What I did for/with Mead today

[Dan O]

I made a couple of experimental batches of Dandelion mead today. I'm trying different honeys & different yeasts to see what kind of flavor differences I can pull out of them.

Batch 1 has Dandelion tea, black tea, Lehua & wildflower blossom honey with BM 4×4 yeast, GoFerm, Fermaid O, Booster Blanc and Opti-white. SG 1.096

Batch 2 has Dandelion tea, black tea, Mamane Blossom honey with RC212 yeast, GoFerm, Fermaid O, Booster Blanc and Opti-white. SG 1.096

 

[MightyMosin]

I have bottled what I have left of my Viognier based Pyment. I really enjoy it and with all the tasting along the way, I managed to get (17) 750ml bottles done and corked. I have enough of the Viognier grape juice to do another 12 gallons and I'll likely get some more started soon-ish.

 

[Rish]

Racked the strawberry jam mead. Taste is pretty good. It's 14.3%, 1.010 and pretty hot right now. Hopefully time will improve it.

 

[Dan O]

I removed the cherry staves from my chocolate/ cherry/ vanilla/ pomegranate mead last night. DAMN! This stuff is smooooth! Goes perfect with the smoked baby back ribs & Boston butt roast.

 

[Ren06]

Never thought I would like a dry anything, but I’m sampling my mixed berry melomel after removing the 9lbs of fruit from my 19 gallons, and WOW!! The dryness is almost non existent and this 13.5% is subtle but it’s very delicious. Don’t worry it’s crystal clear in the fermenter. Gtta add Lemon peel and some more honey to balance the sour of the lemon.

 

[bushpilot]

Never thought I would like a dry anything, but I’m sampling my mixed berry melomel after removing the 9lbs of fruit from my 19 gallons, and WOW!! The dryness is almost non existent and this 13.5% is subtle but it’s very delicious. Don’t worry it’s crystal clear in the fermenter. Gtta add Lemon peel and some more honey to balance the sour of the lemon.View attachment 821333

I am finding that my style preference is definitely moving towards more dry than it used to be. It looks and sounds great!

 

[007]

Watch it ferment, more active than cider.

 

[Ren06]

My blackberry melomel I removed fruit, racked, and added another 4# of blackberries. Can’t wait till this is done.

 

[Ren06]

I am finding that my style preference is definitely moving towards more dry than it used to be. It looks and sounds great!

I’m not a dry palate but I can appreciate certain things when it’s done right.

 

[CKuhns]

Kegged 5 Gallons Pink Lemonade Session Mead (8.9 ABV) then bottled and pasteurized 4.5 gallons (or so) of a blueberry Melomel (1.014 FG at 14.8 ABV). Both crystal clear (KC Super Kleer, cold crash and time) Taste is very nice at bottling.

The Pink Lemonade session Mead is ready to drink and force carbonated. The Melomel although good will benefit from 6 months or so of additional age.

 

[007]

Added nutrients per the recipe, fermenting and fermenting.

 

[Liquid Gold]

I checked the gravity reading on my guava mead today and it showed 0.992... It's super dry, I may add honey. It started out as a basic mead O.G. 1.105 then F.G. 1.020. I added guava nectar and got a new O.G. of 1.045 then F.G. 0.992. Based on my calculations it's at about 18%, a happy accident!

 

[MightyMosin]

Checked my session strawberry mead and found that it had, once again, fermented through the back sweetening honey. This time it stopped at 1.004, so maybe it is done. I certainly need to recalculate the ABV but it won't be 6% anymore.
There was also some slight pellicle looking clouds in there.

I racked it all through a 50 micron filter onto more K-Mets and some more K-Sorbate and I'll check on it tomorrow. I actually started with a 5 micron filter but that wasn't gravity flowing and then switched to the 50 micron. With all the little strawberry seed bits, I'm not surprised that the 5 micron wasn't working... I hope to avoid these kind of mistaked more often in the future as I have wasted a 5 micron filter.

Back sweetened my Honey Crisp Session made with Raspberry Blossom. A nice semi-sweet session (about 1.110 SG).

Put CO2 on my Blueberry Cyser and Honey Crisp. I will hit them with the quick carb tomorrow when I have a bit more time.

I have also ran hot PBW through my home made quick carbonator and then ran clean hot water and sanitizer through it all so I can start to carb up something that I might try and serve on Saturday.

 

[T Murph]

I just saw this thread and it enticed me to have some mead. So, see ya I'm going to get some 3 yrs old mixed Berry melomel.

 

[007]

Racked 6+ gallons. 10.76% ABV

 

[MightyMosin]

I've just barely started the process of converting my various spreadsheets for mead calculations into an application for Mobile Apps... in theory this will be a clone of the Got Mead calculator, ABV calculator, Stabilization values, Pectic enzyme, Bentonite amounts, Sparkolloid amounts, Honey back sweetening, Scaling up of acids or other items up to batch sizes, Calories for batches, and CO2 pressure for specific atmosphere pressures.
Should probably plan on adding a blending calculator too.

This will likely be a long ongoing project, as time permits.

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

During the daylight hours, I harvested honeysuckle blossoms for a small batch of mead and took a sample of the dandelion, which tasted like wine, yet not particularly floral, though I’ve never tasted dandelion wine nor mead.

 

[Ren06]

Racked my Black Currant, Cherry, and Strawberry melomel ~ 5.50 gallons

 

[Dan O]

Racked my Black Currant, Cherry, and Strawberry melomel ~ 5.50 gallonsView attachment 822590

Love the color & the flavor combination sounds great, too.

 

[Ren06]

Love the color & the flavor combination sounds great, too.

Thank you! It’s perfectly blended together with the black currant being the main star. Very delicious and 13% abv will sneak up on you

 

[Dan O]

Planning stages, recipes tweaks & fruit prep for the peach bochet I will be doing within the month. I still have yet to decide which honey(s) I will be using for this, but the fruits will be yellow peaches, nectarines, white flesh peaches and dehydrated unsulfured apricots. There will also be vanilla beans & ceylon cinnamon. The batch will eventually be split to make up different flavor profiles. I can't wait!

In this picture, 8 lbs of organic yellow peaches & 8 lbs of organic nectarines.

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

Harvested more honeysuckle (easy work compared to dandelion) also picked mulberries I’m not sure that I’ll have enough to do much, but time will tell.

 

[Dan O]

I came away with about 6 1/2 lbs of each (organic peaches and nectarines) after removing the pits & cutting them into 8ths to freeze. There's 35 lbs of white flesh peaches in the freezer already. I have a funny feeling this may be a really tasty batch!

 

[Ren06]

Racked my Blackberry melomlel & backsweetened, then racked my Blackberry & Raspberry ( charred white oak stave) melomel. The Black &Red is EXCELLENT

 

[Ren06]

Planning stages, recipes tweaks & fruit prep for the peach bochet I will be doing within the month. I still have yet to decide which honey(s) I will be using for this, but the fruits will be yellow peaches, nectarines, white flesh peaches and dehydrated unsulfured apricots. There will also be vanilla beans & ceylon cinnamon. The batch will eventually be split to make up different flavor profiles. I can't wait!

In this picture, 8 lbs of organic yellow peaches & 8 lbs of organic nectarines.

That sounds amazing!! Loved to know how it turns out when all said an done

 

[MightyMosin]

Today I dumped 5 gallons of Strawberry mead. Some kind of protein fuzz set in. It looked a bit like tufts of cotton floating in there. Not sure what the cause of it, but my best guess is that some of the fruit was missed in the sanitizing.

I will usually do 1 part vinegar to 3 parts of water with a 15 minute soak after an initial good rinse. That is then left to dry and then chopped, bagged and frozen.

Some of the strawberries might have been from an earlier time prior to my diluted vinegar soak.

I'm a bit bummed about it, but I have a hydromel ready that can become a new batch.

 

[Dan O]

Today I dumped 5 gallons of Strawberry mead. Some kind of protein fuzz set in. It looked a bit like tufts of cotton floating in there. Not sure what the cause of it, but my best guess is that some of the fruit was missed in the sanitizing.

I will usually do 1 part vinegar to 3 parts of water with a 15 minute soak after an initial good rinse. That is then left to dry and then chopped, bagged and frozen.

Some of the strawberries might have been from an earlier time prior to my diluted vinegar soak.

I'm a bit bummed about it, but I have a hydromel ready that can become a new batch.

Always sad to hear about losses. Strawberries, being so expensive, is especially a bummer. Sorry for your loss.

 

[MightyMosin]

I'm lucky that we have a small field near us that grows the sweetest strawberries I've ever had and they sell us seconds at a steeply discounted rate. These are what I use.

 

[Dan O]

I'm lucky that we have a small field near us that grows the sweetest strawberries I've ever had and they sell us seconds at a steeply discounted rate. These are what I use.

Pick your own strawberries just opened this weekend @ several local farms to me. I'm going to inquire about whether they would consider doing the same.

 

[Ren06]

I just started growing my own strawberries this year so I’ll probably yeild some fruit next year to be used for meads

 

[MightyMosin]

I bottled 5 gallons of 12% Blueberry Cyser and about 4 gallons of my 5.5% Honey Crisp session. All carbonated.

Hurray for keg cleaners as they really make this so much easier.

Also found out that I got two Double Gold and a Silver in County fair wine contest.

 

[Kickass]

I finally got around to bottling my bochet and blueberry melomel. They’ve only been bulk aging for 1.5-2 years. Ha!

 

[Ren06]

Today I added 3 month rum soaked chips to my blackberry melomel . I’ll sample weekly to see when to remove them.

Also made a traditional bochet mead

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

I packaged some mead to give away, harvested more honeysuckle blossoms and got a small batch of that going last night. Pay no mind to any dust you see in the image.

 

[shetc]

Bottled my 1st 2 mead attempts: 1) a wildflower hydromel with some priming sugar for that pétillant kinda thing and 2) a semi-sweet tupelo standard mead.

 

[Dan O]

I put together a 2 gallon batch of Strawberry/ Raspberry/ Rose Hip last night.
OG of 1.100....rose hips & Ecuadorian tahitientis vanilla to be added after it gets racked to secondary.
Pretty stoked about this one

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

I’ve been harvesting mulberries I have a qt bag of them in the freezer, hoping for at least another qt before they’re done.

 

[Dan O]

I put together a 2 gallon batch of Strawberry/ Raspberry/ Rose Hip last night.
OG of 1.100....rose hips & Ecuadorian tahitientis vanilla to be added after it gets racked to secondary.
Pretty stoked about this one

It's alive!!

 

[Dan O]

It's alive!!

48 hours in, it went from 1.100- 1.016
Totally missed the opportunity for second feeding. Good thing is, I tasted it & absolutely no hot alcohol flavor

 

[Todd Peterson]

I have a 6 month old melomel that has been somewhat stubborn on the last bit of clarity.

I ran out of patience and treated with dual fine last night.

I’m amazed at the amount of material that has dropped out of suspension in less than 24 hours.

Hoping to bottle by 7/3.

Todd Peterson