What I did for/with Mead today

[bushpilot]

Bottled a chokecherry melomel; re-racked, stabilized, and sweetened a chokecherry-cyser blend; and re-racked a dry traditional.

 

[Todd Peterson]

Racked a secondary into tertiary. Racked a primary into secondary. Was going to rack another secondary, but it's mid-cold crash. Perfectly clear above the middle line, fully opaque below.

Worked up the recipe for the next one. First foray into melomels. Will use 32oz not-from-concentrate, preservative-free blueberry juice as part of the water in my typical 1G batch. It's labeled as equivalent to 3lbs worth of fruit. Should be enough, eh?

I have used RW Knudsen pure blueberry juice with good success. They come in 32 ounce bottles.

I look forward to hearing how your blueberry melomel turns out.

Todd Peterson

 

[DBhomebrew]

I have used RW Knudsen pure blueberry juice with good success. They come in 32 ounce bottles.

I look forward to hearing how your blueberry melomel turns out.

Todd Peterson

Thanks. This is Lakewood juice. What sort of dosage do you use?

 

[Todd Peterson]

Thanks. This is Lakewood juice. What sort of dosage do you use?

I’ll check my notes and let you know. I think for my last batch, I replaced 2 gallons of water with juice. Flavor and color held up through fermentation.

Todd Peterson

 

[Todd Peterson]

DB, I checked my notes on the blueberry juice. I used 1.5 gallons in a 5.5 gallon batch. I also used some black currant juice as well. I think juice is a really clean way to get fruit essence into mead. That said, it does not seem to generate all of the qualities as using whole fruit in primary.

Much cleaner and lower maintenance though. Also, not subject to the seasonality and availability of whole fruit.

Todd Peterson

 

[Ren06]

Yesterday checked my sweet potato pie mead and also did a quick taste of my melomel with oak staves; and finally checked my cran raspberry session. Everything is moving along nicely

 

[Ren06]

Racked and bottled ~2gals coffeemel

 

[MightyMosin]

Yesterday checked my sweet potato pie mead and also did a quick taste of my melomel with oak staves; and finally checked my cran raspberry session. Everything is moving along nicely

Never done one of these. What is the basic process?

 

[Ren06]

Never done one of these. What is the basic process?

I’ll let you know when it’s done. Right now it’s experimental but I’m using what would make sense in my head when making my family recipe for the pies and apply that to the mead. I’ll show the final product and process minus the spices (), later on .

 

[MightyMosin]

Today I bottled 2.5 gallons of mesquite/buckwheat bochet... and I was reminded of why I hate bottling.

To be fair, the first (4) 375ml bottles went great and then it became *****.... which turned out to be a split in the tubing on my floating dip tube that was suddenly sending mostly CO2 instead of mead.



That split where it attached to the out tube caused me much grief. It sucked, but it is done.

Now to start on my new version of Marshmallow Bochet, which is difficult as bottling has sucked the life from me, but I need to make the teas tonight so I can actually work on it tomorrow.

 

[MightyMosin]

Cold steeping 7lb. of marshmallow root in 1 gallon of water and hot steeping about 1.5 cups of toasted cacao nibs in 1 gallon hot water. The cacao nibs were lightly pulsed in a coffee grinder to break them up a bit. The hot steeping will be for about 15 minutes or so unless it looks like they need more time.

The cold steep will be overnight with about 2g of K-Meta in the water to help deal with any wild yeast.

The Hot water will go into the refrigerator and in the morning I will scoop off the bits of fat floating at the top as best as I can get it... maybe it will make it into a 1gallon carboy with a spout and I'll empty from the bottom. I have to see if I have another carboy available to do that.

 

[RumOnTheDocks]

Finally got around to bottling and racking today, I've been putting it off for way too long.

Now with that being said I've bottled about 2 gallons of my acacia, wild ferment hydromel.
Racked 1 gallon of my pineapple experiment, not optimistic about it, but we'll see how it'll go.
And I've finally started cold crashing 4 gallons of my spiced, plum melomel.

 

[Dan O]

Which Competition are you entering?

I haven't even looked into it yet. Everyone that has tried my meads keeps prodding me to enter

 

[Ren06]

Bottled 7.5gallons of traditional fall mead

 

[Dan O]

Cold steeping 7lb. of marshmallow root in 1 gallon of water and hot steeping about 1.5 cups of toasted cacao nibs in 1 gallon hot water. The cacao nibs were lightly pulsed in a coffee grinder to break them up a bit. The hot steeping will be for about 15 minutes or so unless it looks like they need more time.

The cold steep will be overnight with about 2g of K-Meta in the water to help deal with any wild yeast.

The Hot water will go into the refrigerator and in the morning I will scoop off the bits of fat floating at the top as best as I can get it... maybe it will make it into a 1gallon carboy with a spout and I'll empty from the bottom. I have to see if I have another carboy available to do that.

View attachment 817817

View attachment 817818

Is there a particular reason you are cold steeping the marshmallow root & hot steeping the toasted cocoa nibs?
Also, are you going to use meadowfoam honey for this one?

 

[MightyMosin]

from what I have read,

Is there a particular reason you are cold steeping the marshmallow root & hot steeping the toasted cocoa nibs?
Also, are you going to use meadowfoam honey for this one?

from what I have read, the Marshmallow root can give off a bitter flavor when hot steeped.
The cacao nibs in hot water allows me to get some flavor and allows for the fats to mostly be skimmed off the top once cold.

 

[Dan O]

from what I have read,

from what I have read, the Marshmallow root can give off a bitter flavor when hot steeped.
The cacao nibs in hot water allows me to get some flavor and allows for the fats to mostly be skimmed off the top once cold.

Did not know either one of those.
The cocoa nibs I used in my chocolate/ cherry/ vanilla/ pomegranate mead gave a nice flavor, but, I think I didn't toast them long enough. Being that it was the first time using them, I was a little cautious about overdoing them.
80 grams @ 350°F for 3 or 5 minutes , I honestly forget. The house smelled great when I toasted them, but, I was looking for more of a dark chocolate flavor....a deeper chocolate if you will. Next time will be in a pan on the stovetop & my nose will be the judge of when they're done.

 

[MightyMosin]

Also, are you going to use meadowfoam honey for this one?

I will bochet a white clover, buckwheat and a bit of meadowfoam honey.
Most of the meadowfoam will not get caramelized and some will also be used to back sweeten.

 

[Todd Peterson]

I added medium toast oak cubes to a black currant and blueberry mead 3 weeks ago. Took a tasting sample for the first time today. Started this mead in early November.

The oak really rounded off the sharp, tart taste of the melomel. Probably going to rack to tertiary tonight or tomorrow along with K Meta and K Sorbate treatment with bottling to follow in a week or when I can get to it.

I am assuming that the oak taste will fade with age. While not off putting, the oak flavor is noticeable.

Todd Peterson

 

[Dan O]

I will bochet a white clover, buckwheat and a bit of meadowfoam honey.
Most of the meadowfoam will not get caramelized and some will also be used to back sweeten.

This sounds very interesting . I'll be watching for updates

 

[Rish]

Yesterday, tasted the strawberry jam mead I started 3 weeks ago. Sweet and hot of course but tasting like it has promise. Strawberry flavor is there but subtle.

 

[MightyMosin]

Racked Viognier pyment as well as Mesquite traditional, Pinot Noir pyment, Christmas mead... followed by the cleaning of the carboys. The brew buckets have been rinsed but will have to wait for PBW until tomorrow or another day.

Ah... the downside of doing so many different meads in short succession...

 

[MightyMosin]

I very carefully degassed my Marshmallow Bochet (only about 1/2 gallon headspace in bucket) and then I gave it more pure 02 and then fed it some nutrients.

It was at about 75F temp, so I sanitized some frozen water bottles and dropped them into the must and have swapped those out 2 times today. I now have the ferment temperature down to 62F and it should drop some more to ~58 or so.

Once there, I think the insulated bag with frozen bottles on the outside will keep it in the low 60's for the rest of the ferment. It's not a regulated temperature but it's brought it down nicely now that the yeast are off to the races.

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

Picked and plucked some dandelions. The last time I did this I didn’t know about putting them in boiling water. So this time I believe I will make mead.

 

[Ren06]

Racked 6gallons of Cranberry raspberry session and added raspberries. Also checked my sweet potato pie mead its sitting around 1.020 and actually tasting good even after almost 2 weeks.

I’ll wait another 2 weeks check gravity again and rack and do my secondary things.

 

[Dan O]

View attachment 818071View attachment 818072Picked and plucked some dandelions. The last time I did this I didn’t know about putting them in boiling water. So this time I believe I will make mead.

What about putting them in boiling water?

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

What about putting them in boiling water?

It stops the petals from developing into seeds which are not tasty. Even when saving up enough by freezing the seeds will develop, so even then use boiling water.

 

[Dan O]

It stops the petals from developing into seeds which are not tasty. Even when saving up enough by freezing the seeds will develop, so even then use boiling water.

Are you boiling them before you freeze them or once you pull them out to use them?

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

Are you boiling them before you freeze them or once you pull them out to use them?

Before, the seeds will develop even in the freezer.

 

[Dan O]

Before, the seeds will develop even in the freezer.

This, I did not realize. Do you keep the water you boil them in to use as your must? There's a lot of flavor in there....or, @ least it helped my 2 Dandelion meads. But, every day's a school day