Show us your Mead in a photo!!!

CV Bochet ready for bulk aging and clearing

After a traditional and a cherry mel, here is my jaom must cooling off before I pitch the yeast.

Just bottled this today! i'm quite proud. Black and blueberry, aged with oak. It's delicious right now. cant wait to try it after a year!

Watermelon Melomel

10 Lbs Clover Honey
2 Lbs Orange Blossom Honey
4 Gallons Spring Water
1 Gallon Juiced Watermelon
EC-1118

10 days initial fermentation
Just racked today into carboy

Really beautiful color and amazing taste incredibly aromatic.

Kiwi mead, blackberry mead, blackberry wine, white grape & raspberry wine, raspberry mead, and brown sugar cyser.

Here is my Bochet bottled today. Made with cold steeped Rasperry Zinger herbal tea.

With Flash



Without Flash

Bottled the rest of my black and blue today. Here are the results.

My first mead, clover honey, blood orange, and raspberries. Pictured after 1st racking and top off.

Cysers and strawberry melomel!

Not my mead, but I was at a homebrew club meeting tonight, and one of the members brought the blackberry mead he made for his daughter's wedding when she was five...in 1982. This piece of art is thirty years old. The picture does it no justice, as it was taken with my cell phone, but I had to share. I am blown away at how smooth it was. He said it is 16% at least, and it tasted like it just came out of the comb.

He also had a bottle each of an eight year old cranberry melomel and a five year old pyment he made. No pictures of those, but they were out of this world, too. I felt so honored to be allowed to try something thirty years in the making.

@MasterJeem,

How do you do your labels? Very nice.

bk0 said:

@MasterJeem,

How do you do your labels? Very nice.

Click to expand...

i'm not sure if i'm allowed to post these links or not, but i just buy this paper, which is incredibly cheap and have my buddy print them out on his label paper. i made the label on photoshop. the dragon, if you dont know, is actually the "skyrim" symbol and i made it blue, added some text and viola. anyways, here's the paper:

http://www.ruffledhomebrewing.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=171

attached is the prototype for my next lemon/lime batch

MasterJeem said:

i'm not sure if i'm allowed to post these links or not, but i just buy this paper, which is incredibly cheap and have my buddy print them out on his label paper. i made the label on photoshop. the dragon, if you dont know, is actually the "skyrim" symbol and i made it blue, added some text and viola. anyways, here's the paper:

http://www.ruffledhomebrewing.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=171

attached is the prototype for my next lemon/lime batch

Click to expand...

Thank you for posting that. I've been looking at different label/cling paper options and they all are very expensive...that paper looks perfect!

Very cool logo.

why thank you, sir! the paper is some really good stuff. so far, the best way to apply is to get a spray bottle and fill with water, mist the back and stick it to the bottle. best part is, when you go to reuse the bottles, just dunk them in water and the label falls right off. i would imagine that you wouldn't want to put your mead in an ice filled cooler because of this. also, if you print them out on your ink-jet at home, the colors will run when you spray the back because its not waterproof. luckily i have a friend that works at a place with a laser printer that lets him print whatever he wants. if you dont have access to one of these, i'm sure you could take it to staples or kinkos and they'll print it for you. i was able to get 5 3x5 labels printed per sheet of paper. so i guess for 7.99 i'll be getting 90 bottles labeled. not bad considering how nice they turned out. i've gotten a lot of compliments.

A couple pics of what's aging right now, a cherry vanilla melomel and a better picture of this years leap day bochet.

The bochet amazes me every time I sample it, how much it is mellowing already, much faster than I expected. As with any bochet it is going to need to age probably at least a year (or four ) until it reaches its potential but it is already becoming surprisingly smooth, maybe the oaking helped, and the chocolate is now coming on big time at the finish, very nice.

The cherry vanilla we did on valentines day is decent, however it was our first melomel and we only added cherries in primary, gave great color, but aroma and flavor is minimal, maybe with more aging some more may come out. It has a hint of sweetness and cherry tartness which is perfect for my tastes. As the first attempt its still real nice for a one gallon "learn to make melomel" experience.

Well it time to get some pictures up.

this is my current projects. Two 20 liter batches and a 10 liter batch.



then we have one i just bottled. It says "philosophi mead" (translated from Swedish)

To borrow a phrase from the boy, I'm stoked about my first mead attempts.

Left
3 lbs Orange Blossom Honey - slightly warmed to loosen honey in jars
Tap Water - tastes good for the beer, should be good for the mead
1 Navel Orange - sliced in 8ths with the rind
30 Raisins
1 Cinnamon stick
1 Clove
1 Fleishmann's Bread Yeast - should finish sweet
Pitched at 75 degrees
Took off like a jet.

Right
3 lbs Clover Honey - slightly warmed to loosen honey in jars
Tap Water - tastes good for the beer, should be good for the mead
1 Navel Orange - sliced in 8ths without the rind
30 Raisins
Pinch of ground Cinnamon
1 Clove
1 Lalvin D47 Yeast - should finish dry, may need to back sweeten
Pinch of Yeast Nutrient (maybe need more)
Pitched at 78 degrees
Taking its time.
Needed to anchor the cork at the start. Too much Star San.

Found someone with a bunch of 1 Gal jugs on craigslist. Now I just need to buy more stoppers.

urbanmyth said:

Not my mead, but I was at a homebrew club meeting tonight, and one of the members brought the blackberry mead he made for his daughter's wedding when she was five...in 1982. This piece of art is thirty years old. The picture does it no justice, as it was taken with my cell phone, but I had to share. I am blown away at how smooth it was. He said it is 16% at least, and it tasted like it just came out of the comb.

He also had a bottle each of an eight year old cranberry melomel and a five year old pyment he made. No pictures of those, but they were out of this world, too. I felt so honored to be allowed to try something thirty years in the making.

Click to expand...

What an awesome story. I don't even want to wait 3 months to drink my mead, that guy has some incredible patience. Thanks for sharing.

Best part about bottling day?

The left overs!!

Image 1- glass of jalapeño raspberry mead leftovers

Image 2- bottle of said jalapeño raspberry mead

Image 3- bottle of vanilla metheglin

Dandelion ginger mead.

My Strawberry/Kiwi mead clocking in at 19.4% it'll be diluted slightly to get 1 gal with more honey.

oooooooo purdy!

I just bottled the result of an experiment. I used the same batch size, same yeast but different types of honey. Since I'm rather new to meadmaking, the idea was to find out how much the honey influences the result.
Also, it was interesting to see how the flavour changed during the fermentation process.

Wow very fun honey choices. Never even seen eucalyptus honey befor. Or ever tried lime honey. Guess you can put bees by any grove of flowering whatever and get some funky honeys.

I hung out with some funky honeys once. Penicilin really IS the miracle of the 20th century.

Ok, all kidding aside. All these meads look fantastic. Well done, all!

Joes ancient orange mead.

gilliam said:

I just bottled the result of an experiment. I used the same batch size, same yeast but different types of honey. Since I'm rather new to meadmaking, the idea was to find out how much the honey influences the result.
Also, it was interesting to see how the flavour changed during the fermentation process.

Click to expand...

Cool, I'm doing an experiment between bread yeast and Wyeast sweet mead yeast at the moment.

gilliam said:

I just bottled the result of an experiment. I used the same batch size, same yeast but different types of honey. Since I'm rather new to meadmaking, the idea was to find out how much the honey influences the result.
Also, it was interesting to see how the flavour changed during the fermentation process.

Click to expand...

Very nice! So, how do they taste.....

My JOAM just before bottling.

BobJ said:

Very nice! So, how do they taste.....

Click to expand...

The yeast in question was Wyeast Sweet Mead Yeast. I can only confirm what many others already stated - it's high maintenance.

Both batches ended around 0.996 after fermentation.

The eucalyptus honey had a mild taste from the start, so the result was a rather dry mead with a slight sweetness in the aftertaste. Not bad.

The lime honey was *very* sour and it almost tasted like lime juice and sugar. I thought this would be a complete disaster.
The end result was not what I expected. There is still a hint of the lime, but the experience was rather a freshness with a pleasant acidity. Something to be enjoyed during summer afternoons I think.

What is left of my recently bottled pumpkin chai spice mead, it was my first attempt at mead, I just used fleishmanns active dry bread yeast in a 1 gallon carboy, very interesting taste, mildly sweet.

gilliam said:

The yeast in question was Wyeast Sweet Mead Yeast. I can only confirm what many others already stated - it's high maintenance.

Both batches ended around 0.996 after fermentation.

The eucalyptus honey had a mild taste from the start, so the result was a rather dry mead with a slight sweetness in the aftertaste. Not bad.

The lime honey was *very* sour and it almost tasted like lime juice and sugar. I thought this would be a complete disaster.
The end result was not what I expected. There is still a hint of the lime, but the experience was rather a freshness with a pleasant acidity. Something to be enjoyed during summer afternoons I think.

Click to expand...

I would like a recipe to your lime mead if you are willing to share

Strawberry/kiwi mead taste test. It passed

Here's 4. Jaom, Lemon, 5 Gallon Strawberry, Dark Cherry. To right is a 5 Gallon Grafs Cider.



(Grafs is tasting so good I have to tell myself NOT to take samples) If you haven't made one, I'd highly recommend it.

A cyser I made back at the end of 2011.

Bradinator said:

A cyser I made back at the end of 2012.

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The cyser from the future!! how did you do that? Can I use your time machine

DisturbdChemist said:

<img src="https://www.homebrewtalk.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=61189"/>

Strawberry/kiwi mead taste test. It passed

Click to expand...

Sounds like a great combo.

DisturbdChemist said:

The cyser from the future!! how did you do that? Can I use your time machine

Click to expand...

Well, if you didn't already know, I saved the world from ending at the end of 2012 and took a time machine back with a glass of celebratory Cyser, which just happens to be the same Cyser I saved the world with

Let me fixed that typo...

Cranberry Braggot........Technically its at least half mead

MrOrange said:

Cranberry Braggot........Technically its at least half mead

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It looks tasty as all get-out.