Wine & Mead International

Meads, their making and stupid questions ?

2012-01-28T00:13:00.001Z

Ok, so when making a mead, there's no real standard. Just various methods and some recipes that have been successful.

Yes there's some archaic and/or historic recipes, but they're invariably to limited in the info that was recorded, especially when it comes to some of the older rhetoric/terminology used.

Again, there's too many variables and that is pretty much why the mead world has ended up using wine making techniques and materials.

One of the problems that does arise, is that while some terms are used to describe slightly different types, some of them are historically accurate, some of the terms should be grouped under the more generic "weirdomel" i.e. the "mel" ending alluding to something made with honey and it being prefixed with weird, as it's ingredients not normally associated with mead making....

Then there's the idiot questions. I want to help, but sometimes just get bored reading, basically, the same question over and over again. I do admire some peoples perseverance when it comes to patience. But I'm starting to get cranky with people who either don't read/research before asking a question, or asking for confirmation, or they ask something so pointless that their question should be ignored or deleted. And yes, I was probably just as bad, but I do try to search/check/read around for my answers first.

A recent question at a forum I frequent, was about the maximum gravity that a honey must could be, before a certain yeast couldn't ferment it.

Ok, "valid question" you might say ? Well I'd say bollocks, it's a pointless question that wasn't even worth the effort to ask...... A lot of yeasts, especially the Lalvin brand ones, have a published tolerance i.e. a level of alcohol that they can ferment a must too before they can't make any more and die off. Ok, great. That doesn't mean that you mightn't want to mix a must that will, with careful management, ferment to that tolerance (perhaps a little higher), and still leave a certain level of residual sugars.

Fair enough ? Got it so far ? Alcoholic drinks will still end up tasting like whatever flavoured syrup after a certain point. I find a lot of dessert meads like that and the 4 that I did the mini taste test a couple of years ago, averaged at about 1.040 FG as sold, and to my taste, were too cloyingly/sickly sweet and not enjoyable. But I suppose that's relative and we all like different tastes.

So in truth, it doesn't matter how high a gravity can be before the yeast can't ferment it, it's just notable to know. Also how high the gravity (starting/original) needs to be to attain a certain level/% of alcohol. Plus some idea of the type of mead that you're aiming to make, so you know where it falls in specification of dry/medium/sweet/dessert - anything else, is bollocks....

Oh, and while I'd agree/admit that we all like different tastes when it comes to our products, there's probably more than a few ingredients that shouldn't be brought within a mile of a ferment. At the same time, the mead maker needs to think about whether certain flavours will actually go together, and less about how it tastes in their dreams! For example, I've seen a recipe for a mead/cyser called "Apple Pie". Now I have to presume, not having tasted it, that it alludes to a dessert type mead that has been made with the expected apple juice, with honey for both alcoholic content and residual sugar for sweetness and the spices usually associated with an apple pie (cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves ? something like that ?).

Anyway, the mead maker needs to recall, that once honey has been fermented, it ceases to taste like honey. Which is one of the reasons that young meads, recently off the sediment, taste fucking awful. Yes, some of the alcohol flavours mellow/blend in, and it sometimes recovers some perception of sweetness, but it won't recover the sweetness. You saw to that, when you fermented the honey/water with the process that is basically the controlled rotting of the sugars in the honey by yeast.

Enough of my rant. If it isn't normally a flavour associated with alcoholic beverages then it probably doesn't belong in a mead................

Specifically about making meads.....

2011-12-11T10:24:00.001Z

I keep reading over and over again, at various forums, the same question(s).

So here's a little precis of good technique.

I suggest using Lalvin products, not because I've got anything to gain, but because they publish more info/data about their products than any other yeast producer.

So, to start with, the basic must (must being the mix of honey and water - possibly other ingredients - to make it ready for fermentation) is just honey and water. There's a certain amount of conjecture as to what "good" honey actually is. The problem is that if it's a commercial/branded honey, it's very likely to have been processed specifically for eating/baking etc, which has a potentially adverse effect on the honey i.e. the process of heating and filtering etc, often remove some of the more subtle aroma and flavour compounds, so if possible, you not only want the honey to be pleasing to the taste, but if it's raw and unprocessed, it's likely to be worthy of the title "better". Any "hive debris" like bits of wax, dead bee's etc will fall out or float during the fermentation and clearing, which makes them easily removed.

The heating thing also applies to "cooking" the must (or wort as beer makers are likely to call it). Now there's no need to heat it up really, yes if the honey as crystalised some, then using hand hot tap water is the lesser evil. Personally, I just spoon it out the container, and then blitz it in a food processor with some water. Honey is hygroscopic, so it will take up the water quite readily. This not only mixes it well, but also aerates the must nicely. The additional water required to bring the volume up to the required level is then easily just mixed/stirred in. Additionally, you don't need to "pasteurise" the must either. Honey is natures most anti-bacterial, anti-fungal substance. Plus with the water, well if you like the water straight from the tap etc, then it's fine to use - yes you will find comment around the bazaars that alludes to filtration of various types, both for distilled water and reverse osmosis water. Some people will bang on about those types of water not having any nutrients etc. Well if you're relying on the water for nutrients, then you're likely to be making show meads that don't use other nutrient, but also can make for a long, tortuous ferment, because one thing that honey is deficient in, is nutrients. Yes it has all the fermentable sugars you could want, but it's low on anything else. Those ingredients are normally added later.

Now with your yeast(s), the data that Lallemand/Lalvin publish, refers to grape wines, so there's still room for error, but at least it's better than nothing. It's a handy guide to work out the relative nutrient needs and with honey/meads, even so called "low nutrient" yeasts will need some nutrition. More importantly, it's handy to do a search to find out what you can, because some yeasts make good meads but have a few caveats attached. One such yeast is Lalvin D47. It does make a good mead, but it does have quite a narrow fermentation range, and it appears that it needs to be fermented below 70F/21C, because above that, it has a habit of producing fusels, that can give a very harsh, chemically sort of taste, that can take forever (if at all) to mellow out. Fusel tastes shouldn't be confused with "alcohol hot" taste because while it takes a while to mellow, alcohol hot taste will age out.

I like to rehydrate my yeasts with GoFerm. It's a type of nutrient that is specifically formulated to feed the yeast while it's rehydrating. Plus it's quite normal to use a little bit of must, some water, the appropriate amount of GoFerm and then the yeast is mixed in and it's left until some bubbling/foaming shows on the top of the rehydrating yeast.That mix, is in turn, pitched into the must, I then either cover with a cloth or airlock it, depending on the fermenter used.I then don't add any more nutrients etc until there's visible signs of the ferment commencing and the "lag phase" is over. I will have worked out roughly how much nutrient is needed for the batch and will have halved it to be added in 2 stages. You can break the quantities down more if you want and work out when you want to add them, though there's some anecdotal evidence, that after a certain point in the ferment, the yeast will no longer absorb inorganic nitrogen sources, so only organic sources should be used (I don't have any FermaidO, so I usually use boiled bread yeast to provide late addition nutrient).

So, I've got it mixed, I've rehydrated the yeast with GoFerm (which coincidentally, is low in nitrogen, as that can be harmful to the yeast in this early stage), there's signs of active fermentation, so I know that the yeast colony is large enough to be doing that, I've used a mix of 2 parts FermaidK to 1 part DAP (di-ammonium phosphate), which has been split into 2 doses, the first has been added after the lag phase, so now I aerate it i.e. you can use a spoon or other stirrer, but I'm lazy, so I use an electric whisk. Some people recommend at least twice a day, but I usually aerate once a day. I will test after about 1 or 2 days to see where the gravity has dropped to, as I aim to stop aeration and any further nutrients at the 1/3rd sugar break (which is a drop in gravity of 1/3 when the starting and estimated final gravity have been worked out e.g. if the start is 1.090, then the 1/3rd break is at 1.060, presuming it's finished at 1.000). I will always aerate first, before adding the final nutrients as that can cause the mead to let the CO2 out of solution quickly causing it to foam into an eruption, which is less likely if most of the CO2 has been removed with aeration/stirring, and you get better eruptions from carboys than you do from buckets......

Now, if I'm making a "Traditional" mead (honey, water, nutrients, etc), I will usually ferment it dry and then back sweeten it. I like my meads sweet, but not too sweet. Some of the commercial meads I've found and tried here, have all been too sweet and when tested have a finished/final gravity of up to 1.040 - which is cloyingly sweet for my taste. I like mine at about 1.010 to 1.020 and I like to sweeten them with honey. This is potentially problematic, because the addition of honey can cause an already cleared mead to haze. So I let the ferment finish (finish is after I've had 3 identical gravity readings taken a couple of days apart over the period of a week). I will then stabilise it, which is done to prevent any refermentation starting. I will rack the finished mead onto 1 crushed campden tablet per gallon and 1/2 a teaspoon of sorbate per gallon (sometimes called potassium sorbate, or wine stabiliser). Then while it's still cloudy, but after a couple of days, I'll add a 50/50 honey water syrup up to the required gravity level, the exact level is achieved by taste but also with hydrometer tests. Once it's there, then I'll just clear it with racking and time, any topping up needed is done with either another mead or with vodka. If it's not clear by the time it's aged for 12 months, then I'll use 2 part finings.

That's not perfect practice/technique but it's not a million miles away from the methods suggested in the excellent Gotmead "NewBee Guide" either. It's linked so you can also read it if you want to.....

A bit of a result there.....

2011-12-04T15:58:00.001Z

Blagged Honey!

I did a delivery to a local farm on friday, and after chatting with the farmer about the 25 to 30 bee hives I could see in the bushes, just off the road, when he said "did I want some honey", it took me a couple of milliseconds to say yes.

He came back from the farm house with a bucket containing 17 jars, which turn out to be 340gramme jars, so as he said that the bloke who owns the hives wanted the jars back if possible, I've just spent a couple of hours pouring it into a couple of small buckets and rinsing the jars out with warm water.

The jar washings are now sitting in a demi-john (1 gallon size) and I've also blitzed 2lb in a pint of water, to bring the gravity up to somewhere near where I'll want it.

The honey itself, is very sweet, with a light flavour, despite it being quite a golden colour. I'm gonna flip a coin as to whether I use K1-V1116 yeast or D21 yeast, both of which were used by the late Brother Adam of Buckfast Abbey bee breeding and mead making fame during his lifetime.

As the K1V will go to 18% and the D21 to 16% ABV, I'm thinking I'll go for a Sack mead in the 16% area and back sweeten it to about 1.020, so it's sweet to taste but not in a cloying way that some of the commercial meads can be.

What I'll do with the rest of the honey has yet to be decided......

Not a bad blag for a gobby fucker like me eh !

What, actually, is it that mead makers are trying to do ?

2011-10-08T16:21:00.000+01:00

The title of this post is something I've been pondering for a few weeks now.

Why should I be thinking along these lines ? Well, to my mind, "mead is mead, is mead".

Now it's fair to point out, that while meads have been around for at least a couple of millenia, is what we make now the same thing, just an improved version of what the ancients made ?

Yes, it would also be obvious that a lot of the methods/techniques used currently are derived from the world of wine making, more specifically, making "grape" wines (not wines made from other fruit).

What it does do, is, to my mind, is make people want to compare "proper" wines to meads a.k.a. honey wine. Yet I don't see the comparison, other than them both being alcoholic drinks. After all, the only thing they have in common other than the alcohol is the presence of fermentable sugars in the unfermented "must". Grapes have different components to honey. Honey has considerably more sugars, but little of the other nutrient type elements that are present in grapes.

So called "proper" wines are made from pure grape juice, meads are made mainly from watered down honey (there's no chance in hell of fermenting pure honey). It's almost as pointless a comparison to that of wine and brandy, or beer and whiskey. They've both got alcohol in them, but that's where it stops.

Hence, should we describe mead as "honey wine", or more correctly, as a fermented honey drink ?

Yes, I gloss over the different variations of meads i.e. melomels, metheglyns, cysers, pyments, etc etc, as it seems that those are just ways of adding different flavours to the honey must fermentation.......

Equally, you can find commercially made meads, though from what I've managed to find/taste, most of those are from existing vineyards/wineries and less from makers who make specifically meads. Should we, as a loose community of like minded people, gather together our experiences, into something "more concrete" ? So some proper research can be done and published, or is it enough to remain on the periphery of the wine making world, so "proper wine makers" can continue to sneer down their collective noses ?

The only place that seems to have any laid down/statutory standards for meads, would appear to be Poland. Whether anywhere else has any mandatory standards for what we term "Mead", I've yet to find out.

Does it mean then, that without any standard, that all we're doing is taking part in some global pissing contest ? "My meads better than your mead?", with a small number of people who are enthusiastic enough about it, to learn as much as they can and then pass on this collected knowledge ?

Or is it something else ?

I mean, lets face it, to try and compete directly with the entrenched wine making world is pretty much a waste of time. Yes, there is a small market for commercial mead making, but the "wine lobby" is a huge, well funded, well advertised section of the alcohol production industry. Anything they consider a threat, is more than likely, going to be stamped out of existence (if that's possible). They don't want anyone else to have a share of the financial pie that they enjoy so much........

Apart from anything else, making meads does seem to take longer than making wines. Yes there's a few short cuts that can be taken, but by and large, it's likely to take many years to have something that is drinkable.....

I just don't know..... I suppose I'll just carry on making my batches to see what I can produce!

Wines at Home annual "Grapefest" 2011

2011-09-18T19:49:00.000+01:00

Last weekend, I managed to work the time to attend the Wines at Home annual grapefest.

Now it's not really a festival, more of a go at the shared enthusiasm for making wine.In many ways, I was the odd one out, because I make mainly meads, with a few "country" wines (that's to say, wine made from fruit etc, not grapes). I decided to find the time, because Bob (who runs Winesathome) suggested it would be an excellent opportunity to sell/pass on some of the 400 or so half gallon DJ's that I got on ebay a couple of years ago.

Ha! a quick look at ebay's home brewing section today and I see someone selling some for £2.50 each - all I wanted was 50p each or 3 for £1, so despite them needing a damn good clean, they've got to be value for money.

Right, enough about the half gallon DJ's.....

Now I can't say for certain as this was the first of these events that I've been able to get to, but apparently, Bob and a few other regulars, decided it would be an excellent idea to include a few educational elements (Bob is a smashing bloke, who seems to really enjoy teaching/conveying his knowledge to others, and damn he knows his stuff).

So the basic plan was to have a curry in one of the local establishments, that also has a "take you own" policy (dunno if that's because they're not licensed or what). None of my meads being ready, I took a bottle of brandy, a half of sloe gin and some "cherimoya vodka flavoured" jelly shots, mainly in the hope that it wouldn't be too posh (you can never tell with wine functions as there is often a certain amount of snobbery attached to the sometimes - this wasn't the case). With the curry, most of the others took a bottle or two of their own products and I managed to provide the jelly shots as a sort of "starter". The wines I tasted, were all very nice, though not of a style I'd normally buy to drink. I point that out, because by choice and accident, the wines I like have been mainly, of the heavier, more "chewy" French reds i.e. Bordeaux and Burgundies. I'm happy to point out, that I know little about "proper" wines, I just try to remember the names of the ones I've liked and go for similar ones, like St Emillion's, Medoc's and the like. So part of my mission was to try and understand a bit more about "grape" wine making and whether I want to have a go myself (I've only made one proper kit before, but I won't bore you with the reasons, type, etc for now).

On the Saturday, we all arrived at Bob's place, at about 10, which was to sort out the kit needed, while we waited for Brian to arrive with the grapes. The grapes that Brian had managed to locate a supply of were, Merlot, Sangiovese and Grenache for "reds" and Trebbiano for "whites".The basic organisation for the day was that Brian arrived, his trailer arranged to be in Bob's driveway, so that the grapes could be unloaded and sorted, so that the Trebbiano could be processed first, being whites, it was best (apparently) that they would be de-stemmed and crushed, so they could then be pressed and the juice run straight into the fermenters/container supplied by those who'd ordered them.The de-stemmer/crusher is one device, that sit's atop a frame. It has like an Archimedes screw that feeds the grapes into a set of bladed rollers that pull the grapes off the stem, then pushes them through a crushing mechanism, so that the crushed, de-stemmed grapes and juice then flow out the bottom of the machine into a bucket/fermenter. Then in the case of the white grapes, the grape/skin/juice etc is poured into the press and it's all pressed to remove the skins, seeds and any remaining stalk/stem.

Once the Trebbiano was crushed/de-stemmed, it was then moved on to the press. A rather nice "bladder" press, that uses an inflating bladder, which I believe works by water pressure. It's certainly a hell of a lot quicker than using some sort of "spindle" press that has to be filled and then the spindle centre, is wound down to press the juice from the pulp, skins and seeds.

Then it was just a case of working out who'd ordered what of the remaining 3 grape types and putting them through the machine to de-stem and crush. You don't press them at this stage, as the ferment has to be started and at the same time, some other chem's added to help juice flavour and colour extraction. Black grapes are, apparently, routinely fermented on the skins so that the yeast goes to work on the pulp/flesh/juice, while other chems are added to aid colour extraction (I don't remember if anyone was planning to use any pectic enzyme, but Paul explained to me about why he uses Rohapect enzyme as it helps to get the colour etc out of the skins, apparently, quicker than other similar materials).

While all of the above was going on, Brian, Graham and someone else did little talks/lectures about some of the various wine making processes. Brian did a general "how to, with grapes" talk, Graham did one about wine making tests/testing (acids and the like). I don't recall the third one as I was helping out with other stuff.

Here's some other pictures I took that show a little of the goings on.......

This is the view into Brians trailer after it had been emptied by about 2/3rd's

This it the de-stemming machine being loaded.....

This is a panorama view of activity around the machinery and a little rinsing of fermenters before they're filled with grape pulp

And here is what it looks like when the de-stemmed grape pulp/skin/juice is running into a fermenter bucket (note the grape stalk/stem's in the bottom of the picture, that drop out of the machine on the side after the fruit have been pulled off)

Now this process was all pretty much complete by about 3pm or so, and the clearing up started. The various machinery had to be washed/cleaned, the empty boxes the grape arrived in had to be disposed of (burned, as it's just like any other wooden fruit/veg packing) and various other bits of sorting out completed.

This all finished with some "nosebag" that had been arranged by Bob/Karl/Karls wife and daughter I believe. Large pots of beef hash and a chicken and veg "thing" (fake veggie chicken that was very nice) and rice. I seem to recall, we then all sat down (well stuffed) for what was planned as a wine swap - which actually turned into a mega tasting session/piss up. A lot of which, went straight over my head, though whether it was my lack of knowledge or the amount of wine I "tasted", I don't know

It was mostly wines, though some who also brew beer had bought some of that as well.

A very enjoyable day was had by all (presumably, but I enjoyed my day as it was the first time I'd taken part in such an event..... I'm still not sure about whether I will order any grapes next year, as it seems that there's still a hell of a lot to learn).

Just to prove that at least some of us ended up as a heap, here's the proof

That's a slightly unstable Graham. What you can't see is that it was raining quite hard and despite us saying he should move under the garden umbrella, he declared "bollocks" and stayed there, snoozing in rain puddles on the table. A top bloke!

I'll link the "Grapefest 2011 ferments" thread from Wines at Home here, so you have some idea of the interest. At the time of writing this, it's just over a week since Grapefest and the buggers have managed to clock up 15 pages of Q&A already..... I do hope that everyone's wines turn out as they would like.

Finally, a mega thanks too all who organised the event. I had a brilliant time and learned a considerable amount about a side of the home brewing hobby that I've yet to "dip my toe into"..... Brilliant, TVM one and all.

Clearing out the cupboard 2......

2011-05-20T20:32:00.000+01:00

Well would you credit it eh ? I did just that i.e. chucked it in the bucket (including sprinkling the yeast on top) and waited to see if it would do anything.

The "lag phase" was about 2 days and then I heard it "bloop", so that evening I gave it a good stir, well actually I just sprayed the electric whisk with sanitiser and gave it a bloody good spin.

Yesterday evening, I decided to give it a stir (spoon this time) and give it a check. It measured up at 1.090, a 40 point drop in about 3 days. So this morning I measured out about 1 teaspoon of FermaidK and a half teaspoon of DAP, then gave it a good stir to de-gas it, then tipped the nutrient in while still stirring.

I could see the foam erupting from the ferment, though not enough to worry about. So it's time to leave it alone.

The only thing I'm not really sure of, it whether to leave the fruit in there, or whether I should strain most of the pulp out. After all, it's peeled, broken segments of mandarin from a tin. So apart from the actual fruit, there's nothing in there to cause the pulp to impart any off flavours.....

Ok, I've convinced myself, I'll leave it alone and strain the pulp when it's finished.

TTFN

Clearing out the cupboard.....

2011-05-15T17:28:00.001+01:00

I was tidying some stuff this morning (shock, horror) only to find that one of the tins of broken mandarin segments had blown.
After I'd cleared up the mess, it occurred to me that I should've used the damn things up by now. They're only about 3 years out of date.
So a quick dig round and I found about a kilo of "Mexican clear honey" and a tin of white grape concentrate.
The picture of the must in the bucket, is the above ingredients, plus a couple of teaspoon of FermaidK and a teaspoon of tannin.

I'm not expecting much from this brew, its just a "sling it in the bucket and see" mix. I didn't bother rehydrating the yeast, I just put some D21 in it and airlock the bucket.
I've made it up to about 6 litres as there'll be a good amount of the mandarin Orange pulp to strain out. The starting gravity is quite high, at 1.130 but I intend giving it a stir at least once a day until it hits the 1/3rd sugar break.
If it ferments dry, then fine, though I'd prefer it to have a final gravity of about 1.010
I'll have to wait and see

Joe's Ancient Orange.........

2011-02-10T23:10:00.000Z

Damn! by now, you'd have thought that people would have learned how to use a search facility.......

Why is it, that so many new mead makers, think that they can just do this or that to make the Joe's Ancient Orange recipe "good".

It was designed, presumably, so that a new mead maker could get a batch on the go from what's in the kitchen cupboards (pretty much), without having to find a load of expensive ingredients etc.

If it's not as per Joe's recipe then wake up fuckwit, it's not Joe's Ancient Orange is it.

Every new generation of young men think that they've just invented cunnilingus! Well wake up you fucking idiots, people like Joe were probably in Baghdad, when you were in your dad's bag!

It's a tried and tested, successful recipe. It does come good and zillions of posts around the net suggest that the recipe is and has been enjoyed by a hell of a lot of people. If you don't like the flavour, fine, make something different.

But if it's not made to the recipe as Joe suggests, it's not Joe's Ancient Orange is it !

Other thoughts during yesterdays filtering.....

2010-12-30T10:27:00.000Z

I've come to the conclusion, that my methods of recording my batches, methods and techniques are still a bit too haphazard.

So I think that I'm going to start numbering them, that way I can just keep adding to the blog, but just refer to, say, No 1/10 (gonna start back with "1" as it makes sense to keep them numerical/chronological and trying to count up the batches I've already made is foolish and time consuming).

That way, I can even make use of labels/tags etc and it should be easier for me to keep records of what's been done, how and when.....

Hell I might even include the numbering on the labels for any bottles.......

TTFN!

Yesterdays job......

2010-12-30T10:21:00.000Z

A week or so ago, I'd been looking through my meads etc to see what needed doing next.

I was mainly prompted by a gallon of heather honey mead that'd I'd made last year, had cleared, then back sweetened - on back sweetening, the damn thing developed another haze. I asked around the forums and the best suggestion seemed to be that it should drop out with age.

11 months later, it was still hazy as hell, so I asked again, the suggestion was to hit it with some finings. I had the "Kwik Clear" 2 part finings from Ritchies, but really wanted to try something a little less harsh. I've got some bentonite (one of the suggestions), but the other i.e. Sparkoloid, isn't available here in the UK.

The long and short of it was that I just got impatient and used the Kwik Clear. It worked a treat, but seemed to produce a considerable layer of "fluffy" sediment.

So what to do....... Well......

seemed like the way ahead. I deliberately chose the coarse, "number 1" filters. as you can see from the picture, I was just setting up the plate filter section of the minijet....

As you can see, the layer of sediment was about 3/4's of an inch deep. I don't know why, because I'd already cleared it once and the only sediment should have been from the haze caused by the back sweetening.

Anyway, there was other meads that needed to be run through the filter as well....

So it seemed highly appropriate to get the filter/pump out.......

It all seems to have gone reasonably smoothly, the only thing I'm not really sure about, is that while I was using the minijet, the mead on the intake pipe was clear for the most part, but where the small pipe comes out of the pump section and passes to the filter plates, there seemed to be a lot of very fine bubbles coming into the mead.

Now I don't know if that was a small leak that allowed some air into the mead or whether it was removing some of the dissolved carbon dioxide (CO2). The meads all passed through the filter section Ok and as you'll hopefully see from the next picture, I know have an increasing collection of meads that are bulk ageing.

Some of them are pretty close to being ready to drink, some of them have a way to go. Now I don't know which, off the top of my head, but some are dry meads, some are sweeter (I prefer mine to have a gravity of about 1.005 - or "medium").

So in the new year, I'll have to go through them again and work out what needs bottling and what can sit for a while, or as might be the case, what needs a little bit of back sweetening....... Plus I'll be able to sort out whether there's any oxidation or not.

Oh and just in case anyone who reads this thinks "he didn't mention any sulphite or campden tablets", they'd all had that the racking before - so don't forget, you would normally only add sulphite/campden tablet every other racking.

That's a poor picture of some of the meads that are bulk ageing under the stairs, but I suspect you get my point. I think there's between 12 and 15 gallons there.

Recent efforts (23/12/10)

2010-12-26T10:14:00.000Z

Christmas eve was a quiet day (me on hols from work and my partner having to go in for the last day before the crimbo break).

So I "wheeled out" the lastest toy. A mini-jet filter/pump. It's a "plate filter" type device - these are available in commercial format with a huge number of "plates". The mini-jet is aimed at home brew/amateur use and has 3 pads/plates. The pads are available in 3 grades, the finest (number 3 pads I think) filter to 0.5 micron (saying that they're "sterile" filters/fine enough to remove yeast cells).

I don't filter to that level usually. I ran 5 gallons of various meads through a set of "medium" or No 2 pads. All of them had cleared/been fined etc and only had a tiny amount of sediment at the bottom of the jar.

It's fair to point out that filtration is no substitute for fining and/or natural clearing. It's only really for final "polishing" of the wine(s).

Anyway, I ran 5 gallons through it as that's the capability of a set of pads. The idea being to transfer/rack/filter out the final tiny amount of sediment so that they can then sit under the stairs bulk ageing (ha! until I can make my mind up what to do with them.......)

I've got at least 1 x 1 gallon batch (heather honey mead) that is being a pain in the arse to get cleared properly. It was clearing fine, but then I back sweetened it with heather honey. That caused it to haze up again (as far as I can find out, it's not unusual for this to happen, and the haze is a "protein" haze, that in theory, will drop out over time). It was back sweetened in February and still hasn't cleared so I hit it with 2 part finings the other day. I did ask on the forums what the best solution might be, the answer being either Sparkoloid or Bentonite. Bentonite I can get at the home brew shop, but Sparkoloid doesn't seem to be available here in the UK.

It does look like something is happening as a fair amount of sediment has dropped out, whether it's enough or not I don't know. I'm probably gonna run it through the mini-jet starting with the coarsest of the filter pads and see how that comes along.

I'll report back then, as far as that's concerned. Apart from that, the mini-jet does seem to work reasonably well. Though I was quite surprised how tightly I had to screw down the pad/plate assembly, to reduce down the amount that seeps out through that assembly. It seems to have done a reasonable job on the 5 gallons I put through it. I'll know in a month or two when I check the batches to see how they're getting on ageing......

TTFN

today 10/12/10 efforts/attempts......

2010-12-10T12:55:00.001Z

Ok, so despite being stuck at home with flu (first time ever.... it's rare that I even get a cold!) for the last 2 days, I thought I'd at least try to see what's going on with the recent batches.

That'd be the elderberry melomel and the elderberry cyser. So, if you've read earlier, you'll know that I was a bit stunned to get an incredibly high gravity reading from the elderberry mel (before I watered it down to about 1.130). Well, when I checked it this morning, it was sat at a nice, pleasing, 1.010, which means that with a bit of stirring and a 2 stage nutrient addition, the Red Star Montrachet has managed a drop of 120 points - which according to Bobs chart (available over at winesathome - and no I'm not gonna link it, if you want to download it, you'll have to find it.....) that's 16.3 % ABV or thereabouts.

I ended up topping it up with some overspill from a batch that I don't recall (but managed to refrigerate and store - and it tasted ok), it's gone onto sulphite/sorbate as I don't want the possiblity that it could start to referment - it's not completely cleared yet so that's what gonna happen now.

A quick word on the taste. Yes there's some residual sweetness, that's to be expected, there's a nice fruit taste to it as well, but as the elderberry juice was quite high fruit i.e. not just the usual 3 or 4 lb per gallon made up with water, but the final 2/3rds of a gallon of steam extracted juice which was mixed with 3lb of honey, and then watered down to reduce the starting gravity, it's also got a distinct tannic bitterness to it, which I guess is natures way of showing me how high in tannins, elderberries are. They still, in my opinion, have an indistinct, generic fruit flavour (a bit like Vimto, if you've ever tasted that

The truth is that Vimto is made from a top-secret recipe, one that's been passed down from John Nichols (Vimto's creator) to us - and he said not to tell anyone! What we can tell you is that our secret formula includes a mix of three fruit juices - grape, blackcurrant and raspberry - along with a mysterious blend of 23 fruit essences, herbs and spices.

and no, I'm not a great fan, but apparently, it's quite popular up north). Though, according to some (thinking of Bob here, he says) that elderberries are good wine makers.... not so sure.

Anyway, it's probably that once it's cleared, it's gonna need to be aged for a long time, in the hope that the tannic taste will blend in......

The other batch I racked off the sediment was the cyser, well I'm gonna refer to it as elderberry cyser, because when I made it, it had a little elderberry in it (left over from whatever I was doing at the time), and thought the bit of colour might be nice. So it tastes like a dry still cider, with some notes of honey. When I racked it off the sediment I got about 1 and 1/3rd gallons, so I've split those to the same ratio and topped them up with some of the left over elderberry melomel must, to act as a back sweetener, but also just to get rid of the airspace. Both the 1 and 1/2 gallon DJ's have been treated with sorbate/sulphate, so there's shouldn't be much, if any, refermentation activity..... the gravity reading before racking was 1.000, so it still might need a bit of honey later, though I'll probably blend the 1 and 1/2 gallon quantities back together before changing anything.....

Got me thinking whether there'll be any use for Mareks suggestion the other month about using banana to improve body, as it should also add a little to the sweetness as well, though I'd probably have to strain and then filter it afterwards... Cos I definitely like the idea of making a strawberry banana melomel in the near future......

Disheartening Results.......... more thought..........

2010-11-07T08:58:00.000Z

So, ok, I've been putting more thought into what it is that I want, or are at least aiming for....

What is it then ? Well, I "think" I'm aiming for a strong(ish) mead, that has good aroma, but also a distinct honey taste. Sweet, well sweetish, though not as cloyingly/sickly sweet as the commercial meads I tasted the other year. So I'd guess something that has a final gravity of around 1.010 to 1.020 and not the 1.040 mark of the commercial ones mentioned before, they were just like drinking watered down honey.

The actual honey type may, or may not be an issue, as might the yeast(s) used. I sort of like the idea of using D21, which according to the writings of the late Brother Adam (of Buckfast Abbey, bee breeding/mead making fame) alluded to as being a good yeast for meads. But, when I dig around, there's a lot of other yeasts used, especially by the members over at Gotmead. The problem is, that apart from the "usual suspects" by Lalvin/Lallemand i.e. EC-1118, K1V-1116, D47, 71B, RC-212, they (Lalvin/Lallemand that is) do a hell of a lot of different yeasts. So which one is likely to be the best for meads like that ?

There's also the issue, of whether they're available in "home brew sized packs". A lot of them aren't, but if I could only work out the best choice, even if it's not available in home brew packs ("morewine" seem to repackage some that are normally only available in commercial size packs/quantity).

I've seen mention of DV10, ICV-D80, ICV-D254 and R2 also used successfuly in mead making (remember, that some, like RC-212 and R2 are mainly for "reds") so whether I'd need to check those out as well.

As for the honey ? Well, yes, it's possible to get honey from lots of places, plus from a lot of the reading that I've done, it suggests that the strongest tasting, darkest coloured honeys are the best for mead making. Though higher levels of alcohol and sweeter tastes suggest making meads more of a port/sherry type (not using the same techniques, just sweeter and darker etc). For anyone who reads this blog, you'll know that with the kind help of one of the members at Gotmead and a work colleague, I managed to get hold of a 14kg bucket of Buckwheat honey from Poland. Now this isn't quite like the Buckwheat I've read about in many places, it's not as dark as I'd expected, though it is darkish. Plus it's different tasting, but doesn't seem to have the "farmyard" type character I'd read about, but it is quite "malty" tasting and less of the strong honey taste you get from a lot of the blended honeys (blended for eating/cooking I'd guess).

Realistically speaking, I have to rely on what is available from Paynes, my local honey wholesaler. Who have some nice honeys, but not a huge range and nothing like the wonderfully exotic sounding honeys available from places like the Bee Folks and other wholesalers in the US.

Of course, not all of the ones available from the Bee Folks (and similar wholesalers) would lend themselves to mead making, but there's also the problem of shipping. For example, having worked my way through their website, it seems that the cheapest method of shipping would be the USPS (the United States Postal Service). So to make it anywhere near cost effective, (I've used a 5 gallon/60lb bucket of "Killer Bee" honey in my example - which would cost £153.98 at the moment) the cheapest method of shipping is "USPS Priority Mail International" and that's gonna cost £143.21 so only about £10 less than the honey (I don't mind that it might take a while to get here). So the cost of the honey would be £297.19 which equates to £4.95 per lb of honey. That's the kind of price I'd expect to pay for a "very premium" type honey, like Scottish Heather honey. But it's the cheapest way to get it from the US.

So, as you can see, all the "what's best" kind of thing is a bit of a PITA.....

Ah well, I guess I'll just plough on and try to make meads that have come out better than most of my attempts have thus far........

Disheartening Results..........

2010-11-06T15:31:00.000Z

Been a "busy bee" today, as there was about 10 or 11 gallons of various brews that needed racking etc....

So why the strange thread title ?

Well, it's one of those days where I've got the "WTF" thoughts going through my head.

Why ? Well as I was racking various brews, not many of them taste like I think they should. And I don't really know why that is.

For instance, a good few years ago, a reasonably local brewery, not only made some excellent beers (real ale type), but they also made a range of country wines. I'd tasted about 5 or 6 of these and the only way I can describe my memory of them is as "alcoholic fruit cordials".

Now a lot of my knowledge and understanding of how wines "should" be made comes from the great and good at places like Wines at Home and Gotmead etc etc.

So, what if the "wine making" methods that are taught, explained and encouraged at these excellent places, are wrong. That's not to be critical of what they're about, but the fruits and flavours used in "Country" wines aren't grapes, so why does it seem that my country wines just taste like mediocre or badly made grape wine ? Or why is it that my meads mostly have a reasonably "honey like" aroma but don't seem to reflect that in the taste ?

Of the multitude of gallon batches I've just been working with, 1 of the meads and one of the fruit wines (actually, it was mixed fruit melomel), nearly tasted like I thought they should.

Unfortunately for me, the mead was one that I'd forgotten to label, and hadn't checked properly when it was fermenting as I measured the gravity and it was sitting at 1.020 so not as sweet as a dessert mead, but certainly nowhere near dry (and probably not finished it's fermenting - which is too late now as it's been racked, sulphited, sorbated and then topped up with an unimpressive chenin blanc that I made by accident....). The mixed fruit melomel has a light almost rose colour, a good level of fruitiness to the taste, but not a lot of body. Still the taste, apart from the lack of body, was good, so it's also been racked and then I've topped it up with sour mash whisky.

Perhaps it's that I'm not as conscientious in my efforts, maybe I should make more effort to record what I do so I can repeat the recipes, maybe I should just make high alcohol meads that are then topped up with honey syrup and then left to age in bulk. Damn I just don't know.....

There was 4 other "reds" amongst the many brews, 2 of them showed a little promise, inasfaras, they actually had some taste of what they were intended to be, I could taste the black currants in the black currant melomel and the raspberry in the apple and raspberry melomel. So I've just racked them out of their respective 1 gallon jars into a 5 gallon jar, topped it up with some of the mediocre chenin blanc wine, added about a half pound of frozen black currants that I had, so I'll leave it to steep on the small amount of fruit and then I think I'll add some honey syrup at a later stage to sweeten it up and then put it away to age (after I've removed the fruit). I might even add some whisky or brandy just to up the alcohol content as well.

Last time I "went through my brews" that needed something doing to them, I just took all the ones I didn't like or weren't looking like they showed any promise and took them to a friend who has a still and chucked the lot through that, to recover the alcohol so I could fortify some other brews.... And got a telling off from Keith for being to impatient.

I suppose half the problem is that I don't know any other home brewers/home wine makers around here to compare brews. I don't even know if I'd want to compare brews, especially if it turned out that mine were a load of shit......

I'll just have to think about how (or if) I want to continue.........

First Sloes.....

2010-10-24T12:34:00.000+01:00

1 pint of gin, 1lb of Sloes, 4oz of sugar. Either prick every berry with a needle, or if like me, you're lazy, then just freeze them for a couple of days and then defrost them.

Once defrosted, mix the gin and sugar together. It'll need a quick shake daily until the sugar has dissolved (and you'll be surprised how long that can take).

Once you've got enough for a 1 gallon demi-john (about 4lb of sloes, 4 pints gin and 1lb sugar) you can add a little spices to taste. The recommended ones are allspice berries, star anise and cinnamon (not cloves as that can make it taste too much like a fruit flavoured cough syrup or similar).

If you picked your sloes early october, then the mix will be just about ready to drink by christmas. The downside of picking the sloes then, is that you can often get an acidic "green" or unripe taste that takes a while to age out. Hence I usually try to pick my fruit at the end of october (if the berries are a little soft or shrivelled, it doesn't matter - oh and the old wives tales of not picking them before the first frost, is to do with the possibility of getting the green/unripe acidity, apart from that it doesn't matter).

Me ? I like to make it now and keep it for a year, then it comes out wonderful :-P

TTFN

Burbling fool ???

2010-10-24T00:49:00.000+01:00

I hope my last two posts don't come across like the burbling of a total fool (ha! they probably do)

If that's the case, I've got an excuse. My friend and colleague Sebastian, is a Polish national. He had a week off on holiday at home with his family last week, but I hadn't seen him this week as his jobs hadn't co-incided with mine.

When I got back to the yard on friday evening, he jumped into my cab as I was reversing into the warehouse and gave me a "present from Poland".......

I wasn't quite sure what to make of it (apart from the nice thought of the gift), as I don't really drink "flavoured" vodka's.

I was a little worried that "Mint Vodka" might taste like "mouthwash", but it didn't.

It was unusual to drink (I was drinking it neat), but it didn't taste like the mouthwash I'd expected, it also wasn't quite as sweet as I was expecting as I understand that some of these flavoured vodka's can be very sweet.

No, it was good. I wouldn't necessarily try to find some to drink specifically, but if I was given another bottle, I wouldn't hesitate to pop the cap and take a big "schlug" of it.

Thanks to my friend Sebastian. It's all gone now and was much appreciated.

Different flavours etc, and other things - Sunday, October 10, 2010

2010-10-24T00:37:00.000+01:00

Marek posted a good suggestion to the above titled blog entry.....

Or maybe something like Banana. It makes great deserts, eaten raw, etc etc, but banana flavoured booze, mead or whatever..

Have you ever tried Strawbana Mead?
I made it three times and I really like it!!!
A small addition of banana to secondary is sometimes great to melomels.

So the answer would have to be no, because I'm aware that banana can be used to add flavour and/or body to a mead/melomel, but have never tried it.

I've also read recipes for "banana wine", but again, while they're on the "to do" list, haven't, as yet, tried one.

I've read about strawberry and banana going well together, but Marek's recommendation is the first one I've read.

I'm seriously thinking of adding a bit of banana to my current cyser batch that's nearly finished. At worst it might add a hint of banana (which I do enjoy), it might even help the batch finish a bit lower, as it was at about the 1010 mark when I checked it last week.

Damn this blog thing is brilliant when you get good and helpful comments like that. Thankyou very much for the input Marek. I'd probably not have considered that....

WTF? (part 2)

2010-10-24T00:27:00.000+01:00

Ok, so today, I've done a bit of experimentation. I started off taking 50mls of the very sweet/sugary melomel must, and then added 50mls of water. The gravity of that measured at about 1090 or so.

The next was 60mls of must to 40mls of water, then 70mls of must to 30mls of water etc etc.

It looked like the best mix would be about 75/25 as I still wanted reasonably high gravity, to end up with a highish alcohol level, but still quite fruity tasting.

In the end I just put the must in a fermenting bucket, and added water at 1/2 litre at at time checking the gravity in between.

I ended up making it up to about 6 litres total volume, which gave me a gravity of about 1.130, which is still a little on the high side but not unmanageably high.

I've reserved 2 x 500ml plastic beer bottles of the original must, which is sealed and in the fridge.

I've also mentioned to a friend about really wanting to use K1V-1116 yeast, but can't as I haven't got any at the moment.

I explained roughly what's available, and it seems that I'll have to check, because if I've got a pack of red start montrachet, I'll use that, if not then it'll have to be EC-1118 which I definitely have got. I don't like using champagne yeasts on musts that have a fruit element as they do seem to blow a lot of the flavour/aroma straight out the airlock during primary fermentation, but as I've got a litre of the must reserved, I can use that for topping up and/or back sweetening.

I know that this will be a batch that will need a long ageing period, but I'm prepared for that. I'm hoping that something like 3 years plus, should do the job....

WTF!

2010-10-17T12:11:00.001+01:00

Off the scale ! The hydrometer only goes up to 1.150 and that means as a "guesstimate" the must is currently sitting at about 1.165 or so.

It seems that I'll have to remove a 1/3rd to 1/2 of it and top it up with water, then ferment it dry and use the reserved bit of the must for back sweetening.....

Still, shouldn't be a problem as the honey and elderberry juice does taste pretty damn good!

What does seem a little weird, is that the elderberry juice on it's own was so high i.e. 1.120 and that the honey (3lb) only raised that to about the 1.165 - what I suppose I really mean, is that I'm suprised that the elderberry was so high and that the honey has only increased it by about 45 points, I'd have thought that the elderberry would have been lower and that the honey would have increased it more.

Not to worry, I'll water it down some and then ferment it. Then back sweeten it. That should just about maximise the fruit flavour with some sweetness.

We'll see eh!

TTFN.

Todays Purchase......

2010-10-16T13:52:00.001+01:00

A quick visit to the local honey wholesaler, has go me this 3.17kg bucket of mexican honey. Mexican honey for any reason ? yes, because I wanted a strong flavoured honey and this is one of the stronger tasting ones that he sells......

Different flavours etc, and other things.....

2010-10-10T19:06:00.001+01:00

Been reading up on some stuff about some of the different flavours that people over at Gotmead have been using.

Some of them sound excellent, but some of them sound very bizarre - well to me they do anyway......

I mean, Chocolate ? Apart from those cream based liqueurs like Baileys and other similar products, I can't get my head round why you might want to produce a Chocolate, or maybe Coffee mead.....

Surely, the whole reason why those work with the cream based liqueurs, is because of the flavour and the presence of the cream and sweetening in them ????

Or maybe something like Banana. It makes great deserts, eaten raw, etc etc, but banana flavoured booze, mead or whatever ?

I just don't get it.

Yes, I can see a bit of "novelty factor", or even the "make it, because I can" idea but I still just don't see the point.....

Of course, something like the cyser that I'm having a go at right now, well, say to have something like a stronger version of a cider (that's hard cider for those in the US), but "appley" with a honey sweetness, sounds wonderful (and hopefully my efforts will turn out like that).

Sure, I know that there's a few fruits etc that are grown for cropping in the US that are grown less so here (Pumpkin comes to mind), but why anyone might want to make a "pumpkin" flavoured mead is beyond me (hell I've never eaten a pumpkin dish that I've liked anyway - maybe that's got something to do with it).

Oh well, s'pose I'll just carry on reading about some of the weird and wonderful brews others make and continue to keep "scratching my head" over the "why" bit...

As for the "Other things" mentioned, well I've read a number of times about not adding any further "non-organic" source of nitrogen as at that stage, the yeast can't use it and that only "organic" sources of nitrogen should be used after the 1/3rd "sugar break".

For "organic" nitrogen, I've read that "yeast hulls" are good/ideal. The only snag being that I can't find them locally......... though I've read that if I boiled some yeast it produces the same thing.

So yesterday, I dug out a small tin of bread yeast that had gone out of date (probably nothing wrong with it, but it was ideal for an experiment), I added about half a pint of water into a small saucepan, heating it until it was boiling and then added the tin of yeast. I had to stir it a lot and reduce the gas so that the yeast/water mix was just simmering.

My problem is, that the term "yeast hulls" suggests something that at least resembles the tiny yeast pellets in brewing and/or bread making packs. Whereas my "boiled yeast" (I boiled it to about half it's original volume) looks like a yeast coloured sludge. Which I don't mind, because lets face it, most of the additives used in mead/wine/beer making don't look very appetising do they.....

So with the "yeast coloured sludge" image in mind, how do I work out how much to use, if at all. Damn! I'll have to go and dig round the web to see if I can find any further info on this.....

TTFN!

Cyser (Apple mead ☠ ☺) part 2.

2010-10-09T14:43:00.001+01:00

Ok, so I got a bit impatient and have just been through the very messy process of filtering/straining/pressing the juice to remove as much of the dry matter from the apples as I can.

I've still got about 10 litres or so, but am now waiting to see if the fermentation kicks in again, as the filter/press/strain thing tends to knock the guts out of it.

I'm also trying to work out how the hell I can get a rough idea of the gravity of the juice before I pitched the yeast and started the ferment.

The apple juice itself, was about 1.050 - I know that from letting the pulp sit with the sulphite and pectolase, and then managing to take a bit of a sample from below the cap of dry matter/pulp that had settled on top of some of the juice.

I also know, since I remembered to take a reading about 20 minutes ago after I did the strain/press/filter thing - it's currently back down at 1.055 (bare in mind that just the juice was at 1.050 so pretty much all the sugars in the honey have been fermented now).

I just don't know how to work out what the likely gravity the addition of the 3lb of honey to the 1.050 juice might have been - I know there's a way of working it out (albeit not very accurately), but I don't know what that method might be......

edit - I've just found a document on the net, that says "3lb of honey in a gallon gives a specific gravity of about 1.090" - so as there was about 2 gallons of juice @ about 1.050, then that would suggest that with the honey and the elderberry juice, I can make the presumption that the starting gravity would have been about the 1.095 to 1.100 range - I'm not fussed about accuracy particularly but it's nice to have a few numbers to be able to guess what's going on and how far the batch has to run - with D21 it should, theoretically, ferment dry - if I haven't managed to kill the yeast when doing the filtering/straining etc.....

Either way, I will consider the moving of the liquid during that process, it's last aeration.....

Cyser (Apple mead ☠ ☺).....

2010-10-08T21:12:00.002+01:00

So, last weekend, my partner came home with a bucket full of apples. She'd spotted some (there's quite a few around here) the day before, but on inspection, found that the ones she'd seen had been messed up/crushed/etc by the local kids. So she'd been to one of the other more accessible tree's and got these ☄ .

Some of them went into a couple of apple crumbles, which are awaiting my attention in the freezer, the rest, well after a little consideration, I decided that it might be best if I had a go at a "Cyser" which is a mead made with apple juice.

It took me an hour or so, to pick through them, rinse them off thoroughly and then chop them up a bit and put them through the food processor (a task that I don't really like as last time I used it to do something like this, I nearly burned out the bloody motor on it).

So after they were all trimmed to remove as much as possible of the bruised parts and any that had been munched by bugs, I ended up with about 6 or 7 litres of apple pulp. To this (as it looked a bit on the dry side) I decided to add a litre and a half carton of apple juice so to make it easier to mix in some sulphite (campden tablets, crushed) and some Pectolase (pectic enzyme).

This was then left until wednesday evening. I decided that I needed to do something with it. As I didn't have sufficient of any other type, I took 3lb of the Polish Buckwheat honey and mixed that in, along with about a litre of elderberry juice (the sulphite had "bleached" any minor oxidation/browning from the apple pulp on sunday evening, but I thought it might be nice if there was a colour other than "appley/cider" brown - in any event, it would add some tannin and other non-honey and apple flavour).

Through choice I would have added K1V-1116 yeast, as it has the "killer" property and would have easily become the dominant yeast (and yes, I'd taken as much precautions of sanitising all the kit as I practicably could). So when I found that I've run out of that at the moment, I decided to use D21 (got plenty of that at the moment..... thankyou Keith, you're a star). That was rehydrated in water, but as I was getting tired, I'd forgotten to use any GoFerm when rehydrating the yeast. So when the yeast had had 15 or 20 minutes at less than the 40 degrees C the packets mention I chucked it in - along with about a half teaspoon of GoFerm and gave it a good stirring to.

Thursday morning, I come down to breakfast only to find that I was glad I'd left the bucket in the sink as it had foamed like hell, blocking the airlock and actually forcing the lid off the bucket......

So after a bit of a mad panic to clean up the mess and some "emergency sanitising", I then gave it a damn good stir/aeration and then syphoned the must, pulp and all, into a 12/13 litre water bottle and then airlocked it, finally leaving it in a sink full of cold water in the hope that the cold water would reduce the temperature of the must/ferment enough to stop it foaming and popping the bung/airlock a second time (Oh and during all the mess - I found no signs of any fruit/fermentation flies, so I presumed that I was safe).

On getting back from work on thursday evening, I found that my attempt had worked, and that the pulp was starting to separate nicely. So I just gave it all a good swirl.

This evening, I got home and it looked basically like this........

Now the only difference between that picture and how it looked is that I took this picture after I'd managed to get enough liquid from below the crust of separating pulp to measure the gravity (it was 1085) and then gave it a damned good stir/aeration and then weighed out 5 grammes of FermaidK and 2.5 grammes of DAP, both of which were added to the 100 mls that was used to check the gravity and mixed in thoroughly before being added to the main body of the must - which was then given a further good stirring and aeration.

So far, the only thing I haven't managed to do, was to check the gravity after the honey and elderberry juice was added to the apple pulp - I did manage to get a measurement from the apple pulp/juice, that was 1050, but I have no way of really knowing what the gravity was before I pitched the yeast - I should have let it stand to separate the pulp enough to measure it..... I didn't.

I'm gonna post a question over at Gotmead, as I understand that there is a way of getting an approximation, from the ingredients alone, but I won't know until I've posted the question.......

Todays "master plan" 2 .......

2010-10-02T16:15:00.000+01:00

Not bad, if I do say so myself. From memory, it was made using one of "CJJ's" recipes from his "First Steps in Wine Making" book, though as Bob over at Wines at Home says, a lot of his recipes do seem to come out very sweet.

Yes, it does taste sweet, almost sugary, but also alcoholic enough (I'll know once I've got pissed enough). The colour doesn't show well in the photo as it's a dull day outside. It's actually a "dark white/hint of rose/pink" in colour (don't forget, canned strawberries aren't as red looking as fresh ones).

So, yes, the bag in a box setup did work, well sort of. My partner had to call me downstairs, as I'd left it to do it's thing i.e. run through the filter into the box/wine bladder, but while I was typing the previous post, it still managed to leak out from somewhere and as a result, it's managed to soak the bottom of the box - fuck!

Just goes to show that even when putting wine in a bag in a box, it pays to have patience and keep an eye on it...... Next time (I bought 2 kits) I'll have to filter the wine into a glass or plastic receptacle and then syphon it into the bag.......

So even the best of "master plans" can go to a sack of shit if not carried out properly. I'll only know it's true worth, if it doesn't oxidise while I'm drinking it.....

Pip pip!

Todays "master plan".......

2010-10-02T15:39:00.000+01:00

Ha! Ok, so I'm getting nagged a bit as there's too much WIP.... a.k.a. wines in progress littering the dining room floor (well it wasn't until "she" decided the dining room needed a change round and all of a sudden the wine isn't just "out the way" etc).

So, what to do?

Well, some of it needs to be aged for longer, some is still clearing, some needs filtering and dare I say it, bottling.........

Bottling????? Aaaaaarrrrrrrggggggghhhhhhhh! The bain of the wine maker (unless you make huge quantities and have some bottling machines to make life easy..... like an ozone generator and plenty of money for bottles by the pallet, etc etc).....

Anyway, I went out with the intention of pillaging some of the local flora for the last of the elderberries, but it started to rain (still is), so I diverted to the local HBS for kit and ideas...

The kit was some plastic bottles and ascorbic acid to put the gallon of steam extracted elderberry juice in (some that I did 2 weekends ago, sorry, forgot to do a write up/article on that).

While at the HBS, inspiration struck, with "how the hell do I get out of having to piss around sanitising bloody bottles etc" ? The inspiration was a small display of "Bag in a box" kits.

You get a flat packed box, an "aluminiumised" plastic wine bladder and a tap.

It's a shit photo but here you are.......

That's the "aluminiumised" bag, with the box behind and the tap in front, the gallon of wine chosen to test drive (an 08 Canned Strawberry) and on the left is the gravity filter unit (an old boots one, not the more up to date "Harris" one - I can still get the filters so it'll do as I was given it by my aunt).

This picture shows the box made up from flat, with the wine bladder in place and the wine is filtering straight into it.

This (one of my less artistic efforts - crap camera work, but it was with my phone) shows the path from DJ down through the filter to the "bag in a box" setup.

Now, I should mention that this is a bit of a pain to do, but it's infinitely better than having to de-label old wine bottles (too tight to buy new ones), then clean them, rinse, sanitise and drain them (you will, if you've got the wine properly cleared, racked and filtered, get a full 6 bottles to the gallon, though in reality 5 and a half).

So, the "master plan" is by using the "bag in a box" kit, the wine has all air removed by holding the tap open and squishing the bag until some wine comes out. Then as the wine is dispensed by the glass, the bag sucks in on itself until it's nearly empty, by which time you just pour yourself the last bit into a glass. Thereby reducing the chance of getting any air into it and oxidation problems that you get by having a part opened bottle of wine.

The same thing can be done by using a "cornelius" keg system, which is pressurised with an inert gas (not CO2 as that is absorbed by the wine and you get a sparkling/fizzy wine, where you'd have wanted a still wine), which will have purged all the air/O2 but also provided enough pressure to dispense the wine. The difference is that a bag in a box kit is about a fiver, a "corny keg" even second hand/used will cost considerably more (seen them go for 30 quid plus on ebay).

Right, I'll close this for the moment so I can go and check to see if the wine has finished running through the filter (it's the one thing that's a bit of a pain, as the filter pad gets blocked by sediment, the slower it runs.... unless you have a mini-jet pump/filter device or similar)...

Will edit and update with a picture of the wine - which does smell of canned strawberry but I have no concept of what it'll taste like......

Some of my meads (and other stuff)......

2010-09-25T16:51:00.002+01:00

Ok, this is what some of my means look like once made, racked, filtered and possible topped up.

Without getting them out from under the stairs again, that's (from L to R) "Greek" honey (nice and cheap from the local brand of Lidl), then Winter mead (recipe found on the net), a traditional type made with Oklahoma Wild Flower honey (thanks Keith, it's lovely honey) and a modified JAO recipe, though made with lemon and lime instead of orange.

As you can tell from my earlier post, I wasn't sure what to do, so I thought "fuck it" and just ran them through my gravity filter and made sure that they were topped up to the brim and then just put them away for ageing (the JAO, Winter and Greek are already about 2 years old).

It remains to be seen whether they improve any further........

Of the other wines/meads etc, I'm gonna continue racking, filtering etc, but not until I've got a "bag in a box" set up. So then I don't need to bottle any of the fruit wines that are a couple of years old, just get them used up......

I think I'll also end up making up the last few 1 gallon batches, but then move over to making less batches, but 5 gallon ones, instead of the smaller ones. It's a lot of effort and messing about for just 5 or possibly 6 bottles........

Occasional moments of confusion and indecision.....

2010-09-25T13:38:00.000+01:00

Ok, so here's where I'm at........

I have a number of 1 gallon batches, some need bottling, some need racking, some need...... well something.......

I don't really want to bottle what needs bottling, because I like bulk ageing meads, I also like how they look in a 1 gallon glass demi-john jar.

So what's the problem?

Well, if I rack the ones that need racking then there's always some racking loses, so you'd normally top them up with something. Water ? Well I don't want to reduce the body of a finished mead/wine/whatever, or reduce the alcohol content. I can use "a similar mead/wine", but I don't really have anything that will do the job.

Then there's the ones that need bottling. My enolmatic vacuum bottler and it's associated filter tend to lose more than if I used something like a "Harris filter" type device - I actually have the older "Boots" filter, but I'm still not a big fan of those as they seem to rely on sitting on top of a demi-john 1 gallon jar, and the wine then splashes into the receiving jar below. I don't like the idea of splashing the wines as it can lead to oxidisation (yes I know that meads don't tend to suffer as badly as other wines, I still don't like the idea......)

What the hell, I might just do that anyway and then just top them up with some of the chenin blanc "panic" wine - it might change the flavour a bit but does that really matter ??? As once it's filtered etc it'll just be put away to age (forgotten about ;-D ).......

Damn! I don't know, I just can't make my mind up what to do next.......

I just want to do something, because then I can start again, and hopefully try and be considerably more organised than I have been up to now..........

Blackcurrant Melomel (clearing out the fridge.....)

2010-09-11T15:45:00.000+01:00

Blackcurrant Melomel (soon)

Ok, so one of the things that Clare wants to do over the weekend is to make me some "Lemon curd". Which is wonderful (nice that she's making it and nice to eat, on bread and butter :-p ).

So after having a look at our stock of empty jars (jam, honey, pickles etc etc), we find that we're running low on them.

I remembered that after last years visit to the local PYO, we came home with 6 or 7 pounds of fruit (don't recall the exact amount) and I promptly put it all through the steam juice extractor (reduces the size/volume of original fruit - excellent for "red" type fruit) and jarred it, the jars went straight into the fridge once cooled.

I also had the last of the 6 jars of generic Polish honey that my friend Sebastian brought over with him, last year or the year before. The were all crystalised anyway and would need warming through to use.

So I figured that as Clare needed some empty jars and I'd been thinking about what to make next, presented an opportunity/idea. Black currant Melomel.

Now I love black currant anyway, so the picture is showing the empty honey jar (1.3kg size), the last of the re-sealable jars of steam extracted black currant juice and the bucket being used as the primary fermenter (containing the honey from the jar, a jar of juice the same size as in the picture and 3 x 1lb jars of fruit juice).

The reason why I haven't put all the black currant juice in, is that I'm going to ferment this, but once it's finished and racked off the lees, I'll add the last of the juice to make it more fruity/black currant in flavour. The honey taste is less important as it's nice tasting but it's processed and of unknown provenance.

I haven't taken a gravity reading yet, just mixed up the honey, black currant juice and made it up to just over a gallon with water. That in turn, has had about 2 teaspoons of pectic enzyme and 1 crushed campden tablet whisked into it.

I'll leave this for 24 or maybe even 48 hours for the pectic enzyme to do it's thing, as the BC juice seemed a little thicker than I remember, and while it tasted fine, it's probably set a little pectin from when the juice was being extracted, hence the 2 tsp per gallon amount used (I'll probably have to add more once I add the rest of the juice anyway.....)

I haven't decided on which yeast yet, though as black currants are a malic fruit, it might be sensible to use 71B, due to it's property of being able to metabolise some of the malic acid. I'm also in 2 minds as to whether I really need to add any tannins as there's gonna be some in the fruit juice.

Finally, whether this ends up as a 1 or 2 gallon batch is dependant on the gravity when I measure it today or tomorrow.

TTFN!

Batch news......

2010-09-09T20:30:00.002+01:00

So, I decided to check to see how the latest batch was getting on (the Oklahoma Wildflower mead batch that is).

It started at a gravity of 1120, now with the presumption that finished is 1000, the 120 point drop would be, as far as I can work out (shit at maths) 16.3% ABV.

The yeast I've used (Lalvins D21) is apparently good for 16%, though maybe, with a little luck, it could go higher.

Where was I, Oh yes, so after carefully suspending the hydrometer in the batch (fully sanitised of course), it said that it had a gravity of 1070, which is actually a little lower than the 1080 1/3rd sugar break. Not to worry, it's close enough.

So I figured it was time to add the rest of the nutrients, and as per previous posts, the guidance I'd been given suggested that 2 grammes of the DAP and 4 grammes of Fermaid-K would be in order.

Now I was thinking about this today and I remembered what it was that I left out of the batch so far, that would be any acid addition and tannin of some sort. So I thought that this batch should now be stable enough to take the last pint that was taken out to give it some head space, and hatched the master plan of putting the pint of honey/water must into the liquidiser and then adding the nutrients, acid and tannin. Lots of sanitising spray and that went smoothly (the whole lot was the colour of the "head" in the milk bottle on the left of the main DJ).

So I carefully put the DJ in the sink, and start adding the mixed/aerated must and nutrient/minerals to it. It wasn't one of those fast "fuck fuck fuck" type foam eruptions, it was a slow but steady one that ended up with me having to sanitise the turkey baster in a rush and use it to suck out some of the foam.

For the moment, I've re-air locked it and put the rest of the must/minerals etc back into the milk bottle so the foam can settle out of that and I'll have another go at gently pouring it into the DJ when I get up for work.

So, TTFN

New Batch ingredients - extra info

2010-09-05T13:58:00.004+01:00

Ok, so this morning, its obviously finished it's "lag phase". So, because I wasn't sure about how to work out it's exact nutrient requirements, I posted a question at Gotmead and "Medsen Fey" was kind enough to post this response.

"I really like the approach Wayneb describes in This Post. For D21, you have a medium nutrient requiring yeast, and you are starting at 28 Brix which is moderately high. I'd probably shoot for around 350 ppm YAN. There is a YAN calculator that has been put together, but it generates numbers that are quite high, and even I get a little timid about adding that much. Of course, I used to be timid about adding the amount hightest recommends, and now I find that isn't enough in most cases.

In any case:
1 gram of DAP per Imperial Gallon gives 46 ppm YAN
1 gram of Fermaid K per Imperial Gallon gives about 22 ppm YAN

Typically, I like a 2/3 Fermaid K, 1/3 DAP mix to ensure plenty of micronutrients and yeast hulls. So using 8 grams of Fermaid K and 4 grams of DAP would give about 360 ppm YAN. The honey itself may provide 10-20 ppm. That is the way I approach nutrient additions."

So I've followed that guidance (not that I understand how to use the YAN (Yeast Assimilative Nitrogen) calculator, so initially it's had 4 grammes of FermaidK and 2 grammes of the Ritchies yeast nutrient (Diammonium Phosphate and something else that I forget the name of - but I'll include it when I've looked it up).

I'm quite glad that I took a pint out of it and then when it was time to give it a stir to aerate it, that I stood it in the sink as I got an excellent foam eruption out of it. The picture shows it after it's settled down again. I'll check the gravity before I aerate it this evening to see how it's getting on, the intention being that I want it to hit the 1/3 rd sugar break before adding the second half of the nutrients.

TTFN

Apples in season, pressing etc etc......

2010-09-05T11:12:00.000+01:00

It's often been a bit of a nuisance when the apples are in season, as I'd dearly love to be able to make use of some.

Whether it's for apple wine, cider or whatever.

Part of what stops me is the price of the kit this should give you some idea of the costs.... very nice, but IMO, over priced.....

Whereas, I recently found this absolute fucking master stroke it's simplicity is brilliant especially if you look further around the net to find the designs for making a press from some framing, pressing boards and a hydraulic bottle type car jack. Or even a smallish, machine shop hydraulic press. You can obtain something like 10 tonnes pressure on the pulp.

The idea of using a "garbage disposal unit" for a grinder is brilliant. Giving a nice, even, "apple sauce" type pommace ready for wrapping up as a "cheese", ready for pressing.

The only downside of that link is the constantly annoying reference of pressed apple juice as "cider". That's more of a language barrier thing between the UK and US (we speak English, they speak "American" - similar, yet very different). It doesn't matter whether the apple juice is clear or cloudy, it's still fucking apple juice. If it's then fermented, it's fucking cider, not "hard cider", just fucking cider!!!!!

Hey ho! be a boring place if we all spoke the same......... Either way, "his" idea and suggestion are, IMO, brilliant......

TTFN!

New Batch ingredients

2010-09-04T12:05:00.003+01:00

In an earlier post (about treasure) I showed some stuff that Keith was kind enough to send over for me. In the picture is the remainder of the Oklahoma Wild flower honey mixed up to a gallon (imperial) with water (nothing special, just tap water).

To work out how to proceed, I've taken a gravity reading which tells me that it's quite high, at 1120. So presuming a drop to 1000 to consider the ferment finished, that should give me about 16.3 %ABV.

There was about four and a half pounds in weight of the honey left so I figured I'd just make it up "as is" and just age it.

Hence it doesn't really matter if it ends up with an "alcohol hot" taste when the ferment has finished.

As I had no idea what the gravity would end up at, I wasn't sure what yeast I would use, but as its 1120, I'll just run with some D21.

The intention is to rehydrate the yeast with some GoFerm and then add FermaidK and some DAP once the lag phase has finished.

I'll be aerating it twice a day to the 1/3rd sugar break (1080 in this case).

D21 is listed as having moderate nutrient needs so I'll be checking the mead calculator over at Gotmead to make sure about the nutrient requirements.

Will it taste like shit ?

2010-08-29T22:48:00.000+01:00

Raspberry Melomel

Ok, so I've just racked the raspberry melomel that I mentioned in an earlier post. I'd been a bit lazy, but also a bit pressed for time recently and it was left in the bucket with too much air space, though in truth most of that air space will have been CO2, not just air.....

So, from memory, it was initially 1.3kg of blended Polish honey, some steam extracted raspberry juice and some red grape juice. The yeast ? from memory it was Lalvins 71B.

Now when it was nearly finished, I added about another 600 to 700 grammes of honey (actually what was left in a jar that I'd been using for other stuff - about half a jar).

That went in and I left it, then when I tested it to see if it was finished, it was just below 1.000, about 0.998 or something like that. So then I thought about making it a bit more "raspberryish" as the whole point of the exercise was so that it didn't taste so much of the blended honey.

So I pinched a bag of frozen raspberries out of the freezer and chucked them in too.

Now as I already said I want it more raspberryish tasting. I finally found a few minutes to get it racked, not really to remove all the yeast etc, but to get it off the fruit and start it clearing. With that in mind, I did rack it reasonably carefully but it's still very cloudy as you can see. I got that gallon in the picture and another 750ml wine bottle full (the wine bottle full is in the fridge - because when I checked it - it was showing a gravity of about 1.005 which is where I want it but in a wine bottle I don't want it starting to re-ferment if it should warm up a little.

I did take a taste of the little bit that was left in the bottom of the test/sample jar - hard to tell how it's gonna finish really as it's very yeasty tasting etc.

The gallon in the picture was racked onto a half teaspoon of stabiliser/sorbate and 1 crushed campden tablet.

Why I've posed the question of "will it taste like shit", I know that I haven't made many fruit meads/melomels and those I have done haven't in my view been that successful. Well, Ok, maybe they were, but they didn't come out how I expected them too - I haven't managed to find any commercially made fruit meads/melomels to compare to so I really don't know. Hence not knowing whether they're any good or not .............

One thing I did do, was before flushing all the pulp/fruit, was to pick out a raspberry and taste it. I now understand what is meant by seed bitterness. There was a bit of raspberry taste left, but not much, but I got a distinct bitterness taste as I squashed the fruit in my mouth. Strange, as I'd never associated raspberries with being bitter. Sharp and/or acid yes, but not bitter.

I only knew of that from reading stuff.

I'm thinking that if it stays tasting like it does now (not the yeast element, but the rest staying the same) what will it taste like after it's aged ? Should I just say bollocks to it and back sweeten it once it's clear ? I'm quite happy to do that with honey as any tiny amount of yeast sediment that continues to drop out is gonna be 71B which is, as I understand it, Ok for ageing a wine/mead on.

After all, I won't be drinking it for a while anyway. Maybe I should just stick a couple of teaspoons of malt extract into it ? Or sugar syrup ?

It doesn't taste very acidic as the yeast metabolises some of the malic acid in the raspberry, so it's possible that I might still need to add a little of that as well.

Hum ? still a bit of a quandary eh! Maybe I'll just see if the bottle full in the fridge has dropped most of it's sediment and then experiment a bit with it, even though it's really there for topping up........

It's supposed to be 6 bottles to the gallon so if I started with pouring off the mead once it's cleared/cold crashed a bit, then I might just try 1/8th teaspoon of acid and then about the same of malt extract to see how that works. If it gives some sort of improvement (well to my taste anyway) that'll do.

I really don't understand why it is that I "don't get" this mead making with fruit etc, it just seems wrong to my way of thinking. Sure I know that lots of people make them like that and I have to presume successfully as well - it's just that I don't get it.........

Right, off to put some more thought into this......

Novelty Air Lock.......

2010-08-28T08:58:00.000+01:00

One of the newer members over at gotmead obviously decided to make a batch of "JAO" and then took the "use a balloon with a pinhole in it for the airlock" just a little further than normal.

Hence my thread title of "novelty airlock". If it works, then WTF! eh ?

TTFN

Mystery liquid & Steam extracted raspberry......update

2010-07-31T10:51:00.000+01:00

Ok, so the post from last weekend (24th) where I showed pictures of the mystery liquid and the raspberries in the steam extractor..... the mystery liquid (1.3kg of Polish blended honey and 1 litre of red grape juice) was mixed with the extracted raspberry juice for a "Raspberry Melomel".

On either tuesday (or was it wednesday) evening, I checked to see how it was progressing. The initial gravity on the weekend (Sunday, I think) was about 1090, and allowing for a total drop to 1000 (a drop of 90 points), that would have given me a %ABV of about 12.2, but as it had dropped quite quickly to about 1045 in 2 or 3 days, I added about another 600 grammes of the honey (Polish blended honey - happened to have just under a half jar sitting there) to the ferment and also a teaspoon of FermaidK. What I didn't do, was take a gravity reading of the must after the extra ingredients were added.....

I've just been and checked how it's getting on and while I don't know how much the gravity might have been increased with the extra honey, the ferment is now showing that it's back down to 1035 and there's still a nice view of tiny bubbles showing on the surface, so I'll leave it be now to see where it stops.

It's very likely that it will finish with some residual sugar, which is sort of what I'm aiming for anyway - though whether or not I add tannin to the finished ferment will also depend on the finished taste. The residual sugar will mean that I don't need to think about back sweetening. Plus once I'm happy it has finished fermenting, it'll be sorbated and sulphited to allow it to then settle/clear naturally. I made this up in a bucket as I'd like to make sure that it produces the 6 bottles to the gallon that you don't normally get as you do get racking losses - which will be negated as it should through a reasonable sediment in the bucket. I won't bother moving it to a DJ just yet, as the ferment should produce enough CO2 to prevent any oxidation.

Hopefully that lot makes sense.

Oh, and I don't recall whether I mentioned that I used Lalvin 71B-1122 yeast in this batch, mainly because raspberry is a "malic" fruit and the 71B will metabolise some of that, which should prevent any malolactic fermentation (not always a bad thing of course).

TTFN!

Further to Saturday 24th entry.....

2010-07-25T21:57:00.000+01:00

This evening, I took the honey/grape juice/raspberry juice mix and made it up to a gallon (well 5 litres really) and then took a reading to see what needed doing to it.

I was surprised that it was "only" about 1090, so because I don't want it too acidic and that raspberry can often be quite overpowering on it's own, I've just pitched Lalvin's 71B yeast.

71B only has a 14% tolerance but I'm hoping that it should ferment dry, I'll have to check the numbers to see what I need in total gravity drop to attain 14%. If I have to feed it a little more honey, then that's not an issue. The 71B was used dry as I don't want it to kick in too quickly, but also 71B can metabolise some of the malic acid from the raspberries.

So I'm hoping that when I get home on tuesday, it should be showing some signs of fermentation........

More Treasure (4/7/10) - Mareks suggestion........

2010-07-25T10:39:00.000+01:00

Thanks for the idea about making a Trójniak instead of the Czwórniak Marek, I'll look into that and try and understand what it entails.

It's just that from reading the descriptions for the Czwórniak, it looked easier for a first attempt than the Trójniak, but I'll certainly check to see what the difference is (apart from the honey/water ratio). I'd only be making a gallon batch as it, to me, is very much an experiment.

It may even come down to having to working within the contraints of how much honey is needed, because I was considering making a 5 gallon batch of a traditional recipe, which is feasible using about 3 and 1/2 lb of honey to the gallon with possible a pound or two for back sweetening - just to retain the full flavour of the buckwheat - and still have enough left over to be able to try a few other recipes as well that include some buckwheat in them.

I'm certainly not going to rush into this, as I don't want to waste a single gramme of this brilliant, if unusual (to me) honey. It's a wonderful opportunity to learn a bit about something that's normally out of my reach (the honey type that is).....

Yet again, I can't thank you enough for the assistance in getting it. Absolutely marvellous.......

Right, off to read up on the differences between the two mead types......

2010-07-24T14:03:00.000+01:00


Todays effort of finally removing the fruit!

Well, today, prompted by our picking of some raspberries, has been a bit "spur of the moment".

To start with, after we'd picked the fruit, I decided it was time to make a bit of space. The resulting picture is what's left of last years efforts of making sloe gin.

I started with picking the sloes, then dug round the net to find a recipe. The one I picked was 1lb of sloes, 1 pint of gin and 8oz of sugar - I was a little concerned about that much sugar, so after asking a few people, I decided to change it to 5oz of sugar - mainly on the basis that it's a piece of piss to add more sugar if it needed it but it's a bugger to remove it if it's too sweet.

So, the mix was made, though I didn't waste my time individually pricking the fruit with a pin, I just froze it for a couple of days and then defrosted it enough to be able to pour it into the jar (picture later) and then add the sugar and gin - I did actually add a little cinnamon bark as well to give it (hopefully) just a hint of the spices.

I'd had some out of the jar, but the picture is of what's left - me being quietly pleased as after about a month or so (possibly as long as 2) it was good IMO, though some might have thought it a little sharp/sherberty tasting/acid.

I can reassure any reader that the acid/sharpness has mellowed quite well, hence it's been moved to the 1 gallon jar/demi-john and the 3 bottles (plus there was about a further 1/2 a pint so I've drunk that mixed 50/50 with lemonade, and now have quite a buzz as I type this...

Remaining fruit after it's been drained.

Ok, so here's the remaining fruit. There was about 16lb in total before it went into the gin etc. I've tried taking a bite to see what it's like, as it's possible to make jam etc from it, what with the sloes/blackthorn plant being related to plums (same genus - prunus).

I've decided that I don't want to do that, so it's gonna end up in the steam juice extractor, to remove any further flavour/juice/colour. Which will then be preserved in a jar so it can go into something later......

Raspberries in the steam extractor.

Here's what happening to the raspberries, they're being steamed in the juice extractor, which is also the ultimate destination of the sloes above as well.

I'm extracting the juice, because we haven't got enough space in the freezer for the fruit at the moment, plus if I extract the juice, I can use it to make a batch of raspberry melomel.

Mystery liquid ?

Ok, so what's this ? Well as you can see from the picture above, the raspberries are going into a batch to be made as "Raspberry Melomel".

Now it's fair to point out, that raspberry can be quite over powering if just used as a flavouring on it's own. So as there's about 2 or 3 kg of fruit in the steamer, this picture shows 1.3 kg of honey (part of what's left of the 6 or was it 7 jars of honey that my friend Sebastian brought me back from Poland on a trip home.

The honey isn't really anything remarkable, other than the 1.3 kg (about 3lb) jars as that's a bit larger than we normally see here in the UK - our normal jars being 1lb/454g in weight. Plus I've added 1 litre of red grape juice, not sure why, but it seemed like a good idea at the time, and as I suspect that with the honey and grape juice, once I've added the extracted raspberry juice it'll be too high a gravity for a 1 gallon batch, so I'll have to make it up to 1.5 or 2 gallons - only time and the hydrometer will tell.

I've already added 2 tsp of "Pectolase" pectic enzyme, because it's got the red grape juice, and will eventually (after extraction/cooling) get the raspberry juice as well. It might as well have a couple of days to do it's thing to reduce the chance of a pectin haze.......

The ultimate plan, is, allowing for the raspberry juice being quite powerful and only having grape juice and honey in it, I expect to have to make this quite a high alcohol batch, so it's likely to come out as a bit "medicinal" to start with, and hopefully a strong raspberry flavour, so I'll have to back sweeten it. I don't want to make it a "dessert" melomel if I can help it, but if I can finish it so it tastes like an alcoholic raspberry cordial then that'd be brilliant.

This is the first time I've actually thought about how I want the end result to be, rather than just throwing the ingredients into a fermenter and letting them do their thing and see what comes out at the end........

Ok that's about it for the moment........

TTFN!

Elderberry melomel...almost in season!

2010-07-22T00:12:00.001+01:00

Elderberry season is almost here, so is one of my favorite meads, elderberry melomel. Employ the same backsweetening method as with concord pyment.

It is easy to pick 33 lbs wild elderberries in a day, we did in 2008. Dried elderberries at the health food store or wine shop are $20/lb, you do the math? I'm drinking elderberry melomel and grinning all the way to the bank...I mean cellar!

After 4 weeks ferment of a classic mead, toss into the carboy about 1 lb ripe elderberries per gallon of mead. Sweeten with chenin blanc for a honey/elderberry delight. As I convinced Fatbloke chenin blanc backsweetening will taste more like honey, than actually backsweeting with honey....FACT!

The elderberries pictured are not ready, as the berry heads will droop towards the ground when ripe. Destem them with a fork after freezing them overnight. DO NOT LEAVE THEM IN FREEZER as I did...they will freezer burn easily. Elderberries are used to accent many different wines, besides making an excellent melomel alone.

All my mead recipes should age for 2 years, but rarely do they last that long. A 4 year old elderberry is to die for...TRUELY an exquisite desert melomel.

ARISTAEUS

Apology to Steven

2010-07-21T19:16:00.000+01:00

There was a comment posted by Steven, on the blog entry dated 13/2/10......

Fatbloke,
You said you were using some of the grape concentrate to top up meads made a year ago. Couldn't this restart fermentation of perhaps change the flavor profile of the meads?
Steve

So, sorry mate, I didn't see it, and only spotted it today..... my bad!

In response to your question, Yes, it's entirely possible that using a flavouring like a grape concentrate could change the flavour profile. Though if you think about it, it depends entirely on the flavour of the top up liquid. This is an idea from Keith. He originally suggested the use of Chenin Blanc grape concentrate as it has distinct "honey like" qualities. It cost me nearly £70 to learn that he was absolutely spot on (the only way of getting Chenin Blanc easily here, it to get a kit and use the "juice" from that).

Sure it's grape juice/concentrate, but when I took a little taste it was very like tasting watered down honey. Of course, there's a few "pro's and con's" to everything. The pro's, to me, are that you're putting something in that tastes not unsimilar to how you'd expect a mead to taste. Also, if it's concentrate, it will add a little more body/mouth feel. There's also the possibility, that depending on what it is that you're topping up with, that you might also lighten/darken the colour as well.

Ok, so I think that makes sense.

The con/con's ? Well yes, it's possible that it could indeed restart a fermentation. Though if you've finished the fermentation stage and done the usual "sorbate/sulphite" stage as well, that should, pretty much, prevent that from happening. Also, if you've filtered the mead, that can (depending on the filter size/gauge) remove some yeast cells. I personally am happy to filter, but not using a "sterile"/ultra fine element - of the 0.25 micron size. I like to use either 1 or 0.5 micron sized elements - so I try to make sure that I don't forget the sorbate/sulphite stage.

A point in fact, is how much you're actually adding, as to the effect it will have on flavour. If, for example, you're in the habit of racking until you start to get some of the lees through the racking cane/syphon - then the last bit of liquid is poured off, into a tall, thin container, then refrigerate that. You'll find that in a couple of days, you can easily remove more clear, or relatively so, wine/mead. Thereby minimising any racking losses. For each gallon, you're gonna lose what, 1/4 of a pint, probably not even that. So if the flavour of the top up is even vaguely close, it's unlikely to affect the flavour of the wine/mead too much.

You might actually be doing something to deliberately change the flavour, like using brandy or whiskey to top it up, that will change the taste. It's also "fortifying" the wine/mead, so might then need time for the "new" flavour to develop.....
Of course, there's always gonna be exceptions to the rule, and in this case, you might intentionally want to restart fermentation, to produce a sparkling mead. So that being the case, then I'd just have cleared/racked it in the usual way, leaving out the sulphite/sorbate stage and then added the grape juice/concentrate.

I understand that Keith is a great believer, in just making a basic mead, getting the fermentation going and then working out how to add any other flavours you might want.

That might entail things like after primary fermentation has started and you've then moved to secondary (one of the good reasons for using a bucket for secondary ferment) then you want it to have a fruit flavour, so you can either ferment on the pulp and by that I mean add the fruit in a muslin/cheese cloth type bag and then putting it in the secondary ferment. Or just crushing/squashing the fruit and putting it in directly - if it's the sort of fruit that just goes to mush, I try to use a bag, otherwise you can easily end up with it being a complete PITA to rack off the lees/fruit pulp. Or you can extract the fruit juice in some way and add it at the same time.

I like to do that with my steam extractor for all fruit, except the ones that give a "cooked" taste if heat treated (the steam extractor is brilliant for "red" fruits - Apples and kiwi fruit are two examples that you can't used steam on, they both give a pronounced "cooked" flavour if you do).

I also like to hold some of the fruit flavour back, as I've learned and found that if it's added after the ferment has finished, you get more of a fruity taste that doesn't get diminished/reduced by the action of the yeast doing it's ferment thing - it can also help with making the mead ready to drink quicker........sugar/sweetness, can often cover "a multitude of sins"......

Hopefully that gives you a clear enough answer to the point I was trying (badly) to make.......

TTFN!

p.s. and sorry if that answer seems a bit "disjointed" I was trying to make it all clear but kept having other ideas/suggestions - so made extensive using of "cut 'n paste"....

Concord Pyment....backsweeten method.

2010-07-21T08:13:00.000+01:00

Making your favorite pyments and melomels just got easier. Just make your mead and backsweeten with properly pasturized or frozen fruits or grapes.

Concord Grape Recipe:

6 gallon carboy

1 gallon Oakiehoma wildflower honey
1 6 oz can of frozen lemonaid juice or 3 juice lemons
1/4 teaspoon of potassium metabisulfite or 4 campden tablets
1 packet 5g Pasteur Champagne yeast or Montrachet or Lavlin 1116
3.5 gallon filtered water 70F/21C - 80F/26C
1 teaspoon yeast nutrient/energizer, (yeast hull/DAP diammonium phosphate)
1 teaspoon acid blend

Prepare yeast starter in 1 litre or 1 quart of water and lemonaid or lemon juice.

Pasturize honey and water by heating to 140F/60C for 5 minutes or 170F/77C for 3 minutes.

Mix all these ingredients EXCEPT YEAST starter, let stand 24 hours, then add yeast starter to 70F/21C must, stir vigorously.

Stir lightly twice daily, after 4 weeks or when fermentation finishes rack into a new sterile carboy and add 1 gallon crushed concord grapes. It should start fermenting again, if not add more yeast; rehydrate yeast for 2 hours, then pitch into must and stir lightly.

After 4 more weeks second fermention, rack into new sterile carboy. Add and stir 1/2 teaspoon of potassium metabisulfite to new carboy before last backsweetening to prohibit additional fermentation. Or 5 campden tablets and stir.

You may add concentrate juices and/or sugar to sweeten to taste. The high gravity/acids make for a pyment that will carry a very sweet taste.

Do not add potassium sobate as it will give concord an off flavor.

I just added 10 gallon crushed concord grapes to 30 gallon of mead. Additions of (3 to 1 water to juice concentrate) concord concentrate will be used to further sweeten after crushed concord grapes second fermention.

It will be a tawny/sweet (port style) pyment you will enjoy serving.

ARISTAEUS

Still trying......

2010-07-20T20:07:00.001+01:00

Well, I have no idea whether this will work or not, because I thought I'd managed to suss the correct method of posting to the blog from a mobile device.

Ideally, it's working out how it's done so Keith can post to from his mobile/cell/PDA - being in very rural Oklahoma, he's limited by bandwidth/equipment issues and has to operate from a PDA - but it'd be good to work this out as I really believe he has some brilliant info/guidance/advice about home brewing of wines and meads....

Oh well, here goes

Ho ho ho!

2010-07-20T05:35:00.001+01:00

Well, it seems that we're part of the way there.......

The "nuclear waste wines" post was from Keith, I hadn't even tried posting via email with images attached, but he's managed it.

I haven't worked out why it says that I've posted it but we both still have a few things to learn how to use blogger for anything above the most basic of functions...

So watch this space....... :-D

Nuclear waste wines...

2010-07-20T05:16:00.001+01:00

We could resolve disposal of nuclear waste from nuclear power plants with Fatbloke's wine recipe. Puts some energy in your reactor!

Mobile devices.....

2010-07-20T02:56:00.001+01:00

So what have mobile devices got to do with home brewing?

Well, you may or may not be aware that we all have different access to different kit, or levels of service, etc etc.

So I'm trying to set this blog up so that Keith can actually post to it. Being in rural Oklahoma, he is limited by bandwidth and has had to opt for using a PDA/smartphone for his phone and net access. It's proving a complete PITA as I'd like his input as he knows shitloads about home brewing of wines and meads.....

I just, apparently, managed to "register" this device, sent a message, but as yet, absolutely sod all has appeared.....

So here goes for a second time......

More "treasure".......

2010-07-04T21:21:00.000+01:00

Ha ha! The picture is what I'd given up as a bad job.

What is it? It's 14 kilo's of finest Polish buckwheat honey.

It's been a long time coming.

One of the chaps over at Gotmead was kind enough to offer to get some for me as it's proving damn near impossible to obtain any in the UK for anything that might resemble a reasonable price. Marek sorted the order for me and then I had to arrange with Sebastian, a former work colleague, so that Marek could get it sent to Sebastians home in Poland, who in turn would then bring it back with him on return from one of his regular visits to his family. I can't put into words how grateful I am to both of them for their assistance in getting this to me.

I'm still of 2 minds as to what I'll actually turn it into. Though I'm thinking along the lines of a gallon batch of a straight traditional mead, plus a batch of one of the "easier" Polish style meads.

Called "Czwórniak", it's basically 1 part honey to 3 parts water. With that ratio or honey/water, I'd guess that it would still work out as quite a high gravity, so I'll have to measure it out and then see how it's likely to measure up. There'd be no point in mixing it up and then hoping that it will work out Ok. It could easily end up killing the yeast if it's too high a gravity.

At this point, I'm not even sure how it'll work out. I've had a read around about meads like this and there's both EU and Polish Government regulations on how it should be made, so I'd like to stick to the rules if possible, but I might have to divert some to get it to work - I'll see and post back on the subject........

A nice comment........

2010-06-27T12:22:00.002+01:00

If you want to check it out, you'll see that Keith has left a nice comment at the last post where I announced him as an author.

His post is correct. It's really all about improving the quality of the brews we make.

Sure, it's entirely feasible that we might get to a point where any further improvement isn't possible without adopting commercial techniques, but it sure as hell shouldn't stop us looking should it.........

Oh and I'm sending this via email to prove that it's still working Ok and I only couldn't send the message from the normal account as it's getting messed about by the provider, though it seems to be to do with it having the address harvested/spoofed........ so watch this space.......

A new author.........

2010-06-10T08:04:00.001+01:00

I started this blog as a record of my home brewing efforts.

It happens, that through my mead making efforts, I've got to know Keith Hardesty. Initially I met up with Keith through a wine making forum.

Since then, it's been a case of a weekly conference call/video conference. It depends on what's available as I'm on the south coast (UK) and Keith is in very rural Oklahoma.

He's a good bloke and he has some brilliant ideas of ways to make meads of various types, so after we chatted about "spreading the message" we decided that as a convenient outlet, he should also post here and make it a bit more international and open.

I'll be more than pleased if he posts some of his methods, techniques and enthusiasm here as it'd save me trying to post them ;-)

Others in the mead world may have already heard of Keith as it seems that he's been around the online meadmaking world for some time.....

Brilliant! Go on Keith, get "scribbling".......

A little bit critical ???

2010-06-06T09:46:00.002+01:00

WTF?

Been trying to get my head round the linked thread above for a couple of days.

Now for reasons I don't quite get, I'm failing dismally, in managing to get any entusiasm (or full understanding) for this. After all, it's a commercial technique, and commercial techniques are pretty much, about maximising the £$€£$€£$€!

{edit}I've decided to delete the rest of this entry, as it'd be rather dis-ingenuous of me to post it here.

After all, I couldn't tell the difference between Malolactic fermentation and a bubbly fart!{/edit}

Hey ho!

update 9/5/10

2010-05-09T10:45:00.000+01:00

So yesterday I went to Paynes for honey to feed and hopefully back sweeten. Damn place! They've done a lovely job of increasing their sales floor area and there's a few changes as to the honeys they stock. It's the first time I've seen this one so I got 4lb to try. It's darker than it looks in the photo......

Anyway, I got an extra couple of jars of Mexican Clear and had to get a 3lb pot of Italian Chestnut as the chap said it was the last of it, something about poor harvest and the lousy summer last year. Shame as it's very nutty/malty and not as "sweet" as a lot of their honey, quite dark in colour. I also had to go to the local Lidl to get another bottle of the Marlene Summer Blossom blended stuff.

The plan was to add an extra measure of honey to the 3 batches from last week. I did screw up a little, as I managed to put the Mexican in the Marlene and vice versa. Perhaps I should have turned the light on and double checked the labels on the DJ's! Anyway, it should still come out ok, as they'll be finished off with the correct honeys when back sweetening.

All I've done is to add the honey, but also a 1/4 teaspoon of FermaidK and 1/4 teaspoon of DAP (Di-Ammonium Phosphate). Which has been added to some must taken out to check the gravities and stirred in with the milk aerator, poured back into the respective DJ, which is then topped up with water (gently as there was still a little foaming, just nowhere near as much as last week).

The changes in gravity were approximately 40 points i.e. one measured about 1080 and the lowest was about 1060 so all on target. Apart from aerating yesterday, I'm not intending any further aeration hence them being topped up with water to the neck of the DJ and being airlocked for the duration.

Mead update 3/5/10

2010-05-03T15:56:00.001+01:00

Ok, so I've already posted about how I progressed on these. Well now I've taken them to the next stage.

I'd already pitched the yeasts if you recall, the Italian Chestnut Honey and Mexican Clear Honey batches with D21 and the Marlene Summer Blossom honey with K1V-1116.

The batch on the right is the Marlene Summer Blossom honey. Now you might be wondering what it is that I've done, and equally, why 2 different batches/yeasts etc are showing foam on the top and one not.

Well, to start with, I've taken a pint glass, a meat baster, measuring spoons and a milk aerator (for making the milk frothy before pouring it on the coffee), sanitised them. Then one batch at a time, I've withdrawn about half a pint of the must, put it in the pint glass, then added 1/2 a teaspoon of FermaidK yeast nutrient and with the milk aerator, it's been agitated. This is for 3 reasons, firstly it will remove any extra CO2 that is starting to build up, second, it will aerate the must with some additional oxygen from the air and thirdly it will also dissolve the yeast nutrient, which is just as important because when the must is gently poured back into the rest, you don't want to disturb it so much that it causes the must to foam out over the top of the fermenter.

That has been done for all 3 batches. The middle one shows that some batches of must won't always foam like hell, whereas you can probably make out the difference in the amounts of foam that have been produced by the other two, the Italian Chestnut batch having foamed the most.

It's for reasons like that, that some makers will initially make a batch in a bucket that is larger than the actual batch. Because when you're adding adjuncts like nutrient, or acid, or whatever, once a ferment has started it will foam like hell when the additions are put in or sometimes if you are aerating it in the early stages of fermentation.

You don't want to lose any of the mead do you! That was why I mixed the nutrient in with the frother, it enabled me to pour it back into the batches without agitating it too much. None of them foamed out over the top.

Now they'll probably get aerated gently once a day, until the gravity drops to about 1020 or so. One thing I haven't mentioned is that I might add a small amount more nutrient, at the 1/2 sugar break i.e. when the gravity has dropped to about 1055 or there abouts, I'll add something like 1/8th teaspoon of FermaidK and 1/8th teaspoon of DAP (Di-Ammonium Phosphate). Then at 1020 I'll top them up and then leave them to ferment dry, and too start clearing/dropping sediment naturally.

That might seem like a lot of faffing about, but it's about how you're caring for the yeast. If it's well nutured, then it's less likely to cause "off flavours" in the mead, at the same time it should normally allow the ferment to finish reasonably quickly. After all, if you're putting in the effort to try and produce a quality tasting mead you don't want to do anything that might damage or otherwise mess up the taste.

Well that's the idea behind it anyway.........

Oh, and before I forget, the reason that I've added the yeast nutrient now, rather than before pitching the yeast, is that it's the Lallemand/Lalvin recommendation that you use GoFerm when rehydrating the yeast as it contains all the goodies that the yeast needs when it's being woken up from the dried state, whereas the yeast nutrient contains different levels of different stuff, that the yeast needs when it's actually fermenting. I don't know the exact differences - there's probably more info about it if you search the web.

update 2/5/10

2010-05-02T11:21:00.000+01:00

Ok, so all of the 3 batches of must prep'd yesterday have cooled to room temperature.

I've just checked the starting gravities and all 3 are showing about the 1.100 mark i.e. the Marlene Summer Blossom being the same as the Italian Chestnut and the Mexican Clear, which suggests that it's got a higher percentage water than the other two - whether thats extra water added during blending or not, I can't say.

I'm currently in the middle of rehydrating the yeasts. That's with about 100mls of water, 1 teaspoon of GoFerm and the yeast. The pack of the K1V says (as usual) that it's supposed to be 50mls of water at 40 to 43 degrees C. I've made it a bit cooler, about 35 degree's C before mixing in the GoFerm, then adding the yeasts to the glasses. It's also supposed to be like that for no longer than 15 minutes but I'm not so fussed about that. It's always worked Ok for me in the past if I've left it for longer, especially when rehydrating with GoFerm as well as just water.

Hell, I could have made yeast starters, but I haven't found that necessary.

Update #2 1/5/10

2010-05-01T17:56:00.001+01:00

So, despite my incredibly bad photography, I've taken pictures of all 3 different types of honey twice, the first pictures are with the honey mixed with water and it's teaspoon of "mead acid" stirred in. The first pictures are all taken with the DJ standing on a torch.
This is the "Mexican Clear" honey.

This is the "Italian Chestnut" honey.

This is the "Marlene Summer Blossom with Wild Blossom" honey (from Lidl's).

The idea of standing the DJ's on the torch isn't so that you can see 3 badly taken pictures but as they've been mixed up identically, you can see by the different amounts of light that's getting through the batches and the different colouration of the honeys.

This is the"Marlene Summer Blossom with Wild Blossom" honey taken with the camera flash switched on.

This is the "Italian Chestnut" honey - camera flash on.

Finally, this is the "Mexican Clear" honey as above.

Now, I hope that you can see that they are all quite dark, but still different shades of colour. Their aroma was very different as well. The strongest smelling was the Italian Chestnut, the lightest smelling was the "Marlene".

The intention is to use Lalvin D21 yeast in the Chestnut and the Mexican - and because I've now run out of D21, the Marlene honey will have to have K1V-1116 yeast.

Oh and before I forget, the "Mead Acid" I mentioned before, well that's from Ashton and Duncans book "Making Mead". It's nothing special really, just a mix of 2 parts Malic acid to 1 part Tartaric acid. I know I should have measured the pH before starting but I can't be arsed.......

So apart from the different yeasts, the only other difference will be that once they've cooled down so I can measure the starting gravity, I expect the Marlene honey batch to be higher than the other two, because they came in 1.36kg buckets while the Marlene honey came in 3 x .5kg retail packs (it seems that while most UK "brands" of honey will supply in either 1lb/454gm or 12oz/340gm packs, all the ones from Lidl's that I've tried have come in 500gm retail packs - hence the expected higher gravity - I'll know once the measurements have been taken).

I'll also be hydrating the yeasts with Go-Ferm yeast hydration nutrient, not because it's necessary, but I've got some so I'll use it. This just means that I won't be putting any yeast nutrient in too start with, because the recommendations for Lalvin FermaidK yeast nutrient are too add it when the "lag phase" of the yeast has finished i.e. when there's visible signs of the fermentation having started. It's also why I haven't topped them all the way up yet - there's room for some foaming, which I suspect will occur when I add the FermaidK though I'll remove a little of the must and mix it with water and mix the nutrient into that so that it can be added carefully but slowly - I hope that will negate any excess foaming of the batch and then they can be topped up with water later on.

I'm not worried about oxidisation, because while there's a small(ish) air space in the DJ's at the moment, it will have expelled just about all the oxygen in the air with the CO2 that will be coming off it once the ferment has kicked off.

I'm posting the progression like this, so any reader will hopefully, be able to follow the progress of these 3 batches and not just try to understand how I'm doing this from text alone - pictures make it easier to follow (well I think so anyway).

TTFN!

Update 1/5/10

2010-05-01T14:35:00.000+01:00

I dug out some honeys that I bought a while back this morning, too make a couple (well 3 really) batches. Hopefully by the time I've finished typing this, the pictures will have arrived via my email account as I can't work out how to get them directly off my phone/PDA.

So, 3 different honeys.

2 of them were bought from the local honey wholesaler/distributor who keeps a good range, just not quite as wide a selection as I'd like but then again, he doesn't keep different honey specifically for mead making. The 2 I got from there, was "Italian Chestnut" honey and "Clear Mexican" honey. Both of these are supposed to be quite dark coloured and strongly flavoured. The third one came from the local branch of Lidl and is supposed to be "Aromatic". The label says stuff like "Summer Blossom Honey with added Wild Blossom" - WTF that's supposed to mean is anyones guess. All I do know at the moment, is that like the Italian Chestnut honey, it's crystalised and is currently sitting in a sink full of hot water to gently dissolve the crystaline sugars back into liquid so it'll come out of the packing OK.

This is what the label from the "Lidl" honey looks like, as you can see (despite the shitty picture) there's not a great deal of info on it. So in truth it could be from anywhere.

Personally I like a little more provenance than that, but they only put the basic stuff, I'll have to go and see if there's anything better on the reverse label - blended honey often just says "produce of EU and non-EU countries". And one of the honeys that I like to stay away from is Eucalyptus honey as it does seem to retain some of the smell/taste properties of the original plants. I don't mind Eucalyptus but not in honey. The Italian Chestnut honey as also crystalised (I can feel it through the sides of the small bucket (it's in small 1.36kg buckets as that's about what I like to use per gallon, though I've recently taken to using a little more, but 1.36kg/3lb as the base amount, and usually end up having to get more to use for back sweetening so that at least it has the taste/flavour of the original honey - as long as it doesn't end up as cloyingly sweet as the commercial ones I tried the other year.......

Well I must have fucked up somewhere as I can't make the picture of the Italian Chestnut and Clear Mexican honeys appear and I'm too lazy to go and take another picture so if you're that interested (or sad ???) then you'll have to follow the link to paynes......

As soon as I've got the honey back to being "runny" again, I'll post about what I've done with it.....

Update (5/4/10)

2010-04-05T14:02:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, I did a check to see how things are progressing with my currently active ferments...

So, the "Polish" honey/Chenin Blanc concentrate gallon is sitting at 0.990, nice and dry. The Oklahoma wild flower is sitting at 1.005, as is the Okie wild flower/Chenin Blanc concentrate gallon. The "mystery" red (Apple/Blackberry I think) is also sitting at 0.990, but the real "star performer", was the "accidental" straight Chenin Blanc.

Now let me explain (If I haven't already done so)...... I'd bought the Chenin Blanc kit, so I could use it for back sweetening of meads. On recommendation from my friend Keith. I'd started to use it and despite keeping the airspace to a minimum in the pack (a "bag in a box"), it started to grow some mould on the surface of the liquid.

That caused me to panic a little and I strained all the bits of mould growth out and put a couple of campden tablets in it to sulphite. I then drew off 2 x 2 litre bottles worth and put them in the fridge, but was a little unsure what else to do with the rest of it (me being a tight fisted git - and not wanting to waste about 9 litres of concentrate..... so I just put it in a bucket, made it up with water and sprinkled the yeast in it. After a fortnight it was doing absolutely nothing, so I sort of planned that I'd be repitching yeast etc to try and get it going - I did give it a bit of a stir.

Anyway, the day that I was going to do that, I opened the bucket and bugger me if there wasn't signs of bubbles coming to the surface, so I just thought "fuck it" and left it alone.

It's fermented dry and sitting nicely at 0.990 so I've racked it off the lees to clear into 2 x 1 gallon DJ's. I'm also quite surprised, because when it comes to "proper" wines i.e. made from grape, I've always favoured heavy reds of the Bordeaux/Claret type. This is actually quite something. It's very fruity tasting but not overly "sweet". I'm very pleased with how it's turned out - especially considering that it was such a balls up to start with......

TTFN

latest - 6/3/10

2010-03-06T15:48:00.000Z

Well, I can't remember if I actually added any nutrient or not to the 3 batches of mead/pyment or not.

So today, I decided to add some, but also some more honey, as they've all been bubbling along nicely all week.

3 times today, I'd weigh out the honey, use a baster to get a little must out of the DJ and then add it to the honey, in the liquidiser, along with half a teaspoon of DAP (di-ammonium phosphate) and quarter teaspoon of Fermaid-K. Then give it a good whizz. The idea being that I was providing some oxygen, as well as the additional honey and the nutrients.

3 times I found that I had to add a little of the mix and then re-stopper the DJ to let it settle, they all wanted to foam like hell. So the only one where I lost a little through the foaming, was the pure honey/traditional mead. I'd worked out that the others would need to be handled with care.

I'm not too fussed about being too anal with adding the nutrients at certain gravity readings, they've been going all week to while I probably should have added the nutrient before now, that's probably gonna be fine.

I'll probably check the gravity mid-week to see if I want to add a bit more nutrient before I top them up to the neck with some spring water and let them finish.

Watch this space.....

Todays "report" (28/2/10)

2010-02-28T17:53:00.001Z

So, today's efforts have been as follows........

1 x 1 gallon of the unknown "Polish" honey/Chenin Blanc pyment has had it's yeast (Lalvin D21) pitched. It's also had 1/2 tsp of tannin added (would have been a whole tsp, but I forgot that I didn't have enough until I opened the pot......) it showed a starting gravity of 1098, so not too strong/sugary.....

1 x 1 gallon of Oklahoma Wild Flower honey/Chenin Blanc pyment has had the same as the above i.e. D21 and 1/2 tsp of tannin. That showed a starting gravity of 1110.

1 x 1 gallon of Oklahoma Wild Flower traditional mead, same treatment as above, but showed a starting gravity of 1112 - and that's allowing for 3 and 1/2 lb of honey to the gallon.

Actually, all 3 of the above batches are just under the gallon as at the moment, I've left some air space, because the D21 yeast was rehydrated with about 100mls of must, 100mls of warm water (checked temp and it was about 30 or so degree's C) and 1/2 a teaspoon of GoFerm rehydration nutrient. Hence the air space is left in the DJ so when they've started to show proper indication of fermentation, I can mix 1 tsp of Fermaid-K nutrient with a little warm water and when it gets added to the batches, hopefully they won't foam all over the place - as can happen.

I've also racked 1 gallon of Apple and Raspberry "08", it's had a campden tablet and 1/2 tsp of wine stabiliser - as I topped it up with mixed fruit juice (mixed fruit juice was the left over from my purge of freezer a couple of weeks ago). Plus I also racked off 2 x 1/2 gallon of Mixed fruit melomel which was made with the rest of the juice mentioned above - that's also had a campden tablet and 1/2 tsp of stabiliser, as it was topped up with the last little bit of the mixed fruit juice and with the left over little bit of chenin blanc juice.

So now it's just a case of keeping an eye on the 3 gallons of mead/pyment to see when they've finished the "lag phase" and started to ferment properly so I can add the Fermaid-K and top them up with about a half to three quarters of a pint of spring water.

Obviously, the gravity numbers will drop a little when they're topped up, but that's a snag of making the batches directly into demi-john jars and not starting them in buckets first. The air space will allow a little more room for stirring/aeration, which will have to be done for at least the first couple of days. I'll have to wait and see how they progress.

I still haven't decided, but there's enough of the Oklahoma Wild Flower honey left to make another batch that will basically be made the same but using K1V-1116 yeast.

Oh and no, I haven't added any acid to them at this point, as there's probably enough already in the honey, and especially in the 2 gallons with the chenin blanc concentrate in them. Hence just the tannin and rehydration nutrient at this point......

TTFN

p.s. Oh and no, I didn't check the "mystery" wine that I mentioned on the 14th. It seems to have stopped fermenting but I'm gonna leave it a bit longer before I sample and check it's "numbers"....

Todays mad panic!

2010-02-27T20:35:00.000Z

I was planning to get my finger out a bit today, but as I started getting myself sorted, something occurred that sent me into a bit of a panic.

The 6 jars of honey from Poland that a colleague brought back for me, well one of them was intended to become a sort of pyment (a mead made with grape juice) i.e. to use a jar of the honey (1.3kg or about 3lb in weight) and then measure a jar full of the chenin blanc grape concentrate.

I knew something was amiss, as when I poured the grape concentrate into the jar, there seemed to be a ribbon of paper (well that's what it looked like) in it. How wrong I was.

It was mould. Fucking mould that'd started growing on the top surface of the grape concentrate. Well the mad panic was mainly because I didn't want to lose the best part of £70 worth of grape concentrate (that's about how much the Kendridge Chenin Blanc wine kit was - where the concentrate came from in the first place).

So initally, I ran the honey jar full of concentrate through a strainer, then through a muslin straining cloth (into my version of Luc Volders "straining bucket" - paints a nice picture eh!). Anyway, I figured that it was paramount to get the concentrate strained and then sulphited in the hope that it (the sulphite) will kill off any remaining wild yeast spores.

Since then, I've mixed up (and sulphited - extra.....) 2 batches of "pyment". In the picture, you'll see the 2 DJ's. On the right, is the one made with the Polish honey (sorry, don't have any info on it's origins) and chenin blanc grape concentrate. You can probably make out some of the sugar that had crystalised out of it in the bottom of the DJ. That's not a problem. The yeast should take care of that.

The DJ on the left, is the same quantity of the chenin blanc grape concentrate, but it's then been made up with a jar full (1.3kg or about 3lb in weight) of Oklahoma Wild Flower honey. Which is part of the gallon that my friend Keith was kind enough to send me. You'll probably notice that it's darker in colour, as well as the layer that should really be mixed in better at the bottom of the DJ.

The intention is, that as they're both mixed up with spring water, but not all the way up, and both have had a crushed campden tablet added, that I'll let them sit till tomorrow so that the sulphite can do it's thing and then a fair amount of it will come out in gas form. Then I'll pitch the yeast after I've hydrated it with some GoFerm. Once the lag phase is over, then I'll add some Fermaid-K for yeast nutrient. I'm in a bit of a quandary, because the ??? about whether I should be adding some acid and some tannin. I probably will, though I think I'll check the pH tomorrow before I actually add any acid. The tannin will just go in as a teaspoon full per gallon. Once they've settled down to the ferment, only then will I top them up, with spring water. The gap is to prevent too much of a problem with foaming in the early stages and when the nutrient gets added (oh and I'm planning on pitching D21 yeast - again, something else that Keith kindly sent me. It's normally only available in the 500 gramme commercial packs, but he bought one of those and split me off about 25 or so grammes - enough to repackage into 5 portions....)

As for the rest of the chenin blanc concentrate, well that's made up nicely to a 2 gallon batch of the wine, and there's also 4 litres that have been placed in 2 x 2 litre spring water bottles and refrigerated. If I have to freeze them I can, the bottles are made of PET. Then whatever batches that are made and finished fermenting, I can always back sweeten with some after it's defrosted.

I'm hoping that I'll be able to arrange with Keith that I can get some smaller tins of the grape concentrate sent over, as a 16 litre wine kit was a bugger to handle. I'd need to have everything ready to go and use up pretty much a whole kit if it's going to be like this. I don't care if it costs me more, the convenience of being able to use smaller amounts of it is too much of a dream. It really does taste like watery honey. It's very, very palatable. I'm wonder what the wine might turn out like, though I expect it to be dry as the yeast they supplied with the kit was Lalvins EC-1118 which is a strong fermenting champagne yeast. We'll have to wait and see.

TTFN

Making Meads.......

2010-02-21T16:23:00.000Z

As you've probably noticed (well if you've bothered to read any of this), I like making meads.

I don't really know why, but I suspect because it's just a little bit different. Lets face it, there's not a lot of meads, irrespective of type, available.

Most of them are just produced at existing vineyards as an additional type (the only "meadery" I can think of, which is just a meadery is Lindisfarne - I don't know if they make anything else). There's no real expertise this side of the Atlantic. What expertise there is in the US, isn't really out of any kind of tradition, it's more of a case that the knowledge that's been built up has been experimental.

For instance, there are some writings about making mead in a historical sense, but it does seem that the brewing, wine and spirits industry has crushed most, if not all of the tradition out of it. I'm guessing that this is more to do with it taking a long time to make, well in relative terms, compared to beer and wines etc.

Honey is strange stuff. It's all sugar and taste but had little in the way of other materials in it's natural make up i.e. just pure honey and water is very slow to ferment as yeasts stuff other than just sugar to work. They need some nitrogen and other nutrient elements which naturally honey doesn't have.

There's also the problem of actually sourcing good honey. Most of the types available from supermarket outlets has been processed to hell and back. Pasturised, blended etc to make it conform to a "corporate taste".

Or there's the other factor, that another industry absorbs just about all of a certain type so there's little to none available to other possible users (it seems that a good example here in the UK would be buckwheat honey - I understand that it's used in some kinds of sweet manufacturing and it's quite hard to locate enough, especially if you don't want to pay "over the top" prices for it - plus it didn't help that a couple of years ago, some journalist type wrote an article about buckwheat honey being an ideal panacea for childrens winter coughs and other chest/throat ailments - you'd have thought it would make it easier to source - well that's not the case......)

I mean, it can sometimes be incredibly hard to locate a specific type of honey. Hell, there's types of honey that I've seen advertised as available in the US that have never been heard of here. I don't know why that might be, but even if it's a "market thing", well surely the importers would keep a list of possible sources of the rarer types of honey. I mean, are they trying to make money or what. ?

Of course, then if I have to use an outside supplier i.e. outside the UK (and yes that does include Mainland Europe), then there's the other "killer", shipping costs. My friend in the US, not so long ago, was kind enough to arrange to send me a gallon (approximately 12lb in weight) of local (to him) wild flower honey. When we were looking for the cheapest way of shipping it, all the "big boys" (DHL, UPS, etc etc) were quoting stupid amounts and in the end, my friend sent it via the USPS - yes, that's right the United States Postal Service - their equivalent to our Royal Mail.

Plus the more I look into it, the more the processes of making mead become complicated - though complicated is a relative term.

Because just about all the historical methods and techniques have been lost, the only methods really available are those that have been derived from wine making techniques.

If you looked at Gotmead you'd see that the basic methods currently used are wine making ones, but they've been modified to take into account the lack of nutrients (for yeast) in honey. Plus some of the techniques used would be considered really over the top to wine makers. Things like bubbling pure oxygen through the must to help the yeast in the early stages of the fermenting, staged addition of nutrients and/or extra honey to help the ferment to finish at a higher alcohol level.

A problem in adopting these methods can often be the other materials needed, and their lack of availability here. For instance, it does seem that one of the best yeast nutrients available is called Fermaid-K. Whether it's the best or one of the best would be debatable, but it's the one that has the most information about it - as in technical data, so you can work out how much nitrogen and trace elements is available to the yeast. Whereas the nutrients available here don't really give much info at all. Plus there's some that are very handy, like Di-ammonium Phosphate a.k.a. DAP, that is in the combined nutrients like Tronozymol, but trying to source it seperately is quite hard....

I've been wondering if it's worth while setting up a mead makers website that talks about different methods and techniques, but also lists suppliers etc so people who are interested as it would be a handy resource. I'm certainly not thinking of making it a money spinner, as there's not a big enough market here in the UK. Just that there'd be less of a brick wall for those who're interested in making a bit of mead and understanding that on the most basic level it's quite straight forward - and still possible to improve the making techniques to have something that is enjoyable to drink but not be cloyingly sweet, like most of the meads that seem to be available on the UK market.

Well I can feel a coffee coming on so I'm off to make that and put some more thought into how to spread the word........ and I've got a few bits that need doing with some wines anyway.......

TTFN!

Forgot to mention yesterday (WTF)......

2010-02-14T10:19:00.000Z

So there I was, ploughing through my stocks, back sweetening, racking, sulphiting, etc etc,

and I came across a 1 gallon DJ (capped with one of the few screw caps I've got for those type) that contained, what looked like a dark elderberry wine.

I though I'd open it and have a smell to see if I could work out what it was (not to hot on taking notes - but I'm normally conscientious at labelling my fermenters). Turned the cap and "aaaarrrrggggghhhhhh @##~[)8&6%£******" and managed to get the cap back on.

The fucker had started to foam, not quite a wine/mead fountain, but enough to potentially make a mess.

So, back into the sink and I uncapped it again, it did foam up but only for 20 seconds or so, leaving about a 1 inch air gap below the neck of the DJ.

I got the turkey baster sanitised and took a sample to taste. Wow! it was like blackberry and apple or something like that when it's been mixed up as a must. Yum yum!

Anyway, I took a gravity measurement and it showed it was at about 1030 (and no, there's no reason why I would have capped an active ferment).

So at a loss as to what this was and what to do, I just sulphited it, then topped it up with vodka and put it under airlock - because it was still releasing a hell of a lot of gas (not enough to foam obviously).

Once it's stopped bubbling I'll take a measurement to see if I can work out what the hells going on.......

Hey ho!

I couldn't organise a...........

2010-02-13T16:28:00.004Z

piss up in a brewery........

Been doing some other stuff today, but while that's getting on with itself, I decided to start racking off anything that's being kept.

Why ? well it's because I've still got about 14 litres of Chenin blanc grape concentrate and I don't want it to go to waste - oxidisation and all that.

So the master plan (yes, another one), is to use it (the Chenin Blanc) to top up the Lavender honey and the Orange Blossom honey meads made last year (april 2009) after I've racked them off the sediment (damn, I'm sure I wrote about the makings somewhere but I'm buggered if I can find it - so I don't know what yeast I used to make them with).

Then I'm also gonna try and freeze 2 x 2 litre bottles of the Chenin Blanc concentrate.

I'm also planning on making a pyment, Chenin Blanc concentrate and a jar of the Polish honey. Not decided what yeast to use yet......

Then just see how much of the concentrate is left and take it from there........

What else have I done recently ? Oh yes, did I mention that I dug out all my current stocks, had a little taste of each and any that weren't showing any signs of promise have all been put through a friends still.

I'm not gonna waste them and just put them down the sink am I! I'll use the alcohol to fortify anything that's getting kept, but has gone below the predicted strength when it's been racked and then topped up with water, grape juice or concentrate.

Then they'll probably just go straight back under the stairs to bulk age (for bulk age, read that as leave them until I can make my mind up to bottle them or at least have another look at them to decide what's gonna happen next.....)

pip pip!

More "Rubbish" wine......

2010-02-06T13:12:00.000Z

So, despite my relative pleasure at learning that the Chenin Blanc concentrate is good for back sweetening, I'm absolutely fucking stumped as to what else I might be doing wrong.........

On top of the 8 gallons I checked last week, to find that about half of it is worth keeping, this weekend, I've just worked my way through 17 gallons of different fruit wines only to find that 6.5 gallons of it are worth keeping for either bottling, or further modification (back sweetening etc). The other 10.5 gallons will go the way of the rest of it.....

I don't know what it is that I'm doing wrong... I don't seem to ever using sub-standard ingredients. I haven't had a stuck fermentation for a long time i.e. it all seems to "finish" as expected.

It's just that it tastes, for the main part, bloody horrible.

I can't fathom out, whether it's to do with unrealistic expectations, or whether it's false memories of how the "country wines" of yester-year tasted ???

Gales, the brewery in Horndean (north of Portsmouth), used to make a range of country wines and my memories of those were basically fruit flavoured cordials but with an alcohol content.

My fruit/country wines taste fuck all like that....

I think my hygiene processes are ok. I think my technique is Ok (all the wines are basically made in the same way - just the variation of ingredients). I'm no expert, but I don't think that any of the ingredients I've tried are bad, they might not be "top quality" (a few of the flavours/recipes have been "opportunistic"....), but they certainly aren't rubbish......

Fuck, fuck, fuck! What is it that I'm doing wrong..........

Back Sweetening......

2010-02-06T08:45:00.000Z

I nearly forgot, I must make a comment about back sweetening.

First off, what is back sweetening (presuming that you don't know of course....)

Well, when you've made some wine, or mead, or even cider or something like that. You taste it and it's too dry or bland or "something" tasting i.e. you might not follow what the issue is but you think that you might like "it" if it's sweeter.

So yes, it's about sweetening after the ferment is complete. Now, there's a number of things that can be used, and the technique can also vary, as it's not totally straight forward.

You can use, sugar, honey, artificial sweetener, or even grape juice/grape juice concentrate, etc etc.

If you're just gonna want whatever "it" is sweeter, then if the sweetening agent is fermentable, you have to make sure that you "stabilise" the wine/mead/cider/etc first. That's normally done when you rack a ferment off the yeast sediment/lees i.e. you syphon it off, and then add a campden tablet (usually 1 per gallon - but you can make up a sulphite solution to about 5% if you have the sulphiting agent in powdered form), plus you also add "sorbate"...... which is, from memory, usually Potassium Sorbate, the amount will vary, so it's usually a case of following the instructions on the pack.

The idea being that the sulphite will stun any remaining yeast cells in the brew and also help with preservation, the sorbate is there to prevent any breeding/multiplication of any remaining yeast cells, because you certainly don't want to add a fermentable sweetener like sugar or honey to have the wine/mead/cider/etc start to re-ferment, as it can produce a "bottle bomb"...... nasty.... unless that's what you're intending as you want to carbonate the product - and that'd only normally be done if you're using champagne type bottles for wines/meads or beer bottles for ciders etc. Not only does the glass have to be strong enough to retain the pressure but the stopper has to also hold pressure as well.

Anyway, enough of that.....

The whole reason for this post, is because through the comments of my friend Keith (all round good bloke and resident of Oklahoma), I've found an excellent sweetening agent for meads. That "sweetening agent", being Chenin Blanc grape concentrate.

Now I speak with Keith regularly, but as with any of those kind of "online friendships" we haven't met in person. He does know a lot of stuff (apparently) about making meads and is a wealth of knowledge and is more than happy to pass it on. Now I'm just a cynical Brit who often "takes things with a pince of salt".

Keith had been expounding the use of Chenin Blanc concentrate for some time. I'd actually found that I'd have to buy it as a wine making kit. So I did.

It sat in our dining room for some months. My level of experience with wine kits is virtually nil, I prefer to make meads and country (other, non-grape fruit) wines. So I'd expect grape juice/concentrate for wine making to be a bit sharp/sour.

Last weekend, I'd got my stocks out from under the stairs to see how they were getting on (the 8 gallons of wines/meads had all been there for at least a year). After tasting them, I decided that 4 were "keepers" and the other 4 would go through a friends still, not with the aim of making spirits but just to recover the alcohol, so I can use it to fortify other home brews...... either way, the keepers would need to be racked as they'd dropped some sediment. Only one of them had I actually put any thought into for back sweetening, that was a gallon of "heather honey" mead I made. I wanted to use half a pound of heather honey for that.

I'd started sorting this out, when I realised that I'd picked up a gallon of mead that I'd made with very cheap, "Greek" honey that I'd bought in the local branch of Lidl (German based discount food chain, not famed for "quality" products/foods, but certainly not to be dismissed as some of their "lines" have proved to be very cheap but very good as well).

So yes, I was in the process of making a fuck up. I was syphoning the mead to leave most of the sediment in the bottom of the demi-john but also running it through a muslin cloth to catch any larger particles.

I found myself with a DJ with about 7 pints or so of mead and about an inch or so of airspace between the top of the liquid and the bottom of the neck of the DJ. Panicking a bit, "oh fuck, what the hell am I going to top up with" ??? When I remembered the 16 litres of Chenin Blanc concentrate in the kit.

I just dug it out and poured it in. On a whim, I put a small amount in a glass as well.

Now I mentioned Keith being in the US earlier, because lets face it, he speaks "American" (or American English) to my "english English" and there's likely to be a little bit of a discrepancy in the way we speak about or describe things, but......

When I took a sip of the Chenin Blanc concentrate, I was absolutely stunned. Keith had enthused about it as he'd described it as like "drinking honey". I just wasn't ready for the accuracy of his description of it.

That's exactly what it was like, drinking a diluted, or just less viscous honey, with a light but full, honey flavour and just the faintest hint of apple in the back ground.

Incredible, absolutely fucking incredible. I'm sorry I ever might have been a disbeliever Keith. I mean, you know how I've described it here, there's just a shit load of stuff you can get in the US that is either unavailable or really hard to get - chenin blanc being one of them (except as finished wine). So well done matey, gold star to you. It was very much worth the effort of locating some. I'm intending it to be my standard back sweetening agent.

Make it up as I go Melomel 3.....

2010-01-03T16:06:00.001Z

Ok, so it's a couple of days since I actually pitched the yeast etc.

I seem to recall that the yeast went in about 3.30pm and by about 7.30pm, there wasn't enough pressure from the ferment to actually bubble the airlock, but the lid of the bucket was starting to bulge and the water in the airlock was starting to push round the bottom bend.

So, I figured it best to leave it to the next morning. That's when I just aerated it and added the main nutrient of 1/2 tsp of Fermaid-K and 1/2 tsp of Di-ammonium Phosphate, both well stirred in.

The following day, I opened the bucket and aerated it and then tested the gravity and from memory it had dropped about 10 or 15 points. Not very far, but enough to show that there was some downward momentum.

Today I opened the bucket, took a sample and then aerated it, only to find (when the foam from the turkey baster had subsided) that I was looking at a gravity of something like 1045. Damn that's good, to have it drop 40 or 50 points in just over 24 hours.

That means that as it was pretty close on the "1/2 sugar break", I added another 1/2 teaspoon of Fermaid-K for it to crack on.

I'm hoping that it will have dropped to between 1030 and 1020 by tomorrow evening. If so, then I'll be transferring to secondary - and if it looks necessary, I'll have to add a bit more red grape juice so there's no free air space in the top of the fermentor(s). I reckon that like the last mixed fruit one I did, it'll take up a gallon and a half......

Watch this space.

TTFN!

Make it up as I go Melomel 2...

2009-12-31T17:18:00.000Z

So I've just finished sorting this out.

After sanitising the bucket, I put 1 litre of red grape juice in minus 100mls. Then I added the rest of the steamed juice that was in the earlier picture.

The 100mls of red grape had 1/4 teaspoon of the GoFerm rehydration nutrient stirred into it and it was then placed in a small bath of hot water and I put my digital thermometer in it. The normal temperature for rehydrating Lalvin yeasts is 40C, but I only let it get to about 38C before pitching the yeast and giving it a good stir.

The main part of the must in the bucket was sampled to check the starting gravity, which measured 1.120 so I should get about 14% ABV from that. At the same time, after a bit of messing about (new battery) I got a pH reading of 3.31 from the must. So it's not as acid as I thought it might be. I like to keep my musts in the region of 3.5 pH so I stirred a teaspoon of calcium carbonate into it - apparently, my friend in Oklahoma emailed me and said that it's better if I used Potassium carbonate as it's less likely to cause any "after taste", but the calcium carbonate a.k.a. precipitated chalk, is all that the home brew shop had. Also, apparently "Cream of Tartar" is also good for neutralising acids as well.

Normally when rehydrating yeasts, you're supposed to leave it for no longer than 15 minutes according to the packet, but there was a hell of a head of froth on it after 10 so it just got swirled back into suspension and pitched into the must.

As soon as I see any signs of fermentation, I'll be adding the main nutrients of the Fermaid-K and DAP. I've just got to work out how much, though I'm thinking of 1/2 teaspoon each at the moment....

Watch this space.....

"Make it up as I go" Melomel!

2009-12-31T15:14:00.000Z

So, just before crimbo, I got the instruction from "erindoors" that I needed to do something with all the bits of fruit that I'd gathered up in the freezer.

In total, it was about 4kg of fruit, that was actually about 2kg of raspberries, 1.2kg of wild plums and 800 grammes of mixed strawberry, grapes and blueberries.

So I put the lot in my steam juice extractor and switched on the gas.

I didn't know how much it would yeild, so initially I started filling a largish jar, that had previously held 1.3kg of honey. Ha! fucked up there, because in the end, the master plan was to add it all together in a gallon "demi-john" jar, but when it came to trying to open the honey jar, I found that as it had cooled, the lid had vacuumed on. So I've just put the jar in the fridge with the intention of either adding the content to the secondary ferment or to use it for back sweetening. I'll have to wait and see.

Anyway, what you see in the picture, is the rest of the fruit juice (including an odd 1/2 litre of red grape juice that happened to be in the fridge), which had about 1.2kg of honey added to it, along with a campden tablet to provide sulphite and then it was left for a couple of days.

Yesterday, I managed to get to the HBS, for a tub of Pectolase and a tub of "Precipitated Chalk" a.k.a. calcium carbonate. The pectolase is to deal with any pectins released during the steaming of the fruit and the calcium carbonate to increase, what I suspect, will be revealed as quite an acid pH measurement.

I added 2 teaspoons of the pectolase (pectic enzyme) and after about 4 hours, the sediment shown in the picture started to drop out. I'm not really worried about the sediment, it's not been fermented yet. I'm guessing but I suspect it's fibre that was contained in the wild plums that has come out of the fruit into the juice during steaming.

I've yet to make any pH or gravity measurements, as I intend doing that when the juice/must is moved to a bucket for primary fermentation. I'm not worried if the gravity is a little on the high side, as I'm intending to aerate the must on a daily basis until it gets to the 1.030/1.020 area, before it gets moved to a demi-john for secondary fermentation.

I'm also going to rehydrate the yeast (I've chosen to use Lalvin's 71B as it will metabolise some of the malic acid I suspect is present in the fruit juice element) with some red grape juice and some GoFerm (lalvins yeast rehydration nutrient), which isn't necessarily required but as there's a high level of fruit, and consequently fruit acids, I figure there's no harm giving the yeast every chance of success.

Then, once the ferment shows signs of having started, I'll add some Fermaid-K (lalvins fermentation nutrient) and some DAP (Diammonium Phosphate). Then I'll probably add a bit more Fermaid-K at the "half sugar break" (if the gravity was 1.100 and we take it that 1.000 is finished, then the half break will be 1.050).

That's about it for the moment so I'll leave it there...

TTFN

Polish Mead ???

2009-12-11T11:38:00.002Z

One of the members over at gotmead posted a link about Polish meads. I had to do a bit of messing around with my browser settings to view the linked document, to find that it was only available in Polish - which is a fucker as I don't speak any Polish.

So, after a visit to google, I managed to use their translator facility and ended up with the quoted text below (just for info, when copying translated text from google, I found that it returned the original text in Polish, followed by the translated sentence. Obviously, I don't have any Polish, so I deleted that part so it can all be understood in the context of this blog)

Definitions
Editor: patricus
21.03.2005
Definition
Mead is an alcoholic beverage resulting from the alcoholic fermentation of the wort (that honey diluted with water). Wort may be an additional dressing of herbs, hops, roots or fruit juice.
Division of mead
Depending on how the preparation of the wort or the additives used meads can be divided in many different ways.
1) The division, depending on the preparation of the wort:
• Honey saturated, that is, those whose wort boil,
• Honey niesycone (natural), or those which do not boil.
Many of the old authorities (eg T. Ciesielski) for mead drinks accounted for just saturated. Also in our association can be found as some supporters and others drinks. Many sources give the saturated honey taste better, and niesycone have a better flavor. If we are at the disposal of high-quality honey, I propose to prepare wort niesyconą, having worse sorts of honey, honey, you can cook. Syceniu its decision on whether or not, may also be dependent on the type of honey which we prepare. Honey, fruit will be better niesycone, honey spicy taste better saturated.
2) The division, depending on the density of the wort.
• Półtorak: 1 part by volume of honey and 0.5 parts by volume of water. The density of the wort BLG 57-66. Maturation of about 10 years.
• Dwójniak: 1 part by volume of honey and 1 part by volume of water. The density of the wort BLG 45-53. Maturation of approximately 5 years.
• Trójniak: 1 part by volume of honey and 2 parts water by volume. The density of the wort BLG 32-37. Maturation of about 2-3 years.
• Czwórniak: 1 part by volume of honey and 3 parts by volume of water. The density of the wort BLG 25-29. Maturation about a year.
The above maturity periods are recommended as a minimum by well-known personalities. As experience shows, however, that a particular fruit honeys are ready to drink much sooner.
Given name is the only officially approved names for the honey trade. In practice, however, such as producing honey wort with a density of 40 BLG, we can use the name półdwójniak. Similarly, for the honey and the trójniak czwórniak - półtrójniak.
3) The division, depending on the additives used.
• Natural Honey: without using any additives.
• Honey Fruit: some of the water was replaced with fruit juice.
• Honey-Herb Korzenno: prepared with spices.
Some authors distinguish a category of honeys hop - which uses only hop.
For the curious below the statutory requirements placed on manufacturers of commercial meads (content of acids, sugars, alcohol, etc.).
According to the Regulation of the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development dated 4 February 2003., Meads:
1) are:
a) miodowowinny flavor, harmonized with the flavors of juice used, free of foreign smell - in a honey meads and grape fruit,
b) miodowowinny flavor, harmonized with the taste of juice used, without foreign flavors - honey meads in grape and fruit
c) miodowowinny taste, enriched with the taste of typical spices that are used - in the honey meads and herbal spices, d) the total acidity expressed as malic acid in an amount from 3.5 to 8 grams per liter,
e) the volatile acidity expressed as acetic acid in an amount not greater than 1.4 grams per liter;
2) include:
a) reducing sugars after inversion:
From 35 to 90 grams per liter for Czwórniak,
From 65 to 120 grams per liter for trojniak,
From 175 to 230 grams per liter for dwójniak ',
More than 300 grams per liter in the case and half,
b) ethyl alcohol, multiplied by 18 and accumulated sugar content of not less than the following values:
- 240 - in the case Czwórniak,
- 323 - in the case trojniak,
- 490 - in the case dwójniak ',
- 600 - in the case and half,
c) ethyl alcohol in quantities:
- From 9 to 12% by volume in the case Czwórniak,
- From 12 to 15% by volume in the case trojniak,
- From 15 to 18% by volume in the case of 'dwójniak and and half,
d) the sugar extract in an amount not less than:
- 15 grams per liter for Czwórniak,
- 20 grams per liter for trojniak, Czwórniak grape and fruit
- 25 grams per liter in the case of 'dwójniak, Trójniak grape and fruit
- 30 grams per liter in the case and half, 'dwójniak grape and fruit
- 35 grams per liter and half in the case of grape and fruit
e) the ash content of not less than 1.3 grams per liter in the case of mead and grape fruit.

Now considering the translation facility is a free one, I'm pleased how it's turned out, but it does read as if the translation is very literal. I understand that the term "BLG" refers to Brix measurements for sugar content readings, so if you read this but use gravity readings, then it's probably gonna be necessary to convert Brix to gravity....

Either way, given that it seems Poland, among other European countries does seem to have an extensive history with meads, it's a bit unfortunate that more info about making meads this way, isn't available.

That doesn't mean I'll stop looking.........

TTFN!

Additional to "Sloe Gin"...........

2009-12-08T09:34:00.002Z

Further to Marek's comment about making a "Blackthorn" melomel......

Well that's a possibility already, as I still have 4lb (just under 2kg) of sloes in the freezer at the moment.

The only thing that's got me thinking, is that given that sloes are of the "prunus" family, according to Luc Volders blog, when making "Plum" wine, it's a good thing to soak the fruit in "Soda Ash" for 24 hours first, to remove the waxy/fungal looking "bloom" from the fruit as this can cause a haze that's hard to clear from the finished product.

I'm unsure whether sloes are closely enough related to plums that this might be an issue ? Either way, I'll probably just put the fruit through my "steam juice extractor" and then add most of the juice, but reserving a little for back sweetening/flavouring after fermentation is complete.

Also, as I understand that plums can be quite high in malic acid, what yeast to use ? 71B would be good as it will metabolise some of the malic acid during the ferment, but I don't want to loose any of the fruitiness of the sloes.....

Things that can make home brewing, erm, difficult!

2009-11-19T09:42:00.003Z

A rough day last friday (weather-wise)........

So I pull the truck over to wipe down the nearside mirrors (nice and responible eh?)

I'm wet, my boots are wet, as are my gloves...... I can reach most of the mirors, but have to use the step and mirror arm to reach the top mirror...wet gloves mean I can't keep hold of the mirror arm so slip off the step, landing in a puddle that happens to be concealing a piece of plastic (one of those clear plastic "document wallets" I think it was).

This ends with me going "arse over elbow" and landing on my hip and wrist (luckily my left one - being right handed).

It didn't hurt to start with, then after an hour or so, it was sore, so I take a couple of nurofen tablets, still believeing that is just a sprain, only to find that by lunchtime I can't change gears or work the handbrake of the truck, so off to the hospital, only to find, after "they've" taken an xray that I've broken the top part of my left radius a.k.a radial styloid (I think that's what they called it anyway).

Which means that if I want to do anything with a batch of brew larger than 1 gallon, it's out of the question for about the next 4 weeks!

Damn, damn, damn!

Bottle Bombs.....a salutory lesson!

2009-10-18T14:50:00.002+01:00

Last week, "erindoors" made some chutney (green tomato....) Part of the recipe included some root ginger.

Initially, she was gonna use a recipe from Mrs Beeton, but ended up using a James Martin recipe.

Anyway, there was some root ginger left over, so I collared it to make some ginger beer. I got the recipe from the net (one that I've used before) and it turned out that I had enough ginger for 10 litres.

So I mixed it up i.e. 2 x 2 litre bottles and 2 x 3 litre bottles. I then put it on top of the kitchen cupboards so I wouldn't get nagged about it taking up room in the kitchen.

Now normally, you'd wait about 24 hours for it to get to the stage where the bottles can't be pressed in and the plastic stays firm/hard, then you'd put it in the fridge. Whereas, because I'd put it on top of the cupboards, I remembered it at about 0600 on Wednesday morning.

Actually I noticed that the 2 x 2 litre bottles were starting to stretch under the internal pressure...... so I took the bottles down from the cupboards and put them on the floor in front of the fridge..... as I was picking up on 3 litre bottle, I knocked the other one over and it exploded.

So apart from some grazes and bruising on 1 hand and 1 shin, plus ginger beer all over the inside of the fridge, the outhouse (where the fridge is) and over both the cats that were eating their breakfast biscuits behind me (no injury or harm.... fortunately), oh and having been dazed by the explosion a bit, no harm was done.

I realise that I was lucky to be making the ginger beer in plastic bottles, because I'd have probably have suffered harm if it had been glass. But it also points out that to have exploded a plastic bottle like that, there must have been a hell of a lot of pressure built up inside.

I mean, the whole point of making ginger beer like this and then chilling it, is because you want to stop an active ferment with the cold of the fridge so that it carbonates the ginger beer, but doesn't ferment all the sugar so there's still plenty of sweetness left. But caution must be observed as this method has fundamental hazards to it, especially, if like me, you forget to get the bottles into the fridge soon enough.....

Apart from that, it makes a nice drink.......

TTFN

Sloe Gin.......

2009-10-03T21:26:00.004+01:00

I've been watching the sloes for weeks, and it's been bugging the hell out of me as they haven't been ripening consistently because of the slightly weird weather.

My first mission, I managed to pick 5lb 9oz's, which, according to the recipe I found on the net, was a little over what was needed (the recipe suggested 1 pint of gin, to 1lb of sloes, to 8oz of sugar...... optional cloves, cinnamon, almond extract).

As it was more fruit than needed, I just thought "what the hell", but with just the gin and fruit in a 1 gallon demi-john, there was no room for the sugar.

So, what to do? Well my only option is to make it in my 5 gallon (5 US gallons/19 litre) jar. I just decided that I'd make a larger quantity instead.

With that in mind, I went out a second time to pick fruit but only managed to get about 1lb 8oz's before it got dark (actually also because where I went, most of the Blackthorn was on a bank that I couldn't get up to get too any more fruit than that).

So today, I went to a different place. It's on the side of a busy main A road, but there was a place I could park my car about 500 metre's up the road and the actual bushes where about 2 or 3 metre's from the road. When I got there, I couldn't believe my luck. The bushes where absolutely heaving. So I just "picked away" until I found that the plastic carrier bag I was using was cutting into my wrist. I've ended up with another 8lb 4oz's. Excellent.

I haven't used "paid for" gin. A friend bought me some cheap Polish vodka when he went home last and I've just bought commercial gin flavouring to mix with that (it makes very good gin).

Apart from the first batch of the fruit, which is still in a 1 gallon demi-john with it's gin, all the rest of the fruit is freezing down, as the "freeze/thaw" method is far less laborious than trying to prick the skin of each and every sloe for the spirit to get at the sloe flesh. Tomorrow, I'll just put it all in a bucket, I'll add the rest of the gin to defrost the fruit enough so it's not in a big lump when it comes out the freezer, then I'll use a funnel to get it all into the 5 gallon jar. Only then will I add the sugar, which I'm intending to add at a rate of 4oz's per pint. How sweet I want it, well that's gonna depend on how it turns out. It's easy to add more sugar if it's not sweet enough but it's a bastard to get it out again.......

{edit}Ok, so I've added the picture for you to see. It's only just been mixed. I've given it a single shake (and not a particularly vigorous one though). You should be able to make out the layers i.e. the remnants of the 3lb of sugar added (equates to 4oz per pint of gin), then the lighter looking sloes, which are the ones that have been in gin for about a fortnight (in a 1 gallon demi-john), ontop of that are the sloes that I picked, washed/rinsed and froze yesterday and finally, the layer of both the older gin from a fortnight ago and the 4.5 litres that have been added this morning (Sunday, October 4th).

I've situated a torch/flashlight, behind it so you can get some idea of how the colour from the fruit develops. The gin from the 1 gallon DJ was a beautifully dark maroon in colour, and it doesn't seem to have been diluted too much by the addition of this mornings 4.5 litres of gin. I hope that you can see enough of the colour showing through the liquid to get some idea.

I haven't added any of the optional spices at this stage as I'm still thinking about how much and which ones to use, though I suspect I'll add a single clove (powerful little buggers...... as my efforts at making Joe's Ancient Orange Spiced Mead have shown), plus I'm not sure about the cinnamon as the pack I have is from India, and is actual pieces of bark, not like the ones that the Schwartz spice company produce, all nicely curled up into little "tubes". I don't want to use too much as I'm aiming at a hint of flavour, and don't want to over power it (all the effort I've gone too so far, and it would be a complete pain in the arse to fuck it up......).{/edit}

TTFN!

Treasure!

2009-08-23T10:35:00.003+01:00

Treasure!
Ok, so what the hell is the picture and title all about ?

Some while ago, when I was both reading and contributing to some wine making forums, I was getting excellent answers to my questions and enjoying generally good "chit chat" with another forum member. All of a sudden, he wasn't there and when I did a bit of digging, found that he'd been banned. Now I'm not privy to the exact "why's and wherefores" of what led to his ban, but after a while, I emailed him and since then we've got on very well.

When the facilities are available, we either do "messenger based" video conferencing, or as is currently the case, send voice clips (again via messenger) and chat that way. It's brilliant for me, as this fella does seem to know his stuff....... like having a remote mentor for guidance and advice.

This chap is in the US (lots of mead makers there) and had mentioned an enjoyment of "english tea", so I got his address and sent him some (actually it was rather specific tea, but that's another story). Not so long ago, he mentioned that he was nearly out of tea so I sent another box (the tea we have at home is in 1.5kg boxes). Now as with anything sent internationally it's usually not the cost of the item(s) but the cost of the shipping that's an issue. If you use a commercial parcel carrier, like UPS, or maybe DHL then they seem to want to charge astronomical prices. I've found that it's often cheapest for something like 1kg + to sent it "small package airmail parcel post", via the Royal mail. The last box of teabags, put in a plastic posting envelope, cost me about £18.50 (plus the cost of the teabags of course).

So I was quite amazed when a parcel turned up last week, containing the items in the picture.........

That parcel weighed in at about 13lb. My friend had tried to find a reasonable quote to send it, but the likes of UPS etc where quoting figures like 170$US + for it. He actually managed to send it for 69.90$US, courtesy of the United States Postal Service...... excellent. That's what I'd call a reasonable charge for posting.

So why have I titled this post/picture as "Treasure etc" ? Well as you can see from the picture, there is 1 gallon of his local wild flower honey (and very good honey it seems to be), plus you can see 4 different packs of RedStar yeast, the RedStar brand not being available in the UK (apparently), there's the 2 white sachets of Potassium Metabisulphite as well as the small bottle of it - again, it's hard to track down the Potassium Met' here, as it seems for reasons I don't follow, the UK home brewing industry pushes Sodium Metabisulphite for adding sulphites to wines/meads and for cleaning/sanitising (it seems that if you can find it, then it's about 4 times the price of the Uk available Sodium equivalent).

Then there's the "Yeast Energiser", which is pure Diammonium Phosphate. A good source of nitrogen for yeast, which is not readily available here in the UK, except as "combined nutrients" like Tronozymol. Which can be a bit of a PITA if you only want to add a little extra DAP and not the other stuff in the combined nutrients.

Finally, there's the last bit of treasure, part of a commercial pack of Lalvins D21 yeast. This strain of yeast is a "Maury" yeast isolate. It's as close as I can locate to being the "Maury yeast" that is mentioned by the late Brother Adam of "BuckFast Abbey" fame (in the Bee keeping world - but also a noted mead maker). It seems that it's not normally available as the small 5 to 8 gramme home brewing sachets (except from a couple of locations in the US and Canada). So to have obtained enough to try a couple of different meads is wonderful. I'm intending to break the package down into small quantities as I want it to last as long as possible (I'll be making it up as "yeast starters" to ensure it's working OK).

I'm very grateful to my friend in the States. He's said that if I want to order any small items like yeast packets etc that aren't usually available here, then it's fine for me to have them posted directly to him so he can forward them on...... which is handy for small stuff like sachets of yeast as they only weigh a few grammes each and he can just put them in an envelope and stick airmail stamps on them...... Brilliant.

So Keith? thank you very much for your efforts mate, they very much appreciated. As is the offer of being able to use your address to have stuff sent/forwarded.

I can't wait to get a batch of mead on the go now.... Brilliant.

TTFN

more Mixed Fruit Melomel

2009-08-02T08:44:00.002+01:00

So, yesterday I decided it was time to rack the mixed fruit melomel. It syphoned off the lees nicely as the yeast had flocculated nicely (I poured the bit that was in the 1 pint milk bottle in). This all went into a 2 gallon bucket and the last of the mixed fruit juice was mixed in. Then it was a case of adding sulphite (1 campden tablet in dissolved in a little water), sorbate to stop any re-fermentation and a couple of teaspoons of pectolase (pectic enzyme) to remove any pectin haze that might have been caused by the extra juice.

Once done, this was split into the 2 jars in the picture (a 1 gallon one and a half gallon one). I did a gravity check, as the mixed fruit steamed juice would have increased the gravity - and despite it being nearly half a gallon of juice added to just under 1 gallon of the melomel (1 gallon minus the bit lost during racking and left in the lees) I still had 1 and 3/8th's of a gallon. The gravity only showed as 1005 on the hydrometer. I didn't check the melomel before racking/blending with juice as it was below 1000 last time I checked it.

I then adjusted the levels in both jars so that they were proportionally the same (not so fussed about the actual measurements), and then topped them both up with 75% alcohol (Polish Vodka) that I had so it's fortified a little bit and won't suffer any drop in % ABV caused by mixing in the extra bit of mixed fruit juice.

I'm actually quite pleased how it's looking. As you can see from the photo, it's looking reasonably clear, and the extra juice will have given it a more fruity flavour.

I won't know until I taste it whether it's more of a "summer wine cooler" type drink or something a bit more "fruity" wine-like. I'll have to wait and see won't I......

TTFN!

Mixed Fruit Melomel 2.......

2009-07-19T13:00:00.003+01:00

Ok, so here's what it currently looks like. It's been a little over a fortnight and the yeast has dropped just nicely.

Oh and if you think I made a mistake in leaving the air space, that was the minimum I needed to leave to stop it foaming out into the airlock. Either way, both the main ferment and the small amount in the milk bottle will have been prevented from oxidation by the CO2 rich atmosphere in the airspaces....

During the main ferment, I'd planned to add a bit more nutrient at either the 1/2 or 2/3 sugar break. In practice I checked the gravity after 2 days of active ferment and it had dropped from 1.100 to 1.010 i.e. a 90 point drop. I did panic a little as I was surprised to see that it had changed so much, so quickly.

What did I do ? I added a further 1lb of honey to bring the gravity back up a bit. No I didn't test it, I just added the extra honey, give it a gentle stir and then added the 1/2 (I think it was 1/2, not 1/4) a tsp of Fermaid-K nutrient.

Now my current intention is to rack it off the sediment check the gravity and then add some sulphite prevent spoilage, and then sorbate it to prevent it starting to re-ferment when I add the rest of the fruit juice. At that stage, I'll probably have to mix it in a bucket as it'll be to much for 1 demi-john, then mix in a good dose of pectolase, after all, the juice has already been heat treated and I want it to clear, even if it does take a long time...

Then I'll put it back into a DJ (probably split between a 1 gallon one and a 1/2 gallon one) to clear.

TTFN.

Mixed Fruit Melomel.......

2009-07-07T20:52:00.003+01:00

When we've done our weekly shop, any soft fruit left over is washed, trimmed, picked over and then bagged/frozen.

This means that over the last 6 to 9 months, I ended up with 4kg of Strawberries, eating grapes, raspberries, black berries and a few blue berries.

I'd already decided to make it into a Mixed Fruit Melomel (a melomel being a mead that's made with fruit).

As this seasons fruit is starting to be ready for picking, I decided to get it out the freezer and put it through the steam juice extractor (see earlier posts about that).

Anyway, I ended up with about 4 litres of juice, which tasted mainly of strawberry (which was the bulk of the frozen fruit). I couldn't decide on the method I would use..... so a little consultation with a friend in the US who's made a number of melomels, I decided that I'd make up a must with honey (3lb of cheap supermarket honey initially), about 1.5 litres of the juice and make up the rest to 1 gallon with distilled water. I did remember to add a campden tablet to the juice about a week before as I was concerned that the juice would start to go off or maybe ferment naturally - though that wasn't so much of a consideration as it's pretty sterile/pasteurised when it comes out the steam juicer.

I put that into a 10 litre bucket, and then added 1 teaspoon of Tronozymol yeast nutrient and 1 teaspoon of "mead acid mix" (the mix is 2 parts malic acid to 1 part tartaric acid - the idea taken from Ashton and Duncans book "Making Mead").

The gravity reading was 1.100 (which some of the bod's at WAH would have said "too high" - but this is a mead, not a "normal" fruit wine).

I'd looked at what yeast I had in stock and decided on Lalvin's D47 - don't ask why, as it probably wouldn't make sense.....

I rehydrated it as per the instructions but was a bit concerned as all it did was absorb some water, no bubbling or anything like that at all. I thought "fuck it" and pitched that into the must.

Now I'd used a 10 litre bucket as it would allow for some foaming that sometimes occurs when a ferment starts, by Monday morning, the small piece of cotton wool I'd put into the airlock grommet in the bucket lid had been blown out. So I quickly sanitised a stirrer and stirred/aerated the must. Replaced the cotton wool and went to work.

By Monday evening, the must had blown the cotton wool back out of the grommet and had foamed out into the top of the bucket - I've never had a must that has foamed so much.... amazing.

This morning, I sanitised the stirrer again and aerated the must. Oh I forgot, I'd changed the cotton wool for an airlock on Monday evening.

This evening, I decided it was time to see how the must was getting on. I took a sample and checked.........."fuck my old boots" went straight through my mind when I saw that the hydrometer was sitting at about 1.015 - that's a drop of 85 points in 2 and a half days. Talk about fast and furious ferments.......

Anyway, it's been stirred again, plus I've added another 1/4 teaspoon of Fermaid-K yeast nutrient. I also decided to add another 1lb of honey which as been warmed up to pour easily and put it in. The idea behind that being to bring the gravity back up, so that tomorrow morning, I can stir the must and then rack it into a demi-john - I've got a couple of 1 pint milk bottles on hand just in case it's a bit more than a gallon (due to the size of the top, 1 pint milk bottles make ideal emergency fermenter a bung/airlock fits perfectly).

Once it's fermented dry, I'll sulphite it and stabilise it because I will back sweeten it with the rest of the juice.

The idea of making it that way, is because the fermenting process can be quite hard on the fruit flavours and as I don't want the honey to be the main flavour, it should (in theory) taste mainly of the fruit juice.

It's all a bit experimental as I haven't made much melomel. I'll see how it turns out. Oh, and because I'm hoping that the fruit flavour is the predominant one, it doesn't matter that the honey is cheap blended crap. Nothing of a good varietal honey will come through in the flavour anyway - or that's what I intend.

TTFN

Practicalities of larger batches.......

2009-06-26T12:03:00.003+01:00

Now I won't bore you with what the actual batch is of......

Suffice to say that I decided to make "double size" batch the other week....... So I weighed out the dry ingredients, worked out the water needs etc and got it all mixed up.

Now the only reason for doing this, was because I'd managed to get a couple of 54 litre carboys cheap via ebay.

The only thing I didn't think of, was the one thing that's turning out to be a complete pain in the arse - I don't have the infrastructure to deal with batches this size.

If I make a 25 litre batch of something, then fine, I have enough kit to mix, aerate, rack from one container to another and moreover, lift it i.e. muscle power!

When I'd mixed that batch, it occured to me that I'd better move it to the corner of the dining room so I didn't get an ear bashing from "erindoors". Fuck me sideways with the rough end of a pineapple! It's heavy. It weighs in the region of 50 Kg's. When it's finished fermenting, I'll have to think about how I'm gonna stir it to de-gas so I can add the finings to clear and how to syphon it so that I can split it into 2 smaller batches (I also got some 25 litre glass demi-john containers as well)!

So before you leap in with both feet, just think about how you're gonna move things like this etc, it's all very well making large batches etc but if you can't move them to where you need to do stuff with them, then as they say, "you're up shit creek without a paddle"!

TTFN

Information and thieving bastards......

2009-06-26T11:21:00.002+01:00

I'm always on the look out for better/extra info on winemaking, specifically on making meads. It's both a minefield and a complete pain in the arse!

There seems to be little, current/U.T.D. stuff available. Yes there's the excellent "Compleat Meadmaker" book by the knowledgeable Mr Ken Schramm, but while his book is excellent, it's aimed at the US market and lots of his recommendations are not suitable/appropriate/available for those of us outside continental North America.

In the last couple of days, I've managed to get 2 "new" (to me that is) books. The first one is "Bee-Keeping at Buckfast Abbey" by Brother Adam. I'm not sure if he's still with us, of whether he's already "shuffled off this mortal coil" (if he is still alive he'll be a very elderly chap). Either way, he's still held in great esteem in the world of Bee-Keeping, and his book (my copy is dated 1974 - though I believe it was republished up to the mid 80's - oh and it's credits don't quote an ISBN, so whether it's still available via the Abbey, I don't know - my copy came via ebay).

The second book is "Mad about Mead" by Pamela Spence (my copy is dated 1997 - ISBN 1-56718-683-1). I haven't really read much of it yet, as it only arrived this morning (again, courtesy of an ebay seller).

The Brother Adam book is primarily about Bee-Keeping, as you'd guess from the title, though there's a final chapter in it about mead making. Which is sort of helpful, yet not. He describes some quite old techniques/methodology, and some of the suggested equipment isn't the most "user friendly" - oak barrels ? obviously he had no appreciation of just how hard it can be to obtain oak barrels of any size that are in good enough condition to use for this, and certainly not the cost............

Plus, having read through it, it seems that he shows a distinct preference for honey type, which is fine, but also only uses "maury" yeast. The honey types he suggests could be obtained without too much difficulty or expense but so far, I'm having a crap time trying to locate either maury yeast or some sort of equivalent....

Hey ho, I'll just keep trying.

As for the "thieving bastards" bit of the title, so many of the recipes and methodology that abound the net for mead making, eminate from the US. Which means that some times, we have to get the materials shipped over (not ideal). The actual prices of the materials is almost always excellent and what I'd call "very competitive". What's a complete fucker is what is charged for shipping. I was looking for 2 items (Di-ammonium phosphate and "yeast hulls"). They came to a grand total of about $6.50, but the shipping charges were from $75 to $82. Now I wouldn't mind that if I was shipping something that weighed about 5 or 6 kg, but the weight for the 2 items was a little over 1lb, plus the weight of the actual packaging. So where those thieving fuckers at UPS come up with $75 to $82 I don't know, other than just conjuring them out of thin air. Plus the actual sellers at Morewine!, surely if they want to sell their excellent catalogue of products further afield than just the US, should try to use a cheaper shipping method (how about USPS, they're much cheaper than fucking UPS!).

I begrudge paying shipping fee's but will only consider it if it's commensurate with the size/weight of the article concerned. For instance, I've just tried the morewine website again, and selected 5 packets of yeast - total weight 25 grammes - they'd fit in a fucking envelope and probably could be shipped for the cost of a stamp! but their "shipping quotation" is

UPS Worldwide Express 69.77
UPS Worldwide Expedited 62.94
UPS Express Saver 66.55

that's in $US. What complete fucking smackhead would ever think of sending something like that ? why default to premium shipping services like that ?

It just looks like that I won't be using morewine!, as there site might seem to have an excellent and extensive range of products, but for all intents and purposed, it's a complete waste of space!

Ah well, I suppose I'd only find up to date mead making info and cheap shipping prices in an ideal world!

TTFN

Steam Juice Extraction........

2009-06-21T12:21:00.003+01:00

Ok, so last year, after reading some stuff about how to extract juices from fruit, I managed to get a "steam juice extractor" cheap on ebay (less than £20 including the postage).

It's basically a large "ban marie" sort of thing, with a lower pan that holds water, a central section that collects the juice but allows the steam to pass through the middle area (which has a high inverted funnel section with holes to let the steam pass through) and a top section (with lid) that holds the fruit.

The middle section also has a tube that you connect a rubber pipe too (and put a spring clamp/clip on to stop the juice running out until you're ready).

You put the water in the bottom, assemble it, put the fruit in the top and then put it on the hob (gas in my case).

It seems to work quite well, inasfaras it takes about an hour or so for the water to heat up and the steam percolate through to the fruit, heating it up and allowing the juice to drop down to the middle section of it, ready to drain it off into suitable containers.

Obviously, it depends on the fruit, as to how much juice you collect (actually it's designed to handle fruit and vegetables but I don't make vegetable wines etc). For instance, yesterday we went to the local PYO and picked about 2.75kg of black currants, which when processed, filled a "normal" sized kilner jar and 3 x 1lb honey jars. After checking on google, that would be almost exactly 6lb in weight of fruit, or enough to make 2 gallons of black currant wine.

Also, over the last year, after we've done our weekly shopping, any soft fruit left over has been chopped and cleaned, and then frozen. This morning I've chucked it through the steam juicer to see how much juice I get, but also to make some room in the freezer as it's time for the first harvests of the summers earlier fruit i.e. blackcurrant, strawberry, raspberry, etc etc.

I did manage to get quite a lot of juice out of it, about 4 litres which I didn't think was too bad at all.

The reason why I'm posting this, isn't because I'm trying to sound like a "clever clogs", but more to do with explaining that it's a handy facility to have but it's certainly not "the B all and End all" when it comes to juice.

Why's that ?

Well, to start with, it's using steam to get the juice out of the fruit, that implies heat. So if the fruit is either heat sensitive or has the ability to impart a "cooked" flavour, then that's what you're going to get.

Yes, it's fair to say that some fruit benefits from the use of heat, for example, elderberry (sorry I can't remember why at the moment). So when they're in season, it will be rather helpful to only have to remove the berries from the main stalk and I won't have to go through them picking off the tiny bits of stalk right on the berry - it's a bloody laborious job at the best of times.......

Though I've also noticed that in some cases, cold or cool extraction might be better....

The black currants I processed yesterday came out quite well, but I was still left thinking that there seemed to be less colour pigment than I recall. Well that's to say that if you buy a pot of blackcurrant jam or jelly, it seems a lot darker than the juice, which is quite dark. Of course, it might just me being daft and remembering wrongly.

Hence I was thinking that it might be my mind playing tricks on me.

There's also the matter of how to actually add the juice to a recipe so I don't loose too much of the flavour, which if you make melomels (fruit based meads), the fermentation process is apt to do. So in the case of these batches of fruit, I think I'll be making the mead as a "traditional" mead to start with, and then when the gravity gets down to something like 1010, I'll add the extracted juice then.....

Hell, it's still going to be experimental but what the hell, it should only be the same as adding fruit at the "secondary fermentation" stage....

I'll have to wait and see eh!

TTFN!

IRT "sollyhousecash" comment on the 20/04/09...

2009-05-31T19:28:00.002+01:00

is there any cost differance between grape concentrate and Honey?

ie: whats cheaper to make? not trying to make cheap wine but just interested in the costs,

To be honest, I can't really say........

They can both be used for similar things i.e. back sweetening or adding "body" (viscosity/mouth feel) to a wine, but basically they're entirely different (apart from the obvious differences).

I don't often use grape concentrate for adding body, I prefer to use "wine tannin" for that, and I don't use it for back sweetening as I don't want a wine/grape flavour to a wine/mead, unless it's a specific part of the recipe i.e. you're using it to make up a must for a "grape" type wine.

I can't remember the price of the grape concentrate......£5 or £6 a 900g tin comes to mind, but I'd guess it depends on where you buy it (and how much you need).

Honey ? well you might find it as cheap as £1.50 to £2 a lb/454g in the supermarkets, but that's gonna be cheapo blended shit of unknown provenance - with really useful comments on the label, like "produce of more than one country". Basically it depends on what you want it for, because it's hard to compare meads and other country wines. If it's just being used as a sweetening source for another flavoured wine, then fine, cheapo supermarket shit might do the job, or if you're making a fruit based mead i.e. pyment, cyser, melomel etc etc then as long as the fruit or spice flavour is the main one the cheap supermarket honey might also be Ok, but if you're gonna make a "traditional" mead, then you are probably gonna get what you pay for (in most cases). If you can, get a lb of the "target" honey and taste it, if you like it then give it a go. Hell if you can do, get a number of different honeys and do a comparative tasting (including a supermarket one) and you'll start to understand the difference.

My next target is gonna be the elusive "Buckwheat" honey, because so many of the books and websites etc that I've read about making meads say that it's good to use the darkest, strongest tasting honey's you can get. Buckwheat is, apparently, the strongest and darkest.

We'll see eh!

p.s. Oh and I've got it on good authority, that a honey to avoid in mead making is Eucalyptus. Plus you also often see "Leatherwood" honey. Now I don't know for certain whether Leatherwood is actually related to Eucalyptus, but it (the leatherwood honey) does seem to have "eucalyptus overtones".... so probably best avoided as well.

Sometimes this home brewing lark is a complete......

2009-05-31T18:52:00.003+01:00

pain in the fucking arse!

Why ? Well, in theory, making a brew of some sort, should be easy.

But it's not.

For instance, I make mainly meads, but have had a go at other country wines. Ok. The issue is that you might have a recipe and think that you're following it verbatim and will get the same result as the original recipe author.

Un-fucking-likely!

Why ? So, in theory (using mead for the analogy), you use the "same" honey, yeast and other ingredients.... but when it comes down to it, you're not are you. Honey might, theoretically, be the same but is "English" heather honey the same as "Scottish" heather honey? Is the actual heather that the bee's have collected from the same i.e. bell heather or ling heather ?

Then there's the issue of the make up of the must. With proper "grape" wines, the must is just pure grape juice, whereas, with country wines and meads, it's a certain amount of fruit or honey and water - with mead you just add or subtract a certain amount of honey to get to the required gravity, and other fruit wines you add a certain amount of sugar to correct the gravity of the fruit/water mix.

Which gives rise to the quality of the water. Where I live, the water is very hard, and has high levels of chalk/calcium. It does seem that this doesn't make for good wines and meads, though normally, to soften water, a device adds a specific amount of salt to the water (a bit like in dishwashers, where you may or may not have to use salt in the device to get the same cleaning performance from the detergents).

As I've mentioned, I make mainly meads, and I've just had to go through my stocks, that have been "bulk ageing", too work out which ones I need to leave and which might be ready for bottling.

Out of fourteen and a half gallons (yes, 14.5 gallons), I've identified six and a half gallons that I'm gonna "treat" to recover as much of the alcohol as possible. I just didn't like the taste of it. Of the other 8 gallons, there is 2 gallons of the same batch that was "sort of" Ok (the third gallon from the same recipe/batch/method of making is one of the "failed" batch gallons - why that should be, I haven't the faintest idea). So I've just added about a table spoon i.e. just over 15 grammes, of toasted oak chips (which looks for all the world like dark/dirty saw dust) to each of the 2 gallons from that batch and I'll leave it for a couple of weeks to see how it gets on.

The other 6 gallons of the meads/wines have been put back in storage until I've got time to do something with them......

Of the actual meads, the gallon that I made using cheap "Greek" honey, from Lidl, tastes the best. The gallon of "heather" honey mead, the heather honey being the most expensive, was Ok, but a little light in flavour, I'm thinking that I might blend the 2 and then bottle them. The other 4 gallons, well there's 1 gallon of "Joe's Ancient Orange" that's come out good, another is JAO, but made with lime instead of orange, there's 1 gallon of a recipe called "Winter Mead" (I don't have the recipe but it should be available via google) and the other one, that has turned out surprisingly well is a "Tinned Strawberry" country wine (it does actually taste, convincingly, of tinned strawberries).

I don't know why it is that I'm getting so much variation in the taste of the end result. Yes, I'm happy to admit that I'm not particularly anal about method so it's replicated perfectly everytime, but I'm quite careful to try and maintain absolute hygiene when making a batch.

Oh, and of the yeasts used, the Greek Honey mead was made using Lalvins D47.

The only other thing(s) I'm thinking of doing, is getting a "Reverse Osmosis" filter, so I can get "pure" water i.e. water that's had all the chlorine, chloramine, chalk/calcium and any other "dissolved solids" removed. Yes I could distil the water, but that does take a hell of a long time and I also don't have the kit to be able to do that quickly enough (I need in the region of 3 to 3 and a half litres of water for each gallon of mead or wine that I make).

Plus I think it's time I took very extensive notes.

Because right now, I'm stumped and I've got 13 gallons of various wine under airlock and I'd rather not have quite such high levels of "failed" batches.........

Hey ho! back to the drawing board.......

Extra "master plan" info.....

2009-04-18T15:35:00.004+01:00

Well the 2 batches of mead (one with Orange Blossom honey, the other with Spanish Lavender honey) have been on the go since the 5th, so that'd be about 13 days. I haven't checked how they're getting on gravity wise, but about 4 or 5 days ago, I topped them up.

Now that in itself shouldn't have needed much thinking about, but I don't recall adding any tannin (I'd have to look back to the recipe........) so I decided to top them up with grape concentrate and RO (reverse osmosis) water. I took a 900g tin of "Youngs" white grape concentrate and split it equally between the two DJ's and then topped them both up to just below the neck with RO water.

The bubbled a bit more too start with, so now I'm planning on just leaving them to finish. Then I can have a taste and decide on what's to be done from there. They're still bubbling at a rate of about 1 bubble ever 2 or 3 seconds, and while airlock activity isn't an accurate way of checking fermentation progress, it's fine for me, for the moment. Once they've slowed even more I'll check the gravity, just to make sure that they're still Ok.

More on the "master plan".......

2009-04-05T20:38:00.002+01:00

So, further to yesterdays post, I've check both musts i.e. the Orange Blossom honey one and the Lavender Honey one.

The Orange Blossom one gave me a gravity of 1090 and 3.82 pH, the Lavender one was a gravity of 1094 and a pH of 4.08

Both have been treated with 1 tsp of the 2 parts Malic/1 part Tartaric acid mix. I also decided to stick with what I know and I added 1.5 tsp (7.5gr) of tronozymol to both musts and I just rehydrated 2 packs of 71B in water for about 15 minutes at just below 40 degrees C.

Obviously it should be a day or so before I see any action but they're now under airlock. I'll try and see if I can aerate at least once a day, but if I don't then I don't really expect any problems as the gravity isn't too high that I need to concentrate on being to punctilious about that. I'm not aiming to try and boost alcohol levels etc.

TTFN!

The latest master plan!

2009-04-04T23:38:00.003+01:00

Ok, so a while ago, I bought a 3lb bucket of Orange Blossom honey and a 3lb bucket of Spanish Lavender honey. The idea being just to make 2 batches of "varietal" mead - traditional mead but with honey of a specific provenance.

Anyway, I've been dragging my arse a bit with this, partly because I was busy doing other stuff, partly because I couldn't get my finger out, etc etc.

I have been doing other stuff, you only need to read this blog between my showing the picture of the buckets....did I post a picture ? damn I can't remember. Anyway, it's too late now.

Earlier today, I got one of my 25 litre PET cans and used bleach to sanitise it, then rinsed the hell out of it to make sure all traces of bleach had been removed. I then went to the local aquarium supplies place and got it filled with "reverse osmosis water" a.k.a. RO water.

Now I won't bore you with technical shit, but here's a nice wikipedia link that explains about drinking water purification using reverse osmosis.

To put it more clearly, the idea is to use water that's had as much taken out of it as is feasible. Yes I could have easily made enough distilled water, but it takes a good few hours for the water distiller to do enough water for 2 gallons of mead.

So, this evening, I've used "Ritchies Cleaner/Steriliser" to sanitise 2 x 1 gallon demi-johns. While the cleaning solution was doing it's thing, I left the 2 buckets of honey in hot water just to make sure that any possible crystalisation was melted down. Plus I put 1 litre of the RO water in a saucepan to heat up, so I could swill the buckets out.

I've marked the DJ's so I know which one is which, the honey has been added and the buckets swilled out into the DJ's and while the "swill water" is still warm I've stoppered the DJ's and shaken the hell out of them to mix the honey with the water - they've then been topped up to 4 litres.

Now I was in a bit of a quandary the other day, because there's the debate about whether you add acid to the recipe before fermentation or afterwards. I could really "kick the arse out of it" and test for "titrateable acid" levels in the must before I actually start the ferment, but I think I'm just gonna test the pH of the must tomorrow, and then add some acid, so that it's somewhere in the region of 3.5 pH (yeast likes an acid environment to do it's thing). It will be the 2 parts malic to 1 part tartaric, that is suggested by "Acton and Duncan" in the now out of print book, Making Mead.

I haven't decided what yeast to use yet, but I'm thinking of using Lalvin's 71B as that came out best in a previous test that I did with yeasts.

Obviously, I'll test the starting gravity of the must. I know that the great and good at the excellent "Winesathome" forums would be a little critical, because they usually suggest that ferments should be started at about 1080 to 1090 because that should, in theory, allow the yeast to "do it's thing" without getting stressed etc.

Now 71B "poops out" at about 14% ABV - by that, I mean that that is it's alcohol tolerance. A gravity of 1080 would give me 14.67% ABV (according to the WAH alcohol calculation chart), and 1090 would give 14.81% ABV. I'm not particularly worried about accuracy to much, as long as it's about 14% ABV. It's my intention to back sweeten it i.e. add more sweetness so that both batches come out as medium sweet meads. I haven't thought too far ahead though, because I've got to wait until the ferment is complete before I start really worrying about that sort of stuff.

For the actual ferment, I'm thinking that I'll reactivate the yeast with a little of the must and some Go-Ferm yeast activation nutrient. Then once it's been going for a couple of days (I might have time to check for either the 1/3 or 1/2 sugar break - that's when either 1/3 or 1/2 the sugar has been fermented), add some Fermaid-K yeast nutrient. Though I also have Tronozymol yeast nutrient. If I used the Tronozymol, then the dosage would go into the must before the ferment is started and the yeast would be rehydrated with just water (like it says on the packet). I haven't made my mind up yet.........

TTFN.

p.s. Oh and if you give a fuck, there is a picture of the 2 little buckets of honey on the post dated Saturday 6th September 2008......

It's just occured to me......

2009-03-15T15:51:00.002Z

When I was a kid, there used to be a brewery, just north of Portsmouth called "George Gale & Co". As well as a good range of beers, then also made a good range of "country" fruit wines.

I'd been lucky enough to taste some of them and my over riding memory is of fruit wines that actually tasted something like the fruit that they'd been made from, but with a base sweetness and a "kick" (which'd have been the alcohol).

Gales was taken over by "Fullers" some years ago, so I don't know if they're still making the fruit/country wines.

My problem is that I like my fruit wines like that. Fruity and sweet tasting, and not necessarily very "winey". Wines that taste, well, like wine, are to my view, made from grapes. Yes it's fair to say that I don't really know much about them, but I tend to remember some of the names and roughly where they come from. They tend to be very fruity, tannic and quite "heavy". Burgundies and Bordeaux - there are also 1 or 2 that I've enjoyed that were made in Australia, whereas the ones I've tasted from other wine making areas, well I can take them or leave them. It may be that I just haven't tasted any of the "good" ones.

I'm also finding that I'm not particularly keen on "white" country wines either. Yes, there's one or two that I don't mind but I seem to vastly prefer the red country wines, and even then they have to be quite strongly tasting of the original base fruit.

I just can't really make my mind up, but I'm thinking that I'll be having to go along the lines of just making traditional meads and then if I want some fruit flavour, to then add it after it's been made i.e. soaking the fruit in traditional mead etc to give it some fruit flavour without the actual fruit sugars being fermented.

I'll just have to put some thought into it won't I.......

Todays efforts....racking the kiwi melomel and the Apple/Blackberry

2009-03-15T15:40:00.002Z

Well as you can see from the picture I've racked both the Kiwi Melomel and the Apple and Blackberry. I haven't been as thorough as I should have been with these as I let them finish in buckets. Not that that should really matter as any air space in the bucket would have been filled with the CO2 that was bubbling out during fermentation.

So what are they like etc ? Well I went (as usual) at it like "a bull in a china shop" as I just wanted to get them both off the lees and into glass. Like a pillock I forgot to take gravity readings......well I just couldn't be arsed really because a small taste I took of the Kiwi Melomel, tasted just like I expected. Like a medium dry white fruit wine, but when it came to the Apple and Blackberry, it still tasted quite sweet and fruity, so I just got it into glass and then the little bit left in the bucket was put in a test jar and when I dropped a hydrometer into it, it showed 1.000 so that's about as finished as I reckon I'll get it given the messing about it's caused me (the restart etc).

I'm thinking that I might just back sweeten both of them a bit, probably with honey. It doesn't matter too much as I'll just leave them under airlock for a couple of months that then think a bit more about how I'll actually finish them.

Still, not bad, if I do say so myself.

TTFN!

Kiwi Melomel - latest...

2009-02-01T10:35:00.002Z

Well it looked like I'd fucked up big time with the Kiwi melomel as it didn't seem to be fermenting. It was bugging me like hell because I'd followed the various instructions and guidance I could find - particularly on using GoFerm to rehydrate the yeast.

I was about to rehydrate another yeast pack, on the basis that I must have done something to kill the yeasties in the first one when I noticed that the damned stuff had started bubbling. Hell it's only been a week - normally when I rehydrate a yeast with GoFerm, it's a matter of hours, because the GoFerm has caused the yeast to multiply it's cells into a nice vigorous starter. So it looks like it was just a long "lag phase" (where the yeast is multiplying and before it starts fermenting the sugar in the must into alcohol) the only thing I can think of is temperature, but that doesn't really make sense because the yeast pack says that the water should be between 40 and 43 degrees C (ideally), whereas I had it at about 37/38 degrees C which shouldn't be so cool as to affect the yeast. I don't know.

Anyway, because it seemed to be fermenting, I added about 3 grammes of FermaidK instead. That was mixed in a little must and then added to the main batch. I also sanitised our electric hand whisk so I could whisk the main batch of must to get some more air/oxygen into it. You'd normally, if aerating the must, do that at the time of the original mixing, but there are also various fermentation regimes that I've read about at GotMead that aerate periodically until the must has fermented down to a certain level of gravity, the must then being allowed to go into the "anaerobic phase" of fermentation.

I'm not using those techniques "per se" but figured that it wouldn't harm the must and as it had already started to ferment (signalling the end of any lag phase) that it was time to add the FermaidK nutrient and that aeration would be Ok.

Either way, it's bubbling away nicely so I'll check the gravity in a couple of days - it should show a respectable drop from the original 1100 that the must started at. Hell I might even aerate it again, it depends on where it's at.....

TTFN!

Kiwi Fruit - Melomel (plus a few other bits of info).

2009-01-22T20:26:00.003Z

A good few months ago, Tesco's did an offer of a pack of 4 kiwi fruit for 50 pence, which is quite cheap. So I jumped at the chance and bought a load (a dozen packs I think it was).

I actually bothered to weigh them and bag them before chucking them in the freezer - I ended up with 4 bags that all contained almost exactly 2lb 10oz.

Time passed and I just happened to see a "steam juice extractor" on ebay, which, as it was listed at about £5 looked like a bargain. They're between £50 and £80 new, so I figured it was worth a punt and made an offer with a maximum bid of £20.

As it turned out, I got it for £11 which I was quite pleased with.

I didn't even bother to unpack it, so it also sat there.

My partner decided she wanted to defrost the fridge as it was getting to the point where we could hardly close the door. So I took the Kiwi's out of the freezer box, unwrapped the steam juicer, put the water in the bottom part, assembled the rest, filled the top part with the Kiwi's and turned the gas on.

It took about 2 hours, but I ended up with almost exactly a gallon of juice.

Now I'm fully aware that some fruit shouldn't be exposed to heat as you end up with a "cooked" flavour to it. Apples are a good example of that (oh, and the heating process can also cause greater formation/problems with pectin hazes - more of that later.

I didn't know that Kiwi's are also like that. They are. So when I tasted the juice, I was a little surprised to find that instead of that slightly sharp, yet hard to describe, taste of "raw" kiwi fruit, I had a gallon of juice that basically tasted like slightly sweet gooseberry. Not unpleasant at all.

I couldn't decide what to do from there, so I emailed my mate Keith. He's a damn good bloke to know - a "direct" person who will argue his corner if he feels he's correct (which has lead him to being banned from a few of the wine making forums etc). His wealth of knowledge has meant that I've started the kiwi juice as a "Melomel", which is basically a mead but made with fruit/juice as well as the honey.

So I'd mixed the kiwi juice with 3lb of cheapo supermarket honey, and made it up to just under 2 gallons with mineral water. This was all in a 2 gallon fermenting bucket. I also dug out some "Pectolase" (pectic enzyme) and instead of the 1 teaspoon per gallon normally used, doubled it up to 2 teaspoons per gallon as the kiwi juice had been heated by the steam extractor and probably contained more than it's fair share of pectin. This I left for 3 days to work it's magic (oh and I also understand that it can help with the flavour as well - either way, the regular use of pectolase isn't a bad thing as it doesn't do any harm even if there isn't much in the way of pectin in the juice/must).

Today, I decided to check how it was doing. There was a nice layer of sediment on the bottom of the bucket. So I decided to check the gravity to see if it needed any more honey. It registered 1060 - the recipe Keith had sent me had a starting gravity of about 1100. So I just went round the local Scummerfield and got another 3lb of honey. With that mixed in the must registered exactly 1100.

I've rehydrated a packet of Lalvin 71B-1122 yeast, in 200ml's of water with 2 teaspoons of Lalvins GoFerm yeast rehydration nutrient. The idea being that the GoFerm is supposed to help get a nice healthy rehydration of the yeast so the colony is lively enough to have only a short "lag phase" (that's where the yeast multiplies before it starts any fermentation).

The only strange thing being, that there's has yet to be any sign of the ferment starting. I know that the water temp was Ok - the packet says it should be about 40 degrees C, mine was at about 38/39 degrees C. So maybe I just used a little too much at 200ml's. Not to worry. I'll leave it a couple of days and if it's still not started fermenting I'll try to start it again (maybe with a different yeast, I don't know, I haven't decided).

The only other things in the must, is a hand full of raisins and 2 teaspoons of tannin (1 per gallon).

Oh and I checked the pH of the must, which was showing at 3.45 on my pH meter.

I mentioned before about my apple and blackberry that had "stuck". Well, I haven't tested it but I think it's probably finished now, because had been bubbling regularly after I restarted it and now I'm lucky if I hear 1 bubble per hour - probably less than 1 bubble every 3 hours. Which is probably it de-gassing naturally.

I'll post again when I've worked out whether the Kiwi melomel has started or not and how the apple and blackberry is looking, but that's probably not gonna be before the weekend.

TTFN!

Todays efforts!

2008-12-29T17:04:00.002Z

Well today I swore that I'd sort out my pile of stuff that's been waiting to be done when I can get motivated enough.

I racked off both gallons of "Joe's Ancient Orange" - well gallons I made with lemon and lime that is. The gallon I made using Lalvin 71B yeast is slightly less "citrusy" than the one made with bread yeast. Though it's also got a little background "pithy bitterness", that the bread yeast gallon doesn't have. I suspect next time I make a batch, I'll use exactly the amount of fruit suggested i.e. if it says 1 orange, and I want to use lemon and lime, then I'll use half a lemon and half a lime.

I'm also thinking that I'll "zest" the fruit and then segment the flesh out of it. So there'd be little to no chance of getting any "pithy bitterness" + it'd be easier to get the fruit out of the DJ and it'd drop sooner as it won't have any air pocket places to hold onto any CO2 that might have come out during the ferment and got stuck in the fruit.

To top the DJ's up I used some of one of my experimental gallons of traditional mead.

I also racked off the gallon of plum that I made in September/October, that racked across quite nicely, though I still put a crushed campden tablet in it (as I did the JAO mentioned above). Oh and I topped the plum up with some of the odd half gallon of "barshack ginger mead - with added fruit", for no other reason than it's a red.

I've also started rehydrating the apple and blackberry that stuck (see previous posts). I started off by checking the gravity of both gallons, one was stuck at 1040, while the other was at 1020. So I've mixed them together in a 2 gallon bucket. I've then taken 3/4 of a pint of the wine/must, and mixed that with 1 and 1/2 pints of water, in a half gallon DJ. I then took a small amount of must (about 75ml's) and mixed that into 200ml's of water. I rehydrated a pack of Lalvin K1V in 200ml's of water with 4 grammes of Go-Ferm for 15 minutes, at just under the suggested temp on the packet of 40 degree's C.

That was then mixed into the 275ml's of very watery must, a good shake and then it was placed into a milk bottle and airlocked.

I did think it would take a good while for it to start showing any signs of "movement" but it was bubbling in about 30 minutes, and then it had a lot of foam on the top, so I left it for an hour or so for the foam to subside and then after running some warm water over the outside of the half gallon DJ (to try and get it to roughly the same temperature), added the milk bottles contents into the 2 and 1/4 pints of diluted must/wine. That also had a good shake and then was air locked.

I'm hoping that by tomorrow, or maybe Wednesday, it will be bubbling enough to top up the half gallon DJ with another pint or pint and a 1/2 of wine/must.

Once that's going I'll be able to add it to the 2 gallon bucket and then it should, theoretically, get that going as well (I might put a belt heater round the bucket, I haven't decided yet).

So really it's all a bit "wait and see".

Oh and I made up another 25 litres of wash!

TTFN!

Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks!

2008-11-16T15:03:00.002Z

Well I've just done a quick test to see how my 2 x 1 gallon batches of apple and blackberry are getting on - actually I tested the gallon of plum as well.

The plum is sitting nicely on about 1.000 so I reckon it's finished fermenting, but the two apple and blackberry ones, one gallon is sitting at about 1020 and the other one is sitting on about 1035 to 1040.

The fuckers! I wonder what's made them stick like that. I'm pretty sure that all the numbers were fine when I started them.

It means that I'll probably have to mix them together and run a restart routine.......

It's basically a process where you take an alcohol tolerant yeast, rehydrate it, then take a little of the stuck must and dilute it with the same amount of water. You pitch the newly rehydrated yeast into that and let it get on for about a day, then add the same amount of the stuck must again, leaving it to start to ferment fully, then you double it again etc. When you've got about between 1/4 to 1/3 of the stuck must fermenting again, you pitch the lot back into the rest of the stuck fermentation. You would probably need to add some yeast nutrient to it before mixing the newly re-fermenting must into the main body of the stuck must! It should then, in theory, ferment out to dryness Ok.

It looks quite straight forward, but it's a bit of a pain in the arse. I'll have to mix the two gallons of stuck must together, then treat it as one. I originally used RC212 yeast as it's good for retaining more of the fruitiness of a red/red fruit wine, but I'm gonna have to try and use K1V-1116 instead as that might knock the fruitiness back a bit and when the ferments finished it might be a little "rough" and need to be aged some, but it has a good reputation when it's been used in wines that are aged. Plus it'll probably be better than trying EC-1118 which is a champagne yeast and I don't want to end up with a red wine that tastes like a dry white!

Fuck! this wine making lark can be a PITA sometimes.

Ah well.

TTFN

Damn wine making ! Mk2

2008-10-26T10:16:00.002Z

This morning, I looked at the bubbler valves and it looks like somethings happening, because both of the jars/DJ's of the Apple and Blackberry are much more active i.e. I can see a fair amount of "micro-bubbles" coming to the surface of the wines and the valves are bubbling much more regularly.

Though I still don't see how it might be lack of nutrient that has caused this, especially with apple juice and frozen blackberries. Of course, it'll be something that I've missed, not tested for or just not thought about, but it does seem a little weird.

I think I'll have to dig out the data sheet on the yeast - though whether that'll give me anything to go on, I don't know.

It does still strike me as strange because the jar that was racked still has a much higher gravity, though it doesn't have the considerable layer of sediment of the one that was racked (wrongly) last week and I wouldn't have thought that the "top off" of the cheapo supermarket apple juice would have raised the gravity by 20 points - it's "only juice" after all, it has no added sugar etc.

Weird!

Damn wine making !

2008-10-25T21:43:00.002+01:00

Ok, so this evening I've tested the apple/blackberry that I might be having problems with. The DJ that I actually racked last week is still giving me a gravity reading of 1050 (it was topped up with cheapo supermarket apple juice to remove nearly all the air space from the racking).

The other DJ that wasn't racked last week now shows 1030 with might be a 5 point drop or thereabouts from last weeks reading.

Like an idiot I didn't note down the actual readings. Both are still producing bubbles at the valve, but they still might have stuck and are just "de-gassing". So I've mixed 1 teaspoon of Tronozymol yeast nutrient into 20ml's of water and added 10 ml's to each of the DJ's and given them a gentle stir.

Hence if it does turn out that they're not stuck it won't matter, or if they are, then the nutrient will help towards a restart procedure.

I'll test them again next week, if the gravity has dropped then I'll leave them alone, if it looks like they're stuck I'll put them together into a 2 gallon bucket and do a restart. Though I'm thinking that I'll probably also test the pH just in case it's a bit too low and it's affecting the yeast. I can always add a bit of gypsum which should help bring the pH up a bit.

I'll have to wait and see.

Pip pip!

Last weekend - racking.....

2008-10-22T22:34:00.002+01:00

Ok, so I thought I'd have a "rackfest" last weekend.

I thought I was beginning to get the hang of this wine making lark, but the first bit of racking proved that I'm still making stupid mistakes.

I collected up the 5 DJ's that needed racking and happened to pick my Apple and Blackberry first. Now because the "turkey baster" was in the dishwasher and my "wine thief" wouldn't fit the DJ, I just thought it would be OK and said what the hell and syphoned the first one. I drained the last few drops from the syphon tube into a glass and was absolutely amazed to find that it was as sweet as hell. "Bollocks" thinks me. Ok so I get the turkey baster out of the dishwasher and wash it up by hand, then sanitised it with the campden/citric acid sanitising spray.

Took a measure and dropped the hydrometer into it. 1030, fuck! That means it's stuck for some reason. So I then checked the second gallon to get almost identical results. For the moment, I've dropped a crushed "Vit B1" tablet in each one to see if that will give it enough nitrogen to fire the ferment back up.

If that doesn't do anything, I'm gonna have to do a restart on them, but it will have to be with K1V-1116 - because it should retain more of the fruitiness than if I tried a champagne yeast - not that I know of any "red champagne yeast" anyway.

Here's hoping.

I then checked the gravity of the Raspberry and Apple, great, that's fine at 1002. So I racked it (both DJ's) then when I had the last drops from the tube to taste, I realised what it is about raspberries. I can hardly taste the apple and there's a very strong acidic taste of raspberry there. Not unpleasant, but very sharp. So I'll probably have to sweeten it up to try and hide some of the acid sharpness. Though I'm confident that it'll be Ok, if a little over raspberry tasting. What the hell, I'll just get it cleared and leave it in the DJ forever.

My best effort so far has been my elderberry. After hours of "de-stalking", all the pissing about with the simmering of the berries etc etc it's turned out to be a dry, but very fruity (that non-descript, generic fruity flavour that elderberries have). Overall I've very pleased with it.

Ah well, only the cyser/apple wine to go now and the gallon of plum when it stops fermenting.

Note to self - buy proper laboratory burette or turkey baster specifically for wine making.

Pip pip!

Absinthe & Water

2008-10-18T22:46:00.002+01:00

So, here's what it looked like, when mixed 1 absinthe and 2 water. I can now see why it's often referred to as "the green fairy".

As for taste ? Well, there's the definite anise taste of pernod, Ricard or Pastis, but there's also an underlying bitterness, which, presumably is the wormwood. Despite the 60% ABV, there's no "alcohol hotness" that you often find with other spirits or with high alcohol wines that are still "young".

Overall, as I like the aniseed flavour, it gets 9 out of 10. Not bad at all.

Pip pip!

My idea for "crimbo presents"!

2008-10-18T14:58:00.003+01:00

I've been thinking about what I was going to bottle up to give to the family for their christmas presents (as I've got plenty of mead that should have aged enough by now).

Now I won't bore you with how I got my hands on the base alcohol - it took some getting, but the idea came when I found this site and a little further digging to find this site for the flavouring.

I've not actually tried it before, myself. Though I've tried other aniseed drinks like Pastis, Ricard and of course, Pernod. So when I found those sites I decided that having read a lot about Absinthe, I should really try some. So as it's quite expensive (if you can find it for sale) I decided that I must be able to make some.

I can't report on what it actually tastes like yet, because after digging around the net, I find that it seems that when you make some of these "flavoured vodka spirits", it can take a couple of days for the flavour to develop. I haven't the faintest idea of why, but having made a few of them before, it does seem that that's correct.

I don't know whether I'll be able to resist not tasting it today - either way, I'll post about what it tastes like.

Oh and despite the "how to" link showing it as "easily done", the sugar takes longer to dissolve into the spirit then they seem to suggest.

TTFN!

So much to learn !

2008-10-18T12:01:00.002+01:00

I keep reading about yet more things I should be doing........

"WTF are you on about ?" I here you say.

At the moment, I'm thinking about understanding pH and acid's by "titration" and also that the "must" must be balanced (as well as the finished product) for the ferment to be as successful as possible.

I have a "Ritchies" test kit and a small electronic pH meter. I've used the test meter, but as yet I haven't got round to using the Ritchies test kit.

The acid/pH thing is a bit weird. Why? because there are various suggestions as to which one should be used and how much or more correctly what the pH should be to create the acid environment for the yeast to flourish - well that's what a lot of the stuff I've read suggests - though I've also read suggestions that it doesn't matter too much about what the acid/pH is for the ferment, as long as you use some to balance the wine when it's finished.

There is also the issue of which acid too use i.e. the 3 "normal" ones suggested for wine making are Citric, Tartaric and Malic acids.

My confusion arises, because some suggest that you should only really be using tartaric, whereas lots of recipes include citric in them. Plus the older mead making book I have suggests a blend of acid i.e. 2 parts malic to 1 part tartaric for mead making (which is what most of my wine making consists of).

To make the confusion worse, if the article/post/whatever I'm reading, has come from the US, the acid titration is usually about tartaric acid, whereas I understand that UK instructions/advice/articles/etc will give the figures as sulphuric acid and then have to be converted to tartaric.

Damn! even typing this and thinking about it is making my head spin.

Ah well, back to the internet too see what I can find, and to try and understand this issue.

TTFN!

Blackberry and apple/Plum.

2008-10-05T17:41:00.003+01:00

Well I've just strained my blackberry and apple off the blackberry pulp and got it into fermenters - it's basically a 1 gallon recipe, but as I had 9 litres of apple juice and 3lb of frozen blackberries, I got 2 x 1 gallon's and about 1 1/2 pints of must left over.

The extra bit is in the fridge so it might tighten up the bottle a bit (a plastic bottle) while the ferment dies down, but that shouldn't be a problem. Once the ferment has finished it can be topped off - the yeast in the spare bit will have settled on the side of the bottle anyway.

Oh and despite the recipe saying that it needed 680g of sugar, I've said bollocks and used a whole kilo - yes it will probably still ferment it ok and it will make it a bit stronger, but I'm not fussed about that as I'll be ageing it for 12 months plus so that should sort out any "alcohol hotness" type taste that might be apparent.

I've also got the plum started fermenting on the pulp - it will have to be strained after about 4 days, onto the sugar, though that recipe does say 1 kg of it. So I'll sort that on Thursday evening.

Excellent!

Odd Stuff to use !

2008-10-05T07:50:00.002+01:00

The fruit wines I've been making recently, due to the time of year/whats actually "in season" at the moment, means that I'm often having to mill/crush fruit and then treat it with pectic enzyme before it can be strained/pressed.

Now I've also been reading Luc Volders' excellent wine making blog (you have to scroll down for the english translation) and made my own version of his bucket straining device. This is fine, if a little slow. I've also been using the pressing bag I have for use with my press i.e. I put some pulp in it, then twist the material to tighten it, squeezing some of the juice out (over a bucket of course) before it goes into the press - the only problem with this is that the press has an internal basket made of stainless steel. Now when this was made, the basket has had holes drilled/cut into it before the basket section was formed. The makers didn't bother smoothing the holes on the inner side of the basket, so when the press is operated and the foot comes down to press the bag/fruit, it sometimes catches the edge of the material, tearing small holes in the material. Which after a while, not only allows some of the pulp to squirt out, makes things bloody messy and the bags are about £5 a go i.e. not cheap.

So to try and remedy this, I've enlisted the mother-out-law, and she picked up a box of 5 pairs of "pop-sox" in the local Wilko's (about £ 1.50), so I should (after sanitising them, despite them being brand new) be able to do the same thing, at less cost and it doesn't matter if they get snagged by the inner part of the presses fruit basket. They should "do the job", especially if I don't mill the fruit as finely as I have been with apples (in a magimix).

I am thinking about getting a press with a wooden basket instead, but they're not as cheap as the small press I picked up on ebay (I think it was about £50).

TTFN!

Fruit wines and other stuff !

2008-10-05T07:35:00.002+01:00

So, the second batch of apples that I pillaged from the local roadside tree's, was milled and then left with some pectolase and crushed campden tablet mixed in. The campden tablet to prevent bacterial infection and the pectolase to help with juice and flavour extraction plus it helps prevent pectin hazes in the finished wine.

Then last weekend, I strained and pressed it. I also added the 3lb of frozen black berries that I had in the freezer. To basically follow one of the Apple and Blackberry recipes in the ageing "Boots book of Home Wine and Beer Making" (ageing as it was originally published in 1982 but the recipes seem to be more up to date than those in the CJJ Berry Book "Firt Steps in Wine Making).

Of course, I should have just milled the apples and then added the blackberries but I don't think it matters, it's been fermenting on the pulp of the blackberries/apple juice for about 4 days or so now, which means that today I'll be straining it and the pressing what's left of the pulp.

Also, about a week ago, I found some cheap plums in the local Tesco (about 65 pence per pound) so I bought 6lb thinking that the average fruit recipe uses about 3lb of fruit per gallon. The plum recipes use about 4 1/2 lb per gallon so I've de-stoned the fruit, crushed it a bit and then added the 5 pints of hot water. This has been allowed to cool and then it's had pectolase, a crushed campden tablet and a teaspoon of citric acid added. Later this evening I'll be adding the rest of the ingredients i.e. yeast, nutrient, grape concentrate (don't recall whether I add the sugar at this stage or not...) etc but it'll then be left to ferment on the pulp for about 3 or 4 days, before the pulp is then strained off.

I should point out, that I've been using either Lalvins RC212 or Youngs Burgundy yeasts. This'd be mainly because of the properties of retaining colour and some of the more delicate flavours that often differentiate between red/dark coloured fruits and light/green coloured fruits (it's more in depth than that, but I suspect it's better to stick with the normal winemaking conventions).

TTFN!

What else ?

2008-09-27T19:32:00.002+01:00

Over the last couple of weeks I've pillaged some "wild" apples from the tree's beside the local bypass. They've been mixed with some apples from the local PYO.

The first batch that was milled and pressed didn't have a very high gravity so I added 3lb of honey. I seem to recall that the gravity got to about 1050. It was just a bit of an experiment to see what it might turn out like. I didn't really want to add loads of extra sugar. Whether it'll taste cidery or whether the honey actually makes a difference I don't really know until it's finished.

Today I've pressed another 12 litres of apple pulp that were milled (milled ? chucked in a magimix) last week - the only additives being some campden tablet crushed and a couple of teaspoons of pectolase, the gravity is 1035 so I suspect that the extra time on the trees has helped a little.

Most don't seem to realise that eating apples are picked before they're at their ripest/highest sugar levels - whereas cider apples are often allowed to drop and then "machined" up for milling/pressing - obviously you'd want the highest sugar levels so you don't have to add much, if anything at all.

The juice from today, is going to have 2lb of blackberries in it as well. Basically following a recipe from the 1982 Boots "Book of Home Wine and Beer Making" though I'm not sure if I'll have any proper "Burgundy" yeast, I've got a few other types to choose from so I'll check the data on them and choose the best one.

Be interesting to see how it turns out.

TTFN!

Ingredients and kit.....

2008-09-06T14:26:00.003+01:00

Today, I decided to get some more honey for another batch or two of mead. You'll see from the picture 2 small buckets of honey on top of two other buckets. One is orange blossom honey, the other is lavender honey. Both are in 1.36kg/3lb "buckets".

Below them, on the right is a 5 gallon fermenting bucket, that contains the remains of 15litres of pulped apples (mainly eating/sweet apples).

On the left, is a "fruit pulp strainer". Actually it's not, it's 2 buckets, one with most of the bottom part cut off, so it acts as a collar, to hold a cloth (in this case, it's actually a straining bag). The idea for this comes from Luc Volders Blog on winemaking (yes it's in english, as well as his native dutch - you just have to scroll down for the english translations).

It's a damn good idea, as it saves a lot of time separating the juice from the pulp if you either don't have a full sized fruit press or like me a small press (mine holds about 1.6 litres). You can use a "tea towel" type cloth or maybe something like a piece of muslin. If you have to process the pulp further, once the strainer is assembled as per Luc's blog, you then just use another piece of cloth laid carefully in the top of the "strainer" (it's all explained in Luc's blog).

The buckets I used to make the strainer, are actually 2, 30lb honey buckets that I got from Paynes along with the honey. They work very well and seem to be very easy to cut (the one that's cut down for the "collar"). Plus at less than £2 a bucket they're cheap enough, as well as being made of food grade plastic. Ideal.

TTFN!