What I did for/with Mead today

[Hoppy2bmerry]

Checked gravity on dragon’s eye, and bottled a different mead for a competition entry.

 

[MightyMosin]

Racked my waterless mead. Lost about a gallon to the sludge at the bottom.

Opened a pinot noir pyment. Yummy.

 

[MightyMosin]

Racked 3 gallons of my v2 of Marshmallow Bochet... not bad but I liked v1 better. V3 is in a barrel now.

Racked and stabilized~6.125 gallon Gewurztraminer pyment off of sediment into carboy. Now to let it sit and clear. If it isn't otherwise occupied, It might go into the 6 gallon stainless keg.

Checked the horchata inspired mead... It might have stopped a bit earlier than I wanted at 1.038. I'll be lightly swirling the yeast into suspension and hoping I might get another 8 points shaved off of that gravity over a couple weeks.

4 carboys have been cleaned up from the racking process and need to get put away... the spose and I both want the dining room back as a dining room and not the mead making overflow space.

 

[MightyMosin]

Bottled 750ml waterless berry mead for County Fair home wine making contest.

Bottled another 375ml of same for friends to taste tomorrow.

Opened a 375ml Cabernet Sauvignon pyment to drink with the spouse tonight.

Really enjoy the pyment style.

 

[Dave_E]

Read the forum for awhile, posted an update on my first mead batch. Checked the carboys (like I do just about everyday)

 

[CKuhns]

One of my sons (he is 38) and some friends killed my last keg. A newly kegged (2 months) 5 gallon cran-blackberry session melomel this past weekend. Ordered more yeast and Fermaid-O on Wed, Arriving today. Will be putting together another 10 gallons or so today. Thinking of doing two 5 gallon batches a coffeemel / acerglyn and a pink lemonade. (Both session meads at roughly 9% to go into a couple kegs)

Organizing my Mead "closet" 419 (beer) bottles at 12.5 to 16% ABV in the cellar.

Dreaming of doing a chocolate desert bouchet 14 - 15%. Will need to age for a few years.
For those of you that have good mead at 2 to 4 months in 2 to 4 years they will be amazing.

Consider this. (Just my opinion)
- Melomels and Acerglyns kind of peak at 2 to 3 years. They dont degrade past that but dont get appreciably better either. Could be my palat juat isnt refined enough to notice.
- Traditionals, JOAM, and Bouchets tend to just keep getting better the longer you let them go. I have had some I seriously considered dumping or blending off at 6 months but at 5 years were great! Just opened an 8 year old traditional Bakers Honey at 13.5 ABV, oaked and ballanced with citric acid in secondary that wss just ok at 12 months but couldnt be happier with it now.

 

[Ren06]

Just added 5 lbs of mangoes to my dragon fruit mead.

 

[MightyMosin]

Dropped off some meads for the State homebrew contest and bottled up some for the County Fair home winemaking contest.

Cleaned a 6 gallon keg, racked gewurztraminer pyment into the keg to sit and age for a bit.

Racked my next xmas mead.

Racked my Horchata inspired mead.

 

[MightyMosin]

Racked (3) one gallon carrot blossom traditional meads.

These started off as a single 3.75 gallon batch with yeast pitched and then divided into (3) 1.25 gallon batches. This is an experiment based on nutrients. Two of the batches got nutrients based on TOSNA 3.0 but one of these was front loaded with all the nutrients. The third gallon used the Travis Blount-Elliot's schedule as calculated via the MeadMakr web site.

The TOSNA batches have the same clarity while the other is cloudier and it had a less compacted lees sediment.

Taste tests will be done soon and I'll likely make this its own post at that time.

 

[MightyMosin]

Dropped off three meads for County Home Wine contest. This is in addition to the ones I sent to the State contest.

Hoping I do well and get back some good tasting notes.

 

[Ren06]

Just racked backsweetened and clarified 6 gallons traditional mead.

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

I started harvesting honeysuckle blossoms for mead yesterday I think I’ll have enough for a full gallon this year.

 

[Ren06]

Just added another 6lbs of dragon fruit to my dragonfruit mango melomel

 

[Lampy]

Placed 1 gallon of mead in the fridge to crash before racking to secondary. I mostly brew beer - can some of you experts critique my mead process? My notes for this batch are as follows:
• 3/8 Made tea w/ 2 black tea bags. Dissolved 2.5lb honey in water to 1gal. 1tbsp bottled lemon juice. ½tsp nutrient. 18.2%Brix/1.075 OG
• 5/29 1.034/8.6% Brix. Still tastes sweet.
• 6/4 1.032/8% Brix. Still sweet.
• 6/9 1.031/7.8% Brix. Still sweet.
• 6/17 1.029/7.4% Brix. Boozy.
• 6/29 1.028/7.2% Brix. Boozy. Placed in fridge.

 

[Rish]

Racked 2 x 1 gallon jugs of strawberry jam mead and added Campden. These were split into separate jugs after being made in the same fv. The 1st gallon was very clear and had almost no lees. The 2nd (l) had lots of stuff from the bottom of the fv and eventually ended up with nearly an inch of compacted lees. I just let them set for 13 months before racking today. They both taste good (though no really noticeable strawberry) but the sur lie jug was smoother and slightly sweeter than the other. I like it a lot and won't backsweeten but I probably will the other. I'll bottle in a couple of days.

 

[MightyMosin]

Attended a home mead making demonstration at the tasting room of Superstition Meadery. The production manager ran through the basics for those in attendance.
By coincidence I was in town, so I opted to purchase a ticket to it. I can't say I learned much, but I'm not sorry for attending.

 

[MightyMosin]

Tasting a Superstition Aphrodesia batch 28 pyment.

If you want to know how a sweet-ish Concord grape pyment might taste, this is it.

IMO it is too sweet and a wine grape should be used in a pyment... my opinion, of course.

 

[MightyMosin]

I bottled (2) 5 gallon blueberry pyments that I started in November. One used apple juice from Sprouts and the other is apple cider from Sprouts. These are carbonated at about 2.8 volume.

Will need to check notes on back sweeten amounts. I think they were the same. The cider one is sweeter than the juice one. **update**: finished at and sweetened to same gravity.

Putting the keg in a bucket and packing ice around it makes a huge difference in keeping foam down with the bottling gun.

 

[Ren06]

Backsweetened, added acid ~15 gallons of grape hydromel today. Tomorrow bottling up ~3.5 gal of cranberry orange mead.

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

Moved Dragon’s Eye to secondary and packaged one bottle to bring to a club meeting (bottom of the bucket picked up some lees) in the fridge clearing for Monday. It tastes fairly good but might need some tannins. I’m thinking a little matcha tea could be nice.

 

[Kyzaboy89]

Started Gen 2 of Solera Bochet, threw it together real quick and getting things rolling on round 2.

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

Local mead judge sampled the dragon’s eye mead and thought it was very lychee forward. I asked if he thought tannins were needed. I haven’t yet added any finishing honey, perhaps that was the character he was searching for. Also, we had tasted 6 different commercial meads so palette fatigue was in play as well.

 

[Rish]

I bottled a couple of gallons of strawberry jam mead a while back and had a good bit of lees that got stirred up since I did one gallon sur lie. I cold crashed what I had left for a week. Filtered it today and recovered 600 ml, so celebrated with a little taste. I like it!

 

[007]

Started 6.5 gallons Honey Mead.

 

[MightyMosin]

I may do more, but for now I have racked 3 gallons of a Cucumber Session into a keg and the 3 gallon carboy is on the washer right now with PBW. I'm still slightly surprised how much Cucumber aroma is in the transfer tubing after that racking... the tubing has been cleaned and is sitting in StarSan.

I also ran my homemade quick carb unit with hot PBW for ~ 40 minutes, rinsed for another 20-ish minutes and its now flushing with sanitizer. I may quick carb that Cucumber mead this weekend, though its not likely to get bottled... but it would be nice to get the ~32 bottles done this weekend.

Racked 3 gallons of my Horchata inspired mead off what has settled to a clean carboy.

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

Mixing my honeysuckle tea (finally) with raw wildflower honey, and getting yeast rehydrated to pitch today. Last year my honeysuckle bloomed again in the fall. I may harvest them and dry them for an addition to secondary to boost the floral character which faded quickly in last years batch.

 

[Ren06]

Racked my coffeemel and also spiced cyser. Then added a few more blueberries to my grape melomel aka pyment.

The coffeemel and the spiced cyser are tasting PHENOMENAL too

 

[MightyMosin]

Rinsed out a barrel that previously held tequila. Racked a Gewurztraminer pyment into it.

 

[MightyMosin]

For this week I started 2 five gallon batches of a session mead using Lutra Kviek. I let it ferment in the garage and it took all of ~2.5 days to ferment dry. One of these batches is using L-Phenylanine; other than that they are identical batches. I even divided the yeast up so that there wasn't a lot# difference between the batches.

Both batches have been racked and stabilized. A day after the racking and stabilizing the remaining yeast settled out and was racked again and then back sweetened. It has been in the refrigerator for ~ 2days. If I have the time today, it will be transferred to kegs and then I will quick carb them.

I'm curious to see if the L-Phenylanine batch will have a more honey pronounced flavor.

 

[007]

Racked 6.25 gallons to secondary for clarification.

 

[SoberEwe]

This week I started my very first batches. Left will be a sweet mead, green tag will be semi to dry I think.
Recipe yielded 1 1/2 gallons, green tag water was added to make a full gallon. Last night, left hardly had any noticeable activity, so more yeast was added. This morning, steady activity. Looking forward to seeing the fruits of my efforts with these.

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

Packaged 2 tall necks of the dragon’s eye for a competition and shipped it today.

 

[JimRausch]

Busy Mead day for me:
1. Bottled a1G Acerglyn started back in March.
2. Started a 1 G Peach Melomel
3. Went to my LHBS and bought a 1 gallon Cabernet kit, which I will eventually use to make a 2G Pyment.

 

[MightyMosin]

Sanitized(2) previously sanitized kegs.
Racking (2) five gallons of cold crashed session mead to kegs for carbonation.
CO2 on kegs in refrigerator.

and clean (2) 5 gallon carboys.

Racked about 2.75 gallon Pinot Noir pyment from oak barrel to carboy for bottling soon.
Filled that oak barrel with about 7.25 gallons of Cabernet Sauvignon pyment.

 

[MightyMosin]

Bottled about 2.5 gallons which yielded (25) 375ml of Pinot Noir pyment.
Cleaned carboy that held the pyment.

 

[Dan O]

Forgot to put this in here the other day. Went to my LHBS to get some fresh yeast so I can get back into the mead barrel. Got some Wyeast 1388 Belgian Strong Ale Yeast & some 71B.

 

[Ren06]

Kegged 2 gallons of grape blueberry, and bottled the rest . Also bottled 2gallons of my strawberry banana, and lastly bottled 1gallon of dragonfruit mango.

 

[MightyMosin]

About 1 year and 8 months from starting it, I a finally bottled my Buckwheat Orange Blossom (BOB) traditional. This was about 4.5 gallons that went into 750ml flip top bottles.

Bottled ~3.125 gallons of my Horchata mead. I ended up with (30) 375ml bottles... carboy cleanup is tomorrow and maybe racking another mead into a keg for carbonation.

 

[007]

Drank one bottle.

 

[MightyMosin]

Adding finings to my Christmas mead. It's had more than 6 months to drop stuff from suspension and its not up to my desired clarity level. I would have normally cold crashed it to get more to drop, but my mead refrigerator is occupied with two kegs carbonating and I feel the need to get this moving along.

I'll likely rack it through a 5 or 10 micron gravity filter in a few weeks and then decide if it needs any acid adjustments.