it a brownish colour and the cloudiness of the juice makes it look, well, brown and murky right now. With the sultanas in there it doesn't look inviting. It's slowly started bubbling though, and we will see how it all turns out. It should be relatively fast (compared to the meads) to drinkability - I'm hoping to have this drinkable by christmas. One can hope.
Starting gravity was 1070. Depending on how it progresses I will probably add more sugar later.