Macachinilla (Macadamia, mochachino, vanilla)

This is my first post
I have only a couple of brew under my belt. Thought I'd give a brief brewlog of my next mead adventure as I've been reading others and found them useful.
Although only a noob, i have been reading the forums a lot and asking endless questions to a friend of mine who is a wine maker (specialising in Pinot Noir), I feel I have a reasonable grasp on the subject. Please do correct any mistakes that I make or any other advice is very welcome.

I was inspired by summersolstice's 'German chocolate coffee mead' so thought I'd have an attempt at a similar. I am tempted by a cocoa mead but don't really want to wait that long.

I can only find a macadamia chocolate coffee, but ground. Do you think being pre-gound will affect the flavour too much if I use it straight out of the bag? If not, I can only get normal coffee in bean form. Obviously bean is better and grind before use but I was figuring that the flavourings may soften the overall flavour a bit.

Like summersolstice I am making a traditional mead, will stabilise, backsweeten and then add the cold-brewed coffee. I'll then add either vanilla pod or vanilla extract made with vodka (yet to decide or make it).

I'm just making a tester batch so it is quite small, 5l (1.3gal).

I have mixed 1 kg of honey (nothing special, just what is in the supermarket, Australian) into the water up to approx 4 litres. Although I'm using EC-1118 which seems to be pretty hardy, my friend recommended easing the sugar content up, hence the 1 kg in the 4l. I also added 2.5g of energiser. I will add another 0.7kg honey over the next few days and get the volume up near 5l but leave enough space for the coffee to be added.
So far:

5/1/2011
1kg Honey
Water up to 4l
2.5g energiser
1.5g EC-118

I didn't take a hydro reading as I'm staggering the sugar addition, but will work it out with grams/volume.

I'm using a plastic sandwich bag as an airlock to collect the co2 to use as a blanket on a cyser (apple, raisen, cinnamon and vanilla) which I'm moving to secondary soon. Any thoughts on using this c02???

6/1/2011
Started seeing a few bubbles and maybe 1cm of krausen so added another 1.5 g of energiser, aerated and quickly took the lid off as loads of gas was produced. Probably 48 hrs in now and can see uniform bubbles rising throughout the bottle. Might add some honey tonight or tomorrow morn.

7/1/2011
Added about half of the remaining honey. I boiled a pan of water to clean the pan, emptied the water out and poured in a very small amout of bottled water, added the honey and warmed gently until it had dissolved and then pitched it. It frothed up quite a bit for a few seconds and then more when I aerated it. I'll add the rest f the honey tomorrow and then take a hydro reading as it will be close to the top of the bottle so I won't need to draw any out.

7/1/2011 (12 hours later)
I've added the rest of the honey (same method as before) and 0.5g of energiser, shook it up. I did it now because I have work tomorrow and it wouldn't get done until tomorrow night, I'll take the hydro reading then.
My first bag of c02 has deflated

Sounds like an interesting idea for a recipe...never thought about a coffee mead. You are correct that cocoa mead can take a while...I'm working on one now, and it has been in endless tertiary/bulk age status waiting to clear, but I'm actually almost ready to bottle after almost 18 months.

Your metric is throwing me off slightly, but it sounds like you have a relatively good ratio...I generally think of 3 lbs honey per 1 gal, and it looks like you have ~3.75 lbs in, as you mentioned, about 1.3 gal, so slightly higher than "average." EC 1118 should handle that without a problem.

I'd add some more nutrient soon...while you can follow the gravity drop to time additions, generally I find you can just add staggered nutrient additions at 1) time of brew, 2) just after start of active ferement, and then 3) a couple days later.

I think your coffee from ground will be just fine, although I agree fresh ground is always better, if you can get it.

I think it's interesting the way you're adding the honey in stages...I've done this with fermentable additions to beer, but never with mead. I usually wait until the initial fermentation is a day or two underway, then add the honey/brown sugar/molasses or whatever with a small amt of water. One thing I have noticed is that by adding the sugar later on in the ferment, it seems to carry much more flavor on to the final product compared to adding the same sugar in the initial brewing process. I'm not sure how much you will notice this with a mead, since all the fermentable is the same, but with a porter and late addition of molasses, for example, the difference was striking.

I wouldn't worry about blanketing your transfer to secondary with CO2, but it's an interesting concept to use ferment generated CO2 for this purpose...I'm sure if you tried it, nothing bad would happen, but again, not sure you'd really get any clear benefit.

8/1/2011 (day 3)
Added 0.5g of energiser, which makes it a total of 5g in approx 4.5l. I'll probably leave it there unless you guys have a recommendation to add more. Having put just under half of the honey in the last 2 days I presume I'm still a way off the 1/3 mark. Not taken a hydro reading yet due to laziness and not feeling like its essential.

There are fairly constant small bubbles coming to the surface. Room temp is around 18-20C (64-68F) and its sitting on the cold floor tiles. I'm more than happy it being reasonably cold, my wine maker friend said that colder, longer ferment will keep/extract more flavours from the must.

I've been thieving a pippet of must when I've added things and it tastes delicious. Still obviously quite sweet but with a bit of alcohol in there. Going on how good this tastes now, I think I'll probably do a traditional mead next (will wait see how this turns out though).

Biochemedic
It should be about 24% sugar and so about 13% alcohol after racking and making it up with the coffee.
Yes, approx 3.7lbs in 1.19gall at the moment but will be 1.32gal after the coffee addition.
Your comment on the flavours carrying through more with staggered sugar addition has piqued my interest. I think this will be my next experiment: 2 1gal trad mead, 1 with all the honey added at the beginning, the other with staggered over a number of days (possibly 14?). And see the difference. If I can be bothered and have the money, I would do a third which would be basically the same as the current one, with honey added over only a few days to see it the extra effort is warranted.

The c02 idea was to avoid any possible contaminations/oxidisation rather than trying to achieve anything particularly special. I lost a 5l batch of coconut mead (I cracked about 15 coconuts and used the water) which was going really well and tasted great. It was basically done fermenting and I would have been very happy drinking it without any backsweetening (I usually prefer sweeter). I'm just waiting for coconuts to go on special offer again and I'll get another batch of this on the go. I was using a balloon with pin holes as the airlock and one day I noticed it had torn . It got me thinking as to the best way to prevent contaminations and this is where it lead me.
When i get round to posting pics it should make it more clear but basically, the airlock is a corner of a sandwich bag which has been elastic banded around the neck. I will snip off the corner and tighten in with a band and clip to seal it. When I want in, I can push a sanitised tube/pippet through this opening and inject/thieve and it will self seal as I remove it. So there will be no need to open it to the air at any time.

22/2/11
Racked to secondary with 3/4 cambden tab and 3g of sorb

My hydrometer broke and I havn't got a new one so I left it ages (also being a bit lazy)

I have 650ml left in the 5l bottle. I'll cold brew the coffee and add it in the next few days

25/2/11 (51 days)

Cold brewed 10 oz of Kona Macadamia chocolate coffee in 650ml water for 13 hrs, drainind it, pushed the grinds against the sieve and got 180ml of concentrate, added to the mead.

Added 100g of 'Winter honey'. I found a shop that has different varieties that I could taste. This one seemed most suitable for this mead. It has a kind of warm, heavy taste without being overly fruity. Hopefully it should be a fairly neutral addition.

I'll add a vanilla bean soon (when I get my ass in gear)

6/3/2011 (59days) (late entry)
1 vanilla bean added (split and scraped)

6/12/2011 (11 months)
It has been sitting under my bed for the past year and I thought I'd give it a try. I am a bit disapointed about how strong the coffee taste is. If I did it again I would use twice as much coffee. There was quite a strong alcohol taste to it which wasn't particularly nice. No idea if its fusel alcohols. The first sip was quite harsh, but subsequent where a little smoother. I will take a sample to my friend and see what he thinks.

I'm thinking of adding some ground coffee to it to increase the flavour. Maybe because I cold brewed the coffee that I put it before that it doesn't taste very strong. I may add a little more honey in the hope that it covers some of the harsh alcohol.

Anyone put ground coffee into secondary??? Any suggestions of how much to add?

Your metric is throwing me off slightly, but it sounds like you have a relatively good ratio...I generally think of 3 lbs honey per 1 gal, and it looks like you have ~3.75 lbs in, as you mentioned, about 1.3 gal, so slightly higher than "average." EC 1118 should handle that without a problem.

Click to expand...

1 Kg of honey is actually about 2.2 pounds. Since nearly everyone on the internet uses imperial (Since Americans have the most computers per capita in the world) I've kind of switched to imperial when it comes to mead making. Also, fongsong, regarding your post on "Advice pls: Adding coffee to secondary" the not enough coffee flavour maybe has something to do with the under average amount of honey? I know you didn't take SG's, but as far as you can taste, what does the ABV look like? Perhaps it didn't ferment enough for the mead to fuse properly with the coffee flavours?

Bugeaud
I added 1kg at first and then another 0.7kg (1.7kg total)
this comes to 3.74lbs (@2.2lbs/kg).

I think you may have missed the extra 0.7kg as it was in the text rather than the original list of ingredients

It actually tastes like there is too much alcohol No idea if it is just because its young or fusels or something else.

Thanks for your comment though