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

Dale - tasting

Pulled open a bottle of Dale (pomegrenate/vanilla) and oh, this is interesting. The first wash is acidic, and then it immediately mellows down into sweet and vanilla. a little weird, but not bad at all

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... 

tasting things

Quite Windy
"Was this made with a special honey?" I wondered. Nope. It's just a nice sweet sack mead with enough character to be interesting. Very accessible though, I think it tastes very much like non-mead drinkers expect mead to taste. This one's gonna make a good gift.

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..

Racking time

I'm not a lazy brewer, I just like slow mead. 
No, I'm totally lazy. I feel like doing brewing stuff only a couple times a year, because making space in my oddly laid-out house and sanitising everything is such a giant pain. So my meads spend up to half a year in primary, and then in secondary pretty much until I feel motivated to go through the process of collecting and cleaning labels off of enough bottles. 

But this past week somebody gave me 5 kg of quince, and I remember how nicely the Halle batch of quince mead turned out. So I borrowed a steam extractor and chopped fruit and... got a lot of quince juice. Like... a LOT. 8 liter in total. 

Halle was made with 1.5 liter juice, though I expect a lot of this juice will be weaker than that was. So maybe I'll just up the juice ration in the new batch. I need to think about doing some more medium-dry meads, since I'm not brewing for my own tastes - I hardly drink it.

But first I racked the batches I had standing: 

Wuluwaid  - a 2 liter 'heavy' 
Eucalyptus honey and you can taste it, heavy sweet syrupy but with enough depth from the Eucalyptus.
SG 1060
18% - bang on what I expect from my 2 liter batches of heavies.
Added yeast stop and a few drops of oak extract

Undine 
The Thyme honey one. As expected super dry. Taste note: 'Not bad just dry' (which is saying something coming from me, I don't like dry meads) but in need of a bit of sweet.

SG 1004
15% alcohol
Added yeast stop and 450 gr thyme honey. Still considering some thyme leaves.

Yngvi
Blueberry mead. Taste note: A little jetfueley but not bad, sweet enough, just needs to age
SG: 1022
18% alcohol (whoa, did not expect that) 
Added yeast stop

Veritas
Sage honey mead. Much like Undine - you can smell and taste the sage (mmm spicey) but it's too dry. 
SG: 1002
14% alcohol
Added yeast stop and 450 gr sage honey

Xenia 
Orange mead. I'd never tried this so my taste note is 'Not sure if like?' then I saw the alcohol percentage and understood why it was hard to tell.
I was concerned about it not clearing but it's cleared beautifully. Pecto enzym magic. Of course, I lost a liter of volume from all the pulp. Ah well. 
SG: 1020 (happy!)
21% ¿¡!? alcohol. Whoa. 
Added yeast stop, a small piece of cinnamon and a single clove.

Bottles!

Quite Windy (needs some time)
sg 1040 
Alcohol 15%

Tuve (yum)

sg 1044 
Alcohol 19%

Lisidh (Eh)
sg 1022 
Alcohol 16%

Shattered Spankerboom   (Don't open before 2016)
sg 1012 
Alcohol 16%
This does NOT want to calm down. Added yeast stopper last year, but the moment I racked it it was fizz city. Also pretty dry and sourish sadly.  Added a small amount of sage honey and bottled in champagne bottles. Should probably leave it at least a year and hope the sour note ages out. 

Jove Apple (Nice)

SG 1040
Alcohol 18%

Ehle Chocolate Vanilla (Nice. Could do with some time)

SG 1024
Alcohol 17%

Ehle Chocolate (Yum yum yum)

SG 1032
Alcohol 18%


And a surprise of the happy accident kind:

Bob Ross 
I made a 200ml bottle of honey syrup at some stage to mix honey into something. Forgot about it and it started to ferment. Needed the bottle and was about to chuck it when I smelled it and - well I would have been happy to smell that from a demijohn. Wild yeast though! It tastes like honey syrup with a very sharp kick.
SG 1170 (!!)
Alcohol 17% 
Put it in a different bottle and added a very small amount of port yeast. Let's see where this goes :-)