Christmas Pudding flavoured mead ? part 5

Well, I finally got bored waiting. Not sure if its stuck or not yet. So I've racked it off the fruit debris and sludge. The bucket level was at 3 gallons and I've managed to rack out about half a gallons worth of the sludge.

Actually, I didn't rack it I strained it through a stainless sieve as it would never have travelled down a racking tube.

If I've got this mobile blogger app right, it should upload a picture of the 2 and a half gallons of liquid. It still looks like the contents of a blocked drain or sewer, but it tastes marvellous........

{edit} This morning, it's had a chance to settle and I find that there is indeed, quite a lot of sediment. The clear glass, 1 gallon jar has a good 2 inches of sediment settled, and the half gallon clear glass jar is nearly half full of sediment. I'm presuming that this is fine sediment from the pud base and yeast based lees, but I'm gonna have to check the gravity tonight after work as the batch may be stuck.

Christmas Pudding flavoured mead ? part 4

Ok, so just tested it to see how it's going. It's testing at 1.064 so between 15 and 20 points drop since wednesday after noon.

Now while I expect it too slow down as it gets further in, it seems to have slowed a little quicker than I'd thought it should, so as I can't find any info about the temperature range for the Gervin GV4(26) yeast there's nothing else for it, the brew belt has gone on, too see what happens.

It could be that the honey is causing a bit of an issue with pH and acid levels, but I don't want to try and test pH, because until I can strain it off the fruit and pud debris, there's too much fat and other fine particulate matter in the batch - I'd rather not disturb it too much at the moment i.e. strain a sample etc to take a pH reading.

I'll leave if for a couple or three days and see what it's like with a little warmth from the brew belt is like.......

Christmas Pudding flavoured mead ? part 3

I nearly forgot to post this bit....

I followed the recipe as per how Duffbeer at WaH posted onto the day 2 part. I didn't take gravity reading for the day 1 part as I was just blindly following the recipe (which is always a mistake, you can never have too much info for recipe/fermentation management).

So, with the day 2 part, I just kept adding the honey, but as I was too lazy to try and melt some of the crystalised bit, instead of ending up at the 1.130 point as suggested, I ended up with 1.140 - though I'm not concerned with that as the yeast is supposed to be capable of 21% ABV which is 154/155 point gravity drop. So as long as I get more than 133, which is 18%, any residual sugars would just mean that I add less to back sweeten with it's finished.

Not last wednesday my curiosity got the better of me and I managed to remove a sample without any fruit or other debris to affect a hydrometer reading. I got a gravity of about 1.080 so it's on it's way down nicely.

I'll test again today and see where it's at. If it's not down to about the 1.030 area I'll probably put the brew belt round the bucket to warm it up a bit, as the dining room averages at about 18 to 19C - the brew belt would bring it up to 24C. And on the basis that "reds" prefer slightly warmer ferments than most whites (when considering grape musts/wines), it shouldn't be an issue, though I'll have a read around to see if there's any downside to this, I might even just drop an extra Q over at WaH too see if they thing that there's anything wrong with this "master plan"......