Vanilla metheglin

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seniorpaul

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After a few smaller batches of JOAM and other "quick" meads, I deceided to try a larger batch. I started with a base mead consisting to 15# honey (SAMs club), water to 5 gallons, and d47. Used the SNA's outlined in the sticky here.

After a month in the the primary, I split my batch so I'd have 1 gallon of plain mead (mainly for topping up future batches), 1 gallon with 2 tahetian vanilla beans, and 3 gallons with 4 bourbon vanilla beans.

I'm trying to deceide now how long I want to leave the vanilla beans in there. Will the flavor mellow or fade with aging? Or possibly intensify as is the case with a lot of other spices?

Thanks for any input.
 
Welcome to HBT!

That is a ton of beans for one gallon. My batch of vanilla mead had two beans for 3 gallon and that was a lot of vanilla. I left them on the beans for about a year. The vanilla aroma is still pretty amazing after 2 years but I expect it will continue to fade over time.
 
I made a 1 gallon batch with 2 tahitian beans. I kept the mead on the beans for about one month. I started with a gravity of 1.100 and used D-47, which took the mead dry which at first I wasn't thrilled with. The vanilla was nice and potent in both aroma and flavor, I just wished it would've been sweeter.

The dryness has grown on me, and also mixes great with some of my sweeter meads, a chocolate especially, which was way too sweet for my tastes (probably a result of a stuck fermentation due to poor management)

Making another vanilla mead is on my list, and was going to blend different varieties.
 
You might want to taste your meads soon.

In the past, I put 1 whole split Madagascar vanilla bean in 1 gallon of semi-sweet mead. The next day already, it was way too much vanilla taste. It was a mistake, but I use it for blending now.
 
Thanks for the replies. My batches have been on the beans for a little over a month now and I'm happy with the vanilla flavor. Since it sounds like the flavor will mellow over time, I'm planning to rack off the beans in the next few days and forget about these for a while. Thanks guys.
 
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