Happy Trails Turbo Mead – The Story thus Far
For a large variety of reasons and encouragement of a good friend, I decided to experiment with one of the so called ‘Turbo Yeasts’. I have always wanted to make mead so I decided that this would just the ticket. I have had mead that another one of the friends made in the past and it was just not good.
Since we have a lot of apples and crab apples growing here, I decided to use apple juice instead of water and make a cyser. The federal agricultural research station developed many varieties of apples. Many of these were never commercialized. One variety called Trail Apple-Crab was ready for harvesting when I got the itch.
I picked several large buckets of apples and put them through an ancient centrifugal juice extractor; seeds, peels and all. I boiled the juice (it WILL clear as this is how I make apple juice and when cleared it is as clear as the commercial apple juice you get in the store) and skimmed all the scum. I visited a local honey producer and bought a pail of honey.
Recipe:
7kg white honey
700ml white grape juice concentrate
1.5l white sugar
16.5l trail apple juice
1 pack of Liquor Quik turbo yeast
Note that no yeast nutrient was used. It is supposed to be in the packet. Also, I did not add bentonite.
August 21, 2011 - I gently heated some juice and added the honey and sugar. It was stirred until it was all dissolved. This was transferred to a primary fermenting vessel, added the grape concentrate and topped up with the rest of the apple juice. I measured the gravity and it was 1.150 with a potential 20% ABV. Very sweet and almost syrup like.
August 22, 2011 – Noticed a slight yeasty smell and some bubbles forming. The yeast appears to be waking up and smelling the sugar.
August 23 -> 28, 2011 – What I called near explosive fermentation was in action. The yeast packet said to stir the batch every day. When I did this, it foamed up like a warm root beer.
August 31, 2011 – Aggressive fermentation seems to have subsided. Tested the gravity and it was now 1.076 with a potential ABV of about 10%.
September 4, 2011 – Fermentation has slowed considerably. I measured gravity to be 1.068. So I figured, now is the time to rack into a carbouy. The taste was complex, very yeasty of course and sweet. As it stands now, it would make a damn fine winter drink. Heat it up with a clove, cinnamon stick, maybe an allspice berry and stiff shot of rum. Serve outside in your shorts when it is -35c.
September 13, 2011 – It is still slowly fermenting as evidenced by the air lock. The gravity is now 1.060. It is very cloudy. I am confident that I can get it to be crystal clear with some finings and mechanical filter but I am not worried about that or even bothered that it might not clear.
So, that is the story thus far. I am not sure how long I will let it ferment. At some point I will be happy to have a strong mead that is sweet. If it gets to 15% in a reasonable amount of time, I will stop it and go onto preparing it for bottling.
This is my first post to this forum which I stumbled upon just the other day. I will update this as time goes by.
For a large variety of reasons and encouragement of a good friend, I decided to experiment with one of the so called ‘Turbo Yeasts’. I have always wanted to make mead so I decided that this would just the ticket. I have had mead that another one of the friends made in the past and it was just not good.
Since we have a lot of apples and crab apples growing here, I decided to use apple juice instead of water and make a cyser. The federal agricultural research station developed many varieties of apples. Many of these were never commercialized. One variety called Trail Apple-Crab was ready for harvesting when I got the itch.
I picked several large buckets of apples and put them through an ancient centrifugal juice extractor; seeds, peels and all. I boiled the juice (it WILL clear as this is how I make apple juice and when cleared it is as clear as the commercial apple juice you get in the store) and skimmed all the scum. I visited a local honey producer and bought a pail of honey.
Recipe:
7kg white honey
700ml white grape juice concentrate
1.5l white sugar
16.5l trail apple juice
1 pack of Liquor Quik turbo yeast
Note that no yeast nutrient was used. It is supposed to be in the packet. Also, I did not add bentonite.
August 21, 2011 - I gently heated some juice and added the honey and sugar. It was stirred until it was all dissolved. This was transferred to a primary fermenting vessel, added the grape concentrate and topped up with the rest of the apple juice. I measured the gravity and it was 1.150 with a potential 20% ABV. Very sweet and almost syrup like.
August 22, 2011 – Noticed a slight yeasty smell and some bubbles forming. The yeast appears to be waking up and smelling the sugar.
August 23 -> 28, 2011 – What I called near explosive fermentation was in action. The yeast packet said to stir the batch every day. When I did this, it foamed up like a warm root beer.
August 31, 2011 – Aggressive fermentation seems to have subsided. Tested the gravity and it was now 1.076 with a potential ABV of about 10%.
September 4, 2011 – Fermentation has slowed considerably. I measured gravity to be 1.068. So I figured, now is the time to rack into a carbouy. The taste was complex, very yeasty of course and sweet. As it stands now, it would make a damn fine winter drink. Heat it up with a clove, cinnamon stick, maybe an allspice berry and stiff shot of rum. Serve outside in your shorts when it is -35c.
September 13, 2011 – It is still slowly fermenting as evidenced by the air lock. The gravity is now 1.060. It is very cloudy. I am confident that I can get it to be crystal clear with some finings and mechanical filter but I am not worried about that or even bothered that it might not clear.
So, that is the story thus far. I am not sure how long I will let it ferment. At some point I will be happy to have a strong mead that is sweet. If it gets to 15% in a reasonable amount of time, I will stop it and go onto preparing it for bottling.
This is my first post to this forum which I stumbled upon just the other day. I will update this as time goes by.