More Kevin's Mead pics

MEAD

This bottle of the 30brix went over very well at Fred's Oktoberfest party! He tells me I made some mead drinkers that night. That's my job. I'm a Meadvangelist.
SKOL!

Mead Update/ Next Mead !V

The dried fruit mead. I've been agitating it (shaking the carboy instead of "punching down") at least twice daily and sometimes even thrice.

The Cabbage Palm/Mangrove triplets:

next mead III

This is what the dried fruit mead looked like after I cleaned the airlock. When I got home today, the airlock was full of pink, and when I removed it I was hit with fruit shrapnel. Apparently it was blocked and pressure was building up in there.
In order to prevent this and to preserve the volume (I didn't lose much, but I don't want to either) I decided to transfer to my 3gallon carboy. The color was so dark after so little time that I figured it wouldn't hurt to dilute it a bit. I dissolved the other 1.5# of honey into 1 gallon of water and added it. Here is the result:

Oh, and a bottle of my WSSAle v3.1 all-grain. I'm not happy with the spice mixture on this one, but it'll be better next year!

update re: next mead

I only used 1.5# of the honey to start with. If it looks like it will ferment dry, I will feed it some more.

the next mead

I may have to dilute it later, that's a lot of fruit for 1 gallon, but I want to see how strong the taste can be. I may also start it with only 2 lbs. of the honey since I'm not sure how much sugar I'll get from the dried fruit. When I spotted the antioxidant blend I instantly thought "that should make for a very ageable mead!"

I know some purists would decry my use of box-store ingredients, but come on... aren't you just a little curious? Besides, I make up for it by having 15 gallons of traditional mead bulk aging to which I added nothing but local raw honey, water, and yeast.

WSSAle v3.0

infection

Well, I thought I had it whipped! ...



...but the bottles of WSSAle3.0 now have a film/scum on them. I figure that as long as they don't live past 2008 they'll be alright. They are developing a crust (pellicle?) though, so you have to ignore that because it breaks up when pouring and flows out with the beer, but they don't taste bad yet.



WSSAle v3.1 is still in the primary. In case I didnt't post about it (and I don't think I did), It was 9lbs. of Munton's mild ale malt+ 1lb. Weyermann's CaraAroma [mashed~150 for 90 minutes] + 1/2oz. EKG 60min. +1/2oz. EKG 7minutes, +1.25lbs. panela sugar (from Columbia- the ingredients' list is: "pressed cane juice") for a starting gravity of 1.060, cooled in kettle on the lanai (that's like a patio to y'all up north) and pitched the next day with SafAle's 33 (IIRC). It is not showing any signs of infections after a week and a half in the fermenter and I will not rack or bottle it until I replace my tubing. That's the number one suspect right now.

WSSAle v3.1 2008 (III)

Turns out I'm lazier than I thought.

I couldn't get the Hennepin yeast going and I haven't brewed yet.

I did rack my Cabbage Palm/Mangrove Mead. What? You haven't heard about that one yet? ....

Back just after Mead Day, Sue at In The Spirits had a walk-in beekeeper who offered her 5 gallon pails of honey. It was a combination of Cabbage Palm and Mangrove honey and was pretty wet stuff. The price was right, though, so I was one of four H.A.M.S. club members who bought a bucket each. I divided mine into 3 batches. The first one was 5 gallons at 35brix, the second about 5.5 gallons at 30brix, and the third about 5.5 or 6 gallons at 25brix. I started fermenting them right around the Autumn Equinox and racked them all into 5 gallon carboys over this past weekend. What was left of the 2nd two (since they were over 5 gallons) went into the continuous fermenter which is currently a bucket. The 25 tasted pretty close to dry and a little hot, the 30 was definately sweeter and not so hot, and I didn't taste the 35. That honey is certainly different from the Orange Blossom I had earlier in the year! Not really floral, somewhat spicy, and a bit earthy. I suppose it will make for an interesting and rather unique mead.

If I remember, I'll have to tell you about my Guava Mead sometime.

WSSAle v3.1 2008 (III)

6,7,8 November 2008:

Waiting for something to happen in my Hennepin bottle. Nothing did.

9 November, 2008 (our 12th anniversary!):

Drank a 12 oz. Hennepin, swirled and poured dregs into the inactive starter and then applied the airlock. We shall see. If I get nothing this week, I guess I'll go with dry yeast and get my brewing done with by next weekend.

WSSAle v3.1 2008 (II)

4 Nov. 2008:

Poured out several glasses of Hennepin so as not to leave it open for an extended period of time, then poured into the bottle and the dregs at the bottom of it my DME starter. Topped with an airlock.

Update 5 Nov. 2008:

No action yet. I may just go with dried yeast this year :( .

WSSAle v3.1 2008 (I)

v3.0 is the extract version, but I won't get into that right now.

I am going to try my hand at documenting this year's attempt at my Winter Solstice Spiced Ale. v1.0 won me a blue ribbon at the county fair, and in my opinion it's only gotten better. Now that I'm gettting into all-grain, I've decided to add that into the (hopeful) improvements.

Fred (from H.A.M.S.) proposed a club contest for spiced winter beers due for judging in January. As I've been attempting and tweaking one for the last couple years, I thought I'd join in.

3 Nov. 2008:
Buy a 750ml bottle of Hennepin. Put it in the refrigerator.
Into a 1pt. Mason jar: 1/2 cup Munton's amber DME, 1 avg. sized Cascade hop pellet, water to 1 pt. Microwave until good and boiling. Sterilize lid with vodka then seal and leave out to cool.

Yep, that's what I've got done so far.

Continuously fermenting mead.

I mentioned in my last post that I have a "continuously fermenting mead". I thought I'd explain since I had never mentioned it here before. It looks like any other mead, as you see here:

As I listened to an archived episode of Basic Brewing Network's podcast of an interview done with a South African meadmaker he mentioned his "continuously fermenting" system. I began to look into this idea, not really knowing what it was, and came across the sherry "solera" idea that I had read about long ago when I was learning about wine. What I decided was that it was all just terribly impractical and I was not going to try it.

What I did was start a batch of mead with a combination of a lot of samples of different fermentations, mostly citrus wines from the back yard, that I had going at the time as a starter since I had no yeast and could not afford any more ingredients (Misty came across the honey purchased a couple years before in the back of a closet, so the mead wasn't costing me any current money to produce). Money was a huge factor in deciding to try this, you see: I figured I could afford 3lbs. of honey at $6 (yes, grocery store honey) every month or two. What I did was siphon a gallon out and replace it with new honey and water. I applied this to a blueberry and to a pineapple mead (for the wedding in my earlier post). I put the fruit in the gallon jugs and racked some semi-sweet still fermenting mead on top of it to finish. These did not require a whole 2 gallons of mead because of the fruit's displacement, so I pulled out a few bottles worth and cold-crashed it in the fridge for drinking at a ripe young age. Not bad stuff.

It's been going since February, I think. I hope to keep it going for a nice long time. I like the solera philosophy that once you start tapping the last barrel, it is a nice blend of old and new and have figured out how I can use this to achieve a similar end. I do have to rack to a new carboy every couple of months to reduce the risk of autolosys (sic?), but do not have to worry about oxidation from the racking since it is perpetually fermenting and the added oxygen is actually beneficial to the yeast (I think). My hope is that after a couple years use, I will be able to pull a gallon and finish its fermentation and it will already taste fairly well-aged. It will never match the solera for aging because this is my fermentation method, not my aging method. Maybe I'll add something for that. Remind me and I'll let you know in a couple of years.

Congratulations to Ernesto and Pam!!!

A great couple, and great friends.

Inspired by a BYO magazine recipe for a Mountain Dew Beer, I made this for their wedding. Ernesto is a Mountain Dew drinker, you see.

I was honored to not only brew, but to make ribs and also officiate the ceremony.

3 gallons Mountain Dew poured into fermenter

boiled:

2.5 gallons water

4lbs. Munton's light DME

1/2 oz. Cascade 45 min.

1/2 oz. Cascade 10 min.

pitched:

Safale 05





It was a love/hate reception. About a third of those who tried it hated it immediately and the other two-thirds said it was really interesting and then proceeded to empty the keg.

.

Mead Day 2008

2 August 2008

H.A.M.S. club held our part of National Mead Day at Rasher Tierney's.

The other mead guys, John and Jim, tend to be more traditional than I: they usually heat or even boil their must. They were heading up our Mead Day, so that's what we did.

I did not intentionally overexpose the photos, but it does kind of give the feeling of HOTNESS. It was a very blistery day. I really like mead, it's my favorite, so I'm going to suggest we do two club Mead Days: one on the standard 1st Saturday of August and another in February. We can do a no-heat mead indoors in August and a heat or boil mead outdoors in February. Florida brewing is necessarily different from most of the rest of the country due to our climate.


John brought this commercial bottle of "Orange Blossom Honey Wine". It was pretty well colorless and tasted like a simple syrup. He and Jim and I all brought some of our own and they were better by far!
The owner of Rasher Tierney's is a really good guy. He accomodates our somewhat rowdy group really well.

Misty and John passed out samples of our meads. They were well recieved and allowed us to evangelize about this, the greatest and most ancient of adult beverages.
Here's a blueberry melomel (melomel means a honey-wine with fruit added) I was working on just before mead day. It was not quite ready for mead day, but I cold-crashed the yeast out of a bottle's worth and then topped up with citrus wine. I'm happy to say that just about everyone liked it:

our newest offering

Twins (unindentical)

Though you can't tell in the picture, these wines were nicely cleared up. They are the 2nd annual citrus wines put together in January. The one on the left was aged on orange blossoms from my pruning at the spring equinox. The floral aroma is overpowering even though, as you see, there isn't really that much in the way of flowers in the jug- maybe an inch in the bottom of the gallon. I have since bottled some for later and split the remainder into four containers: two left as they are here, and two of each of the same with oven-kilned orange wood in them.

As I said, the floral aroma was very strong so I am considering blending what I bottled of that one into an orange blossom mead when it's ready to bottle, just for a little extra varietal character.

As the orange wood was drying the smell was very sweet and almost honey-like. I can't wait to see what they age into.



Fermented and aged from New Year's Day to the Vernal Equinox; split between flower and no flower until the Summer Solstice; split between flower, no flower, flower with wood, and no flower with wood. To age until the Autumn Equinox and be bottled for tasting around the next new year.

All Grain II update III

You wouldn't believe how hard it is to get a good picture through the glass with a bunch of condensate and kreusen all over the inside of it. This is what it looks like tonight:

Anyway, it looks like it's turning into beer at this point. At the pub social, it was theorized that perhaps the dry hops' antibacterial properties managed to keep whatever the weird stuff was from taking control. Sounds good to me. So the photo is through a clear spot in the wall of the glass surrounded by kreusen and is still a little out of focus, but in the middle on the left side you can see the nice bready yeasty normal thing happening.

Here's another photo attempt from earlier today:

White Balance

This will teach me to learn what the heck I'm doing before I do it, huh? I had the white balance set for the incandescent lights we were under, but I used the flash (hiding it behind a piece of paper to keep the glare down).



I went with a few fellow H.A.M.S. club members to a pub social at Sarasota Brewing Company. It was a pretty cool place. Not too much going on, a few families eating dinner together and a few patrons sitting at the bar. Then there were the beer geeks in the corner. I mean us.

I swear they didn't have blue beer. Stupid "white balance".

a pint of Maibok:

There seemed to be a distinct lack of head on the beers in general. We couldn't pinpoint why. The Maibok did lace the glass, though.

My tasting notes:
I really liked the Maibok the most even though it was a bit hoppier than I expected. Overall Vince (the brewer and I believe to be a fellow H.A.M.S. member) did a great job making big and well recieved batches of beer. I passed around my sampler of Sunset Red for everyone to try because I thought maybe something was wrong with it. Apparently all that was wrong is that I just didn't have an appreciation of the style (I don't really care for that style) because even though not everyone who tried it liked it nobody thought there was anything wrong with it. Anyway, that one aside, I was really impressed. As you'll see if you click on my notes to enlarge them, I thought they did a great job describing their beers. I tasted each before reading the descriptions and was kind of at a loss when it came to writing notes because much of what I noticed was already typed up for me.

All Grain II update II

Sorry about the quality of this picture, but it turned out to be the best of the lot from last night. There's a bit of condensation on the inside of the carboy and that proved difficult to work around.

Still odd looking, but not quite as weird.