A recent find...

Just a quick post this time. While wandering around some local shops I came across a lovely little item. The bottles on the right are probably only about 50ml each but I thought that it would make a great way of presenting some of my meads. Originally they had red ribbons around the necks and a felt love heart on the front of the crate but I removed these in lieu of a more vintage look.  I've decided that when I fill these I shall cork them and wax the tops. I really can't wait for the finished product!

Summer Batches

Well last weekend I spent at home and I've been looking to make a few drinks ready for the summer as there's nothing quite like a hot weekend in the sun lying back after a long week with a drink in your hand. I knew with the resources I have left that I could comfortably make 3 one gallon batches of various flavours. I decided that as I've not tried a cyser yet that this would be a good opportunity. Cider is a great summer drink with a load of ice so why not try a cyser. Gallon 2 would be a more citrusy brew. After wandering around the local fruit shops I settled with orange, pink grapefruit and ginger for this brew. Lastly I let my brother decide on gallon 3 coming up with the idea of raspberry and chili.

I began by brewing up the cyser. This is one that I would definitely repeat again and do slightly differently as I completely forgot when I was doing it that apple juice has sugar in it! As such I ended up mixing together 6 jars of honey and 4 liters of apple juice yielding an original gravity of 1.120... waaaaayyyy too high than what would have been more suitable especially considering I was aiming for a light refreshing drink at around 6%... It's just going to be really really sweet instead! The yeast and extra additions I shall describe at the end.

Secondly I got the capsicumel brewed. This one I asked my brother what he would prefer in terms of a flavour profile. He wanted a subtle chili flavour with most of the focus being about the raspberry. I added my usual amount of honey with 4 liters of water and mixed the lot together. Adding to this I used 10 tablespoons of raspberry syrup and 1 whole chili (I've forgotten the type but it was a just a standard one, nothing in league with Naga). On sampling the first flavour to get you was the chili which was then overwhelmed by the flavour of raspberry on the aftertaste. If this remains the same after fermentation I'll be very happy! The OG for this batch was 1.110.

Lastly is the citrus mead. I cut up 4 mandarin oranges, 1 pink grapefruit and a small stem of root ginger (approximately 50-100g) sliced fine. originally I added about a 3rd of the ginger and then ended up just adding the whole piece I bought as I felt it needed more. When I topped it up I added 3.5 liters of water and half a liter of orange juice. Everything went into the demijohn to make sure the flavour potential is maximised. The OG for this batch was 1.110

Once all three had been added to their demijohns and they had all cooled down to an acceptable temperature, I added 1 teaspoon of nutrient to all three and 1 teaspoon of pectolase to the cyser. For the yeast, I found a cider yeast at the local shops and used this for all three rather than opening up multiple sachets.

All three have begun to ferment now with the citrus batch fermenting the strongest. Once these have finished I will be looking at starting a few other non-mead batches... criminal really for a mead blog but I wanted to try something completely different. I was bought a chardonnay kit almost a year ago now so I think it's about time I started that one. I've also been wanting to try an elderflower wine too. If both of these are on the cards it looks like summer time should be a very relaxed one this year!

Banana mead batch 2

Another quick update...

I decided to do a second batch of banana mead to try and get more banana flavour into the mead... that and Tescos had reduced them massively again! I wont go on too long with this post as the details are pretty much identical to the first banana mead except with more banana. After everything had been done I ended up with a banana mead at around 13% abv. The flavour was very similar to the last one too but definitely did have more of a banana flavour to it.

For the future (maybe this weekend), I am looking to start some summery meads, definitely including a cyser. watch this space!

The biggest batch yet! - 5 Gal Traditional

After a lot of playing around with small 1 gallon batches I decided it was time to get a full 5 gallon batch brewed. As I still had yet to use my barrel I decided that now seemed the perfect opportunity to use it. This decided the flavour of the mead too. As I want to use my barrel a few times in the future too I decided a traditional mead would be the most suitable and allowing the oak flavour to shine the most it can.

I started with almost 9kg of honey that, when I first saw saw the jars all lined out ready, I was a bit overwhelmed. I had been buying a few jars every week so the cost wasn't that much on one go so I hadn't noticed just how much I had bought, but when they were all lined up in the kitchen it actually took me back a bit. When you're used to 6 or so jars per patch and then move up to around 26... it's a bit of a jump.

Anyway, I added the jars into a very large pan to heat them together with water to get them diluted and then added them all to the 5 gallon carboy and topped up to 5 gallons with cold water.The yeast was pitched. Lalvin EC118 was chosen again for this batch although the original gravity was only 1.085. As I am staying the my Girlfriend a lot at the moment and the mead itself was at my parents house sat on the heater I didn't have many chances to monitor it. By the end the final gravity of the mead was 1.040 giving a fairly low ABV of around 6% but overall a very nice pleasant mead even at it's young age.

After stabilizing and clearing it was finally time to move it over to the oak cask. I had soaked my cask overnight with cold water after rinsing it out thoroughly to give the wood time to swell sealing any holes and cleaning out any last debris from the charring and transporting that may have been caused. Eventually I filled the cask slowly, taking care not to aerate the mead.

After a day in the cask there was some minor leaking from the spigot. If you look closely at the picture you'll see a dampness in the spigot. This has since dried and stopped leaking. At now 2 weeks aging the mead has taken on a very nice oak flavour so after 1 more week or so I shall bottle and age. Come summer time this should be a very smooth drink!

On a side note from this batch, the cask is 15litres and I brewed 5 gallons so there was around 3 bottles worth that went unused. If you have read some earlier posts you'll know I decided to pour vodka over cocoa beans to extract the oils and left them for months. I have added this vodka into the mead and I shall age for at least a year to give the oils plenty of time. Below is a picture of what happened. the vodka decided to float on the mead although after mixing they do not separate. The effect however was really cool and one I shall remember for party purposes!

Milk mead part 2

After the explosive start to the life of this mead I have finally got around to the final stages of the process. This blog entry is going to be kept short and sweet as there is not really much to say here. The mead has finished fermenting now with a final ABV of 13%. In hindsight I wish I had stopped this a lot sooner and yielded a lower sweeter mead instead. Overall the mead was very harsh to taste but with meads, the aging process gives so much back to the flavour of them. The milk mead is now currently in secondary. It's been stabilised and is now clearing nicely courtesy of bentonite. I'm thinking I may bulk age this batch in the demijohn rather than the bottle as a "safer" method.

More bottling and the next brew... Milk mead

More of my previous batches are nearing completion now and needing to be bottled was my bochet. This has cleared lovely giving a deep ruby-caramel colour. Upon tasting it I found the original description of "toasted marshmallows and caramel" to be very accurate and after others tested it too with the reaction of "you're not getting this back now" I knew we had a good mead. Nice to know the 2 hours stood watching the mead boil were worth it!

As for the new mead of the day I started a milk mead brewing. This one has already gone pretty interesting and not necessarily in a good way! The ingredients simply consist of honey and lactose free milk (due to the sugar molecules being too large to be broken down by the yeast). UHT milk was also to chosen to air on the side of safety. Initially after I pitched the yeast there was a huge lag phase. Possibly making a starter culture in advance would be more appropriate for this mead. Although the initial ferment looked slow this completely changed once the yeast kicked itself into gear. This was probably the most explosive ferment I have ever done both requiring the blow off tube and then some. I'm hoping that once it's split and ready to be re-racked it will have calmed down some and that there is enough liquid left in the mix! If I get 2 bottles by the end of this I shall be happy.

(Generic information: Lalvin Ec-1118 was used with a OG of 1.100)

Banana Melomel (Bottling)

Well I finally got round to bottling the banana melomel after almost a month of letting bentonite do it's work. It's been my first time using this and I already love it. If you're just starting brewing and you're reading this then invest in some Bentonite! It will improve the clarity and look as well as removing any impurities floating around in there like residual yeast that you don't really want in the bottle. After siphoning the cleared mead off into an empty demijohn I stabilised and added a crushed campden tablet. I didn't really want any residual fermentation happening in the bottle. The gallon, after racking twice gave 4 bottle (and a glass which was very nice for testing purposes). I decided against sticky labels this time. If I want to reuse the bottles again and again I didn't want to be bothering with picking off the labels every time to wash them. Instead I opted for a vintage looking tag around the neck which I think works quite well. In the bottle pictured below I also added some gold leaf to sparkle it up a bit. I was a little apprehensive about adding the leaf initially. When I received them I examined them and realised just how fragile they are and how easily they can get stuck to themselves and other object (like fingers!). To add them in I just used a knife. After filling the bottle I scraped small sections of gold off of each leaf and added them little by little to the mead. Although they got stuck to the knife as soon as they met the liquid they came off easily. I homebrew terms it is a little expensive adding around £3 to the cost of each bottle but for the odd special one I think the price is well worth the effect.