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

Racking

Lane - ginger/apple/hibiscus tea

SG 1032
18%

Smells amazing - appley! Tasting both the apple and ginger, not sure if I get the hibiscus. good sweetness. Aftertaste is a bit hot. Currently in the fridge to cold crash.

Wait, did I put yeast stop in this? I've been thinking about doing a carbonated batch and this would work for it. Shit, my notes don't say. Though even if I didn't, I think this is too fermented out to get going again. Might try it a second time with this tea though, I like the result.

Moragh - coffee

SG 1012
19% ?
Was a bit scared to try this but it's not bad. Mostly dry. Smells of coffee for sure. Taste is a bit acidic from the coffee and maybe I just don't like black coffee... but meh. Added yeast stop + 125 gr honey, cold crashing it. IDK if I'll ever want to drink this. Maybe if I age it?

Noon - fig

SG 0.999
17%
+350 gr honey to SG 1022
No taste notes. Kinda too early to tell anyway.

Kearney - cacao + bengal spice 

SG 1030
17%
Oh this smells SO GOOD. Taste is more mellow than the peppery hit of Chai, but very nice. Wish there was a more pronounced cacao flavour but I think it's there. More nibs for the big batch I plan to make (10L). Or make cacao nib tea?

Added yeast stop & bentonite

Ode - strawberry & apple

SG 0.999
14/15% alc

+ 275 gr honey & yeast stop
No taste notes. Kinda too early and too dry to tell anyway.

Ode

Ode

This looked completely inactive once in the carboy so I checked it this afternoon.

SG 0.999
Alc 12%

No wonder the yeast wasn't doing anything anymore. I added about 400gr honey. Wanted to add more but no more headroom. There's gonna be a lot of sediment so next racking I'll lose some volume and add more honey.

Ode de-bucketing

The worst of the fermentation storm has passed (it has been really hot here so I'm expecting this will need a lot of aging) so I put this in a glass carboy. Couldn't seem to siphon it off the strawberry pulp so ended up pouring it through the funnel with a filter in it. More aerating than I wanted to, but ah well. It's early enough that maybe the yeast will like that. Who knows.

Ode - apple-strawberry mead

Ode
1 kilo strawberries, because it's the season
3.5 l homemade apple juice
Sherry yeast (I think it's the same strain as mead yeast anyway)

Starting gravity ~1080.
Cooked the strawberries to mush in the apple juice. The whole thing is in a bucket to avoid repeating the foam disaster I had with Noon.