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.
Bottlings
Plans!
Uh oh, I have joined a mead brewing discord and now I am full of ideas
- cacao mead. I've been meaning to make another one of these. Since it takes forever (though not as stupidly long since last time I did not backsweeten from the start) this will be the next 5 gallon batch. If I have to wait 2 years for a result I might as well make a lot of it.
- ...but I also want to make a cacao bochet. Wait I have done that. It's June? I think it's June. Which still isn't very cacaoish because the nibs just didn't work out well
- and a cacao with bengal spice, since the cacao aspect of Tai turned out so underwhelming
- heather honey! gotta so something with those 4 kg very fancy honey.
- buckwheat honey. It had such a wonderful molasses-syrupy flavour.
- hibiscus
On the go:
Yaffe (Lapsang souchon)
Never got a name so I guess it's stuck with this now Yaffe
Fermented dry. Definitely smokey! really cool. About ~15% alcohol
Sweetened to SG 1026
I feel like this will need an acid to counterbalance all the tannins and sweet, but haven't decided yet if I just want to do an additive or use lemon juice or something else.
Xanthe (Pine Tips Mead)
...still waiting on my dining room table to be racked. Suspect this will also need an acid.
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
new things!
Xanthe
100 gr scots pine tips
~1750 honey
port yeast
SG ~1100
Yaffe
50 gr lapsang souchon tea
~1750 honey
port yeast
SG ~1100
More mead ideas
I have dried pine tips that smell delicious and I think I'll make tea of that and then brew with it
I have dried hibiscus flowers
I am considering lapsang suchon tea mead
All Rise Up (Again) - update
I actually did the degassing and feeding for this batch in the first weeks! It's much less scary in a bucket with some headroom, if I do that in a carboy I get a fountain.
The batch has been ticking along and SG was at about 1008 this morning, which is definitely too dry and it's likely to still be fermenting a little. So after some calculations I caramellised another 2 kilo of honey and mixed it in - we're now at 1030. That's usually about where I like it, but we'll see how that turns out. If it ferments off a bit more it may need more backsweetening.
It can stay in the kitchen until I start tidying up before christmas, then hopefully it'll have dropped the worst of the lees and can go into the carboy
All Rise Up (Again)
All Rise Up (Again)
In january 2017 on the day before the US inauguration we dreaded, bestie Sess and I made a mead and called it All Rise Up. A quince bochet. It turned out a lot better than all the political stuff.
Now on the day before the 2020 US elections I am making that mead again. Maybe the yeasties will eat the stress and the dread and make something beautiful again.
5 gallons.
8 kilo well-caramellised cheap-ass Lidl honey
~16 liters quince juice, part from last year and part new
mead yeast.
It's going to be living in the bucket on my tiny kitchen counter for a week or two until it's dropped a good deal of its sediment (bochet has a lot). I made a little extra to account for the loss.
Whaitiri
Whaitiri (the personification of thunder)
A friend sent me a cheering care package from New Zealand and included a local tea, so I could brew with it. It was this tea with ginger, lemongrass and Kawakawa.
2 kilos honey
mead yeast
Mead plans
I always mentally plan new batches and then when it comes to actually starting things, I'll have forgotten all over again. So.
- 5 gallon with quince juice and caramellised honey. That quince bochet batch was a hit and I hope I can replicate it. I only have 10 liters of juice right now though. I either need to make up the difference with water, another juice, or I need to wait a couple of weeks for quinces to come into season and make another batch of juice.
- 2x a 10 liter batch with 2 kg plain honey and 2 kg of the heather honey
I could do this in the 5 gallon vessel but I have carelessly negative-pressured the airlock when I moved it, and I'm too scared to ruin this amazing honey
- a 5 liter batch with fig. Noon was nice but fermented slightly too dry, I think
- 5 liter plain for backsweetening with rosemary honey
- 5 liter plain for backsweetening with thyme honey
- 5 liter yuzu mead. I have a small amount of juice, and yuzu marmelade. The juice should go into primary (and then hope I can get the ferment started at all) and the marmelade later, in secondary, presumably. Or get some zest by that time.
Newly bottled:
I seriously need to make a new index list.
Uriel One - plain mead, semi-sweet
Uriel Two - Mead with lemon zest and fresh thyme
Ruby - blood orange. Semi-sweet
Tai - bengal spice and cacao. Dry-sweet
Seraph - date syrup mead. Dry-sweet
Paloma - raspberry mead. Champagne bottled. Maybe be fizzy in a while! May not, who knows, not me.
Vercopa
Apparently did not note this down so backdated
Vercopa - blackberry, 10 liter
uhhhhh don't really remember what I did here or how much juice went in. about 7 liters at a guess? Honey? who the fuck knows. Might be port yeast? Past me, you are useless.
Uriel
Uriel: SG 1018, alc ~15.
A little sharp/hot but good sweetness and probably just needs some time.
Uriel 1: bottled about 5 liters plain
Uriel 2: racked onto the apple, ginger and hibiscus tea (8 bags) - a proven flavour but this may need to clear all over again.
Uriel 3: Fresh thyme and lemon zest
Uriel 4: Orange zest and 6 teabags of rooibos-chai tea.
Ruby, Tai, Seraph
Ruby - SG 1016, ~16%
this turned pretty nice, on the dry side of sweet. Slightly orangey.
Ruby 1: I bottled half
Ruby 2: put the other half on orange zest and rosemary and will bottle that in a couple of days.
Tai - SG 1014, ~16%
again, dry side of sweet. The bengal spice comes through. Not sure about the cacao to be honest. Maybe it's overpowered. Bottled. I did two champagne bottles with some added honey just to see if that would happen.
Seraph - SG 1008
the date syrup mead. Mostly quite hot/alcoholic. Not bad but a little odd. Might need to mellow.
Paloma - raspberry. Bone dry: SG 1000
Bottled in champagne bottles with about a spoonful of honey each bottle. Either it becomes sweet mead or it becomes fizzy. Hopefully both.
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