cbulman

Recipes 

Penguinetti

Recipes 

This is something i definitely plan on doing for my daughter's 21st (she'll be born in May), although if it's possible I'd prefer to make a medium, rather than a sweet, mead. Would this just be as simple as cold-crashing it / bottling it sooner, along with a little less honey?

Hazroth

Recipes 

Longer aging requires a low ph and higher alcohol content for sustainability along with cold storage and limited light. Remember this has a long time for the flavors to mull together, therefore taste test a lot!

Cheers!

fatbloke

Recipes 

Not necessarily. Some of the older vineyards of France make their products so they've still got an appropriate level of alcohol (12 to 14% ABV), but are fermented dry, with high levels of tannins (tricks like fermenting on the pulp and then just punching down the cap and leaving it to finish until the skins etc sink to the bottom, before draining off the wine and pressing the skins). They keep their products ageing in wine cellars that aren't at room temperature but certainly aren't refrigerated - in the low to mid 50's F.

They've ended up with wines that are a number of decades old i.e. 20, 30 and sometimes longer.

Hence something like a sack mead with added tannin would probably be successful in a project like this......

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"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away". Tom Waits.

Oh, and here's some blog stuff!

Penguinetti

Recipes 

Wait a minute...

are you saying mead can go bad during the ageing process?

USMCMatt

Recipes 

Yeah can we get a better explanation of your starter? And what's the total batch size?

discgolfin

Recipes 

Well it wasnt a 21 year mead..but my berry melomel is around 18.5% abv. It was 21# honey and 18# fruit. Was drinking it at 3 months...sure it will get better with age but Its darn good now.

The dark fruit tannins and hi abv should let this age nice for a long time.

Jay

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Primary: DFH 60 IPA
Secondaty: Blond Ale, Apfelwine, Crandaddy mead
Bottle: Blue moon clone,Kolsch, Eds House Ale, Barley wine, Stone IPA, Oatmeal stout, Hefe,

Drinking: 60 minute IPA, Honkers Ale, Wheat, cherry wheat, Appfelwine,

On Deck: Imperial Stout,

Hazroth

Recipes 

So what was the consensus? What did you guys go with?

LightningInABottle

Recipes 

I've bottled 2 batches I started during my sons birth year 2009. The first was a 18% blueberry blossom mead the second a 17.5% blueberry mead. One of the bottles of the blueberry blossom mead that I gave away was reported as bad. I'm not sure what happened but it could have been the recycled wine bottles I used or bottling equipment was contaminated. So I bought all new bottling equipment and new bottles from the brewing store before I bottled the blueberry mead. Hopefully these will not go bad. I will have to keep testing the blossom mead just to see if it was a one off bottling mistake.

I have 2 more meads I started that year in carboys. The cyser is stalled and I plan on mixing it with cider this fall. The carmel apple mead has been ready to bottle for some time, but I don't need the carboy for anything so I have been letting it sit. Eventually I will get around to bottling it, but having a toddler is time consuming.

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