Accidental Sour Mead

[chippermonky]

I made this tiny batch about an year ago when I first started homebrewing and just finished reading Wild Fermentation and was getting real experimental. It's a naturally fermented mead w/ spices. I used a wide mouth vessel with some cheese cloth over it. Needless to say (unless you're me one year ago) it went pretty sour in a Kombucha sorta way. I thought it was pretty undrinkable then (I think it had some funk to it and the sourness was weird) so I threw it in a colt45 bottle and forgot it in my fridge. Cleaning it out today, I gave it a try and it is the most AMAZING thing I've made to date. It's wonderfully effervescent, has a delightful smell. It has an incredibly crisp and delightful bite. The spices and OB honey flavor pair really well with the acidity. Even my friend who barely drinks and only eats like 5 different foods liked it. Comparable to Lindemans Framboise lambic but more smooth (and better). I smell like saffron now too.

Here are my sparse notes on this one:

-I think I used some of my ginger bug that was sitting around unfed for a very long time
-orange blossom honey, water, 1:5 ratio approx. 1/2 gallon total
-cinnamon, star anise, cloves, saffron threads

I'm also almost certain I put a bag of green tea in this as well. According to my notes, this fermented for one month and was bottled. I opened it two weeks later and it foamed all over the place. I think if I were to try this again (which I definitely will), I'd air lock it after 1 month to halt the acetic acid production but finish the ferment and then bottle with sugar to carbonate.

 

[Bearmaul]

Sounds awesome. I enjoy a good sour ale from time to time. I never even thought about a sour mead... it definitely sounds like it'd need some serious age to smooth things out a bit though.

 

[MarshmallowBlue]

I'm in the middle of an on purpose sour mead. You can read up on it https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f30/storm-lambic-mead-410764/ here. You can also post whatever sour mead de-railage you want!

 

[chippermonky]

So I just had to go make another gallon before I visit my parents next week. Changed the recipe slightly:

:13AL wild sour mead
-contents
-about 500 ml OB honey
-5-10 cloves
-10-20 saffron threads
-about 1 tbsp of brown rice green tea (fancy stuff from nijiya) steeped in hot water (liquid only).
-1/2 cup ish of 13AH as a starter.
-timeline
-08/23/13 primary started, wide mouth vessel with cloth cover.

13 AH is a wild kombucha that I started 2 weeks ago. It has a grapefruit peel itself as a starter. It's slightly sour and slightly sweet at the moment. No formation of a mother yet. Also can not taste any alcohol. I have no idea if its brett, acetobacter or lactobacillus that's making it sour . My notes say I used a ginger bug (ginger + white sugar wild culture) as a starter so I figure the kombucha would be similar. I don't want to start without a starter because I always get mold on ones that are exposed to air... I probably will still get mold since I didn't use that much starter and it's just barely acidic though. I may try another batch using more acidic kombucha as a starter to see the flavor difference and hopefully ameliorate the mold problem .

Hey Marshmellow. I'm all for mutual deraillage .

 

[theciderkid]

Bottle of colt 45???

 

[chippermonky]

Bottle of colt 45???

That was the classiest bottle I had laying around.