Quick mead ?

When you read posts from new mead makers around the forums, the question that often comes up, is which is the quickest mead to make ?

Given that young meads can often taste like piss, that's not the easiest question to answer, because while a young mead can indeed taste hideous, the transformations that are wrought by ageing are amazing.

Taste a young brew, finished fermenting, cleared and then racked to bulk age and you can get just "alcohol hot" with some vague indescribable "what's left after the sugars have gone" sort of thing. Yet bulk age for 6 months or more and if you're really lucky, it might come good that quickly, it may need longer to become good, but the 6 months will demonstrate the changes that are happening in the bulk ageing stage.

Bulk ageing is actually a home brewers compromise. It allows us to produce a batch where all of the bottles produced from that batch will taste the same i.e. consistent. It prevents different characteristics developing from differences in heat, humidity, etc, which might occur if the batch was bottled prior to ageing. Of course, it would seem that commercial wine producers can indeed, "bottle age" their wines, but equally that is because they have access to temperature and humidity controlled storage for consistency, which we home brewers don't have or can't afford, generally speaking.

So here's a link to Gotmead main sites list of (apparently) "quick" meads.

Now I can't really recommend them particularly as "quick" meads, because apart from the Joes Ancient Orange recipe, I haven't tried making any of them.

The "JAO" recipe is pretty quick for a mead, it takes IRO 3 months. Joe himself, states that it's drinkable once it's clear. Indeed it is, but if you age it for 3 to 6 months as well, IMO, it improves immeasurably.....

Oh, and JAO is best made as close to the original recipe as possible. Of course, there are some issues that crop up over and over again. Like the yeast. He suggests using the Fleischmanns bread yeast, which is fine, but not a bit of good to me as Fleischmanns is a US brand. But having tried the recipe with local equivalents like Allinsons, Hovis, and even both Tesco and Co-op own brand, they all work fine. So I'm thinking that as long as you keep your batch basically the same i.e. the honey to water ratio, "normal" bread yeast, the orange, raisins and spices, then you should get a decent brew that conforms to the criteria set down by Joe.

The rest of the recipes, you'll just have to try for yourself........

Bochet part 3......

Well, the bochet seems to have fermented ok. I was very lapse with it.The master plan was to use the stirrer and make it my first stir plate attempt, but for reasons I don't yet understand,  the fucking stirrer kept throwing the stir bar off the magnetic field. I even sent off for a longer bar to see if that would work but it didn't.  So I lost interest in it a bit and forgot to add nutrient and stuff like that.

Anyway,  it seems to have fermented ok and it's even cleared pretty much. I haven't tested it recently but when I did the other week it was at about 1.004 and now its racked out of the 5 litre erhlenmeyer flask into a DJ it still tasted a bit weird. Plus there was about a half litre of air space so I just topped it up with a sour mash whisky as it was to hand.

I'm not fussed how it's come out as I'm more interested in getting a working stir plate for some other traditional batches. I can focus on sorting out yeasts etc for now, as the D21 I did have had given up the ghost and wasnt starting at all.

A quick rant !

I like to try and be helpful around the mead making forums. Often in respect of stuff that newer mead makers ask, and especially when it comes to getting ingredients that might have local equivalents.

Equally, we (as in us lot this side of the pond) have to often "make do" as the stuff you see mentioned on the mead forums where there's a high proportion of American mead makers, just isn't easily available.

There's a lot of info out there. It may be that it's been posted by one of us UK based mead makers, so it's easier to ask the "why's and wherefore's". Even if it's been posted by one of the US based mead makers, it might just need a bit of a pointer to set someone in the right direction.

They just need to have a bit of a search, and read the fucking guidance. Hell ask a few questions, there's plenty of people who will explain why if they do X, they won't get Y, they'll go straight past Z and end up back at D.

High gravity/strength is fine, just don't put all the fucking honey in a batch at once. It will cause problems stressing the yeast and possibly resulting in off flavours that may either take years to mellow, or even not at all. It's easy to make a batch that needs to meet certain criteria, but it's likely that if it's suggested that it's made in a certain way, then there's a fucking reason for it.

Don't try and re-invent the wheel, you'll just end up looking like a cunt who can't even make basic recipes. Plus you'll stress yourself out trying to work out "what went wrong"......

Ok, I'll get off my soap box.........

Bochet part 2......

Ok, so I had left the caramelised honey alone as I was sulphiting to make sure that I didn't screw up in any way.

Now the intention was to use some of the D21 I had for the yeast - on a completely different issue, I'd given some of the packs to another mazer from one of the forums I go to (he's local to me). He was trying to use it and it just wasn't starting to ferment, after he'd tried making a starter with it too and had no luck, I rehydrated some with some GoFerm, then topped it up with a little of the bochet must, only to find that it wasn't gonna play.....bugger!

So I just left it on the stirring plate and put a pack of 71B in to rehydrate and start doing it's thing.

By last Tuesday, it looked fine, producing some gas etc, so it went straight into the must and is fermenting fine.

I wanted it to be a stir plate batch, but the little spinner (not a proper stirrer, but one that was made for 1 gallon wine batches originally) doesn't want to keep the stir bar spinning, it just throws it off.

A little bit of experimentation with a jar of water, and it seems that I've got to raise the flask up about 1cm above the stirrer. I don't know if the issue is the strength of the magnets in the stirrer, the weight of the stir bar (it's 36mm long) or what. So I've cut little pieces of wood this morning to stand the flask on and I should be able to get the stirrer below the flask and get it spinning correctly.

It's my first go at using a stirrer etc, as I just want to try it out at this stage.

Apart from that, the ferment seems to be going great guns and is chucking out the CO2 and bubbling away just nicely.......

I'll see if I can get any pictures etc......

Bochet....

Ok, so "Bochet" ?

Well Bochet is a mead made from burned or caramelised honey. It's sort of been on my "todo" list for some time.

The problem is, well was, that when it comes to caramelising the honey, you have to have a large pan and be very careful. It's thought that the honey expands when boiling like 3 possibly 4 times and it's hotter than hell. If it gets on the skin, it's like being burned with molten plastic apparently. Well after all, it's molten sugar so it'd just be boiling wouldn't it.

Anyway, one of the members over at Gotmead or was it at Homebrewtalk (doesn't matter as it's the same person i.e. WVMJ/WVMJack) said about caramelising honey, but instead of an open pan, to use a pressure cooker. He likened it to boiling cans of "Condensed Milk" to make the toffee flavoured stuff like you see on "Banoffee" pie. The same thread (at whichever forums it was at) someone else also suggested using a "slow cooker" type crock pot pan/device. Now I didn't want to fuck up the slow cooker as I'd still have to make sure about adding water periodically, because apparently if you use an open pan, after a while it starts to thicken up and then needs to be watered down so that the boiling honey doesn't end up like very hard toffee when it's cooled down.

The picture is of the 4lb of honey I had to put in jars to I could see what happened with it when it went into the pressure cooker. The honey isn't varietal or anything, it's from one of the buckets that I bought from the chap in Oxford after he scored 400lb of honey on ebay. He sold me about 100lb or so in weight and this is just from one of the buckets.

This is what it looks like after its been in the pressure cooker for an hour. The jars were still hot when I took the picture, but you can see that it's become a lot darker.

The suggestion of using a pressure cooker was to do with, when using an open pan and direct heat, you can caramelise the sugars too much and the honey, well the sugars in the honey can become too dark/burned and it may cause problems when trying to ferment it. I can't say what the pressure etc was for the pressure cooker, as I just put the jars in, filled it half way up the level of the jars with water (the trivet was in the bottom to keep the jars off the bottom of the base of the pan). I understand it's possible to use it to cook with a reduced pressure but from memory, it would have had about 15lb pressure of steam.

I didn't do a perfect job either. The remaining water showed signs that at least one of the jars must have leaked a bit. Yet the jars all still seemed full, so maybe it was just that the heat increased the pressure inside the jar(s) a bit and forced a bit of the honey out into the water. I'll have to see how it measures up when I mix it with water and measure the gravity before pitching yeast into it.

My limited knowledge of this means that I'll have to wait and see what it's like once it's cooled, whether it sets/goes hard or not, and whether I need to mix it hot or with hot water to dissolve it or not. This is very much, a voyage of discovery for me. I haven't completely made my mind up yet, but it may be my first attempt at a stir plate recipe. I'm only going to make it like a traditional anyway. It's a good excuse to try out the nutrient bit's I swapped with another person from the forums who's local(ish) to me. I sent him 50 grammes of GoFerm and 50 grammes of FermaidK and he reciprocated by sending me 50 grammes of Dynastart and 50 grammes of Nutrivit. GoFerm seems to be the same as the Dynastart and FermaidK the same, well similar at least as the FermaidK - I say the same, the products are designed to be used at the same time in the same way.

I'll have to have a think, because I'm intending to use the 5000ml erlenmeyer flask as the fermenter, but haven't yet ordered the bung for it (it's not the same size as a 1 gallon demi-john fermenter, it's neck seems to measure 40mm), but I can just use a bit of cling film and an elastic band as it shouldn't be an issue as the yeast will produce enough CO2 to protect the surface until it's finished and then I can just rack it to a DJ. I'll have to have a bit of a read to work out how much of the nutrient to use as I'll probably be doing it as a staggered nutrient (probably only in 2 parts though).

Here's a picture of Charles the cat, who was perched on the newel post of the stairs being nosey. No particular reason for posting the picture, just that I hadn't seen him sitting there before.......

Christmas Pudding flavoured mead ? part 5

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

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

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

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

Christmas Pudding flavoured mead ? part 4

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

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

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

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

Christmas Pudding flavoured mead ? part 3

I nearly forgot to post this bit....

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

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

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

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

Christmas Pudding flavoured mead ? part 2

Ha ha! it's bubbling....... it's bubbling

I'll be able to complete part/day 2 of the recipe/method later on today.

I'm so looking forward to the part where I get to strain off all the "gunk" and get it into DJ's. Because it will look more familiar to my usual mead making efforts and not some sort of mad scientists experiment with a bucket of puke !

Christmas Pudding flavoured mead ?

Ok, so if you find this and you don't happen to be a Brit or have any Brit relatives, you might have to look up Christmas Pudding.

It's a typical, traditional heavy(ish) steam cooked pud. Lots of dried fruit, nuts, beer, spices, suet and a number of other ingredients, served after the main course on christmas day, traditionally (served with either double/heavy cream, or custard a.k.a. "creme Anglaise" and possibly "brandy butter" or "whisky butter" or in my case both the double cream and brandy butter).

Anyway, the nature of a flour, fruit, etc based pud does make for a rather strange ingredient in a mead.

Actually, I'm taking no credit for this recipe at all, because over at winesathome, it's the fourth recipe in the new wine makers section, which I believe Bob, who runs winesathome put together, though it does seem that Karl was the person who prepped the info on the website, the recipe and method for the wine are here.

All I'm doing, is to "meadify" the recipe and where it says about adding sugar, I'm using honey instead.

So how far have I got ?

 This is what the crimbo puds look like when taken out of the packaging. There's actually slightly more than the recipe states but because I'm an ingredients hoarder, when I find them cheap I always buy at least enough, usually a bit more just in case I need it. Each pud is a 1lb/454g pud and I'm making a 2 gallon (imperial)/9 litre batch.

Now follow the instructions for the method, this is what it looked like after I'd added the hot water and chopped the puds up into pulp. Yes, I've also heard of the parallel description to a bucket of diahorrea too.....

Now I'd originally thought that I was going to have to use Lalvin K1-V1116 yeast, as I thought that's what I'd have available, but when I went to dig the yeast out, I found that I didn't have any of that, but purely by chance, had a single pack of the Gervin GV4 yeast that Karl detailed in the instruction/method at WaH, so it was mixed up as per the instructions and as you can see it was just waiting for me to do the rest of the stuff that's listed.

 The tinned peaches and the juice of 6 oranges (remember, I'm making a double sized batch of 2 gallons).

Here's the grape juice I ended up using. I couldn't get any white grape juice so had to make do getting red grape juice instead, not that the colour will matter very much, as you will have observed from the picture above of the basic mix, the liquid is quite "brown" looking already.

Here's the kilo of dried fruit after it had been rinsed under hot tap water, as per the instructions, to remove as much of the preserving oils that they like to spray this with during the production process.

Here's my contribution i.e. the honey. Well not all of that. That's about half a bucket or about 12.5 kg. I got to the bit in the recipe about adding the sugar and took a gravity reading and it was at about 1.055, so I knew I'd have to add honey to get it somewhere around the 1.090 mark.

If you really want to be anal, you can click the image and you should be able to get the full sized one, that shows I managed to get it to 1.085 with 3 large kitchen serving spoons full of the honey after I'd mixed it up. So in the spirit of being "hit and miss" with my usual method I then added about 1/3rd of the same size spoon I'd been scooping it out the bucket with. I didn't bother with a further gravity reading, as the yeast is capable of 21% ABV and while Karl points out that the recipe aims for 18% ABV, if it's a bit stronger it doesn't really matter, as it's meant to be a sweet, dessert wine.

This is the picture of the must after it's had all of the ingredients mixed in i.e. all the ones mentioned above, plus the yeast nutrients, the vitamin B tablet (which wasn't really needed as I used "combined" yeast nutrient - actually it was Lalvins FermaidK), etc etc. The only thing I haven't added so far, is Bentonite. I thought I had some, but when I came to dig through my home brewing chems, I find that I must have used what I had up, and only have "precipitated chalk" and "Irish Moss". Bollocks to it, the only reason why the bentonite would be in there is to help with clearing later on. I can sort that out another time.

So as you can see, with all the ingredients in the bucket, it now looks less like a bucket of diahorrea and more like a bucket of puke after a good meal and piss up.

Of course, some would worry about the pieces of congealed fat from the crimbo puds floating on the top, but I'm presuming that as it seems to be quite a quick fermenter (anecdotally of course - I'll have to wait and see), all the "gunk" will be strained away when I move it all to secondary, which at the moment is likely to be next weekend, but I'll have to wait and see won't I.

I'm pleased to have finally got my finger out my arse and got this mixed up. I've had the crimbo puds for 2 years waiting to be made into this.

I'll post a bit more tomorrow, once I've added the rest of the honey (as per the recipe linked above).....