More Kevin's Mead pics

Kevin is 18 now...

We made this mead today. Local wildflower from 2008. 28 Brix with Lalvin EC1118.

We'll open the first bottle 31 Jan 2013. What a nice, dark and aromatic honey it was.

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 v3.1 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.

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.

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:

Brew VI

Well, I bottled the mead too early. What didn't explode had to be put in the fridge to stop the secondary fermentation from getting carried away. Now I have a few bottles of bubbly, sweet mead. Not too bad, but not what I wanted.

As for the "live fast, die young". It died young alright. I did not boil it to see what difference it made. It was like sniffing a flower shop, I swear! BIG nose. Quite dry. Perhaps it should have lived longer if only to see its potential.

The cherry/white grape only made 2 bottles. I drank the first at bottling time and it was surprisingly good. The other is in the cellar (closet) waiting for Misty. It's a light pink color, reminiscent of a very pale WZin.

Reverend Olson's Chapple Wine was a hit for all who tried it. Perhaps next cherry season I'll make a full 5 or 6 instead of just 1 gallon.

We drank a bottle from the citrus flor (renamed "Sunshine Citrus") early- it's not cleared and was kind of harsh. It was really good for such a young drink. I look forward to drinking it as soon as I start making another batch next January or so.

The Strapple is sitting contently in the corner not bothering anyone. Waiting patiently. Looking tasty.

The pyment was quite good. Dry, but fruity. Big concord flavor, maybe would age out if I let it.

I started a "Big Pink Grapefruit" back at the Vernal Equinox. It's a varietal because all the fruit came from one tree. I used more juice than most recipes call for and just a touch more sugar as well. 1.5 gallons juice, 10 lbs white sugar, 2 lbs brown, 2 packets Premier Cuvee yeast to make 6 gallons. We'll see!

Brew V

Above and below: A bucketload of strawberries. Stemmed and bucketed by my children. I knew they were good for something.

19 1/2 gallons now. Left to right: rear: Mead Day mead, Citrus Flor, strawberry-apple; front: Live Fast-Die Young Mead, Special Secret Wine Inside, concord pyment, Chappel Wine, and the white grape-cherry.

Chapple Wine sitting in warm water. An attempt at bringing it back to life as a drier wine. It did kick start it, but it didn't last. It is what it is, I suppose. A note for the curious: that is a ghetto airlock. I keep it for old time's sake. Necessity is the mother of invention, and there was a time when $2 for a replacement was just not available.

Brew IV

The astute observer may have noticed that I never mentioned what was in the half-gallon jug in my previous brew post. It was a jug of Welch's white grape cherry juice. I removed a cup of it and replaced it with a cup of sugar before pitching champagne yeast. I have tried a few Welch's wines but found they were a bit thin, so I thought I'd chaptalize a little and see how that works. Misty is the one who suggested the flavor, and I of course agreed- I dig cherries.Well, this is it, up close and personal.

The concord pyment.

"Citrus Flor" So named for the fact that I picked the fruit up off the forest flo(o)r (not really a forest, but I've always been a fan of poetic license) in my back yard. And I pitched a flor sherry yeast.

"Live Fast, Die Young" mead. Made with slightly less honey than usual for a fast fermentation and will be carbonated and drunk immediately, or as they say in wine: young. Yes, less honey means a lighter color, but the main difference between this and the Mead Day mead is the type of honey that was used. The smaller was made from Florida wildflower and the larger from Florida citrus, palmetto, and wildflower.

Reverend Olson's (that'd be me) Chapple Wine.

Brew Magic

Above is a rather close-up picture of the HAMS Mead-Day mead. I love that color. I hate camera flash, so I tried flashing through one of the airlocks picured below and it came out interesting. To me, anyway.

This is a concord grape pyment. It is the most active fermentation I've got going right now. For those out there without experience: see the stuff above the liquid, stuck to the glass? That is remains of the initial fermentation boom, and it is why you shouldn't fill your jugs too full. Trust me, I know this to be true.

This is a group shot. 13 1/2 gallons worth.from left to right they are: 1 gallon of concord pyment (which is a grape/mead mixture), 5 gallons of Mead-Day mead (s.g. 1.142) sitting in a prohibition era carboy (it's bottom is marked with- I believe -"1927", but I'm not picking it up to check any time soon), 1 gallon of a weaker mead (intended for near-immediate consumption and sharing as a sparkling mead), 1 gallon of Reverend Olson's Chapple Wine (for religious purposes, I'm sure), and 5 gallons of citrus wine (my first attempt) made from two different varieties of grapefruit and oranges from my backyard.

It may look like a lot, but trust me- it doesn't last long, especially if you share!

Oh, thanks to Tom for the gallon jugs.

brew notes

Then:

The mead (brewed at Mead Day, courtesy of HAMS club) was not stuck, just extremely slow. It still bubbles, but you really have to wait for it.

The elderberry wine tastes pretty good, could use a little more body, but the majority of the bottles blew their corks out! The gravity was so low, I thought I shouldn't need to sulfite. Perhaps I was wrong, eh?

The gingered ale was a hit. I kegged it with the setup Misty bought me back at xmas '03. It was sweet (not the beer, that was a bit on the dry end).

Now:

I'm letting some apple wine ferment complete before adding cherries for "Reverend Olson's Chapple Wine".

Last night I bottled a "Spiced Solstice Ale". The spice seems a little heavy, but will probably mellow shortly. I figure it will be ready by New Year's Eve. I should have bottled it sooner, but I was recently diagnosed with diabetes and wasn't even sure if I was going to be able to drink it. Turns out that "moderation is the key" to controlling blood sugar, so I am able to hold onto my hobby. Anyway, I used (for the first time ever) a kit. It was English, Munton's "Old Ale", and it was much hoppier than I had expected. The orgininal intent was a Fruitcake ale and I brewed it with ginger, brown sugar, and honey, but the hoppiness killed that idea. Instead I spiced it with a cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg tea at bottling.

Next:

A dry mead. 9lbs honey and champagne yeast. Not sure what else.

more later...