Sloe Gin.......

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!

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

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.......

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.......

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.......

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......

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........

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...

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......

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.......