Guilty as charged.......

Why is it that a lot of newer mead makers, think that if they do this, that or the other, they're gonna discover some magic bullet of the mead making world ?

Or why is it that so many of us, can't be bothered to search for help/clues/answers etc, when there's so much guidance of this type out there ?

Now I never thought I'd find a magic bullet, but I certainly didn't look for enough info. Possibly because when I started out, I'd only hear rumour and stories/mythology of meads, and when I bought a copy of CJJJJJJJJJJJJJJ's "First Steps" book, it was one of his recipes/ideas that caught my eye, which wasn't such a good idea. Likewise, I got my supplies from the supermarket and the local HBS, which also wasn't the best of approaches.

Yes, it did make a mead, but certainly only a mediocre, medium dry mead. But nothing special.

A bit of searching would have led me to at least understand why my materials were crap. Ok, not crap, just not as good quality as I thought.

People seem to think that the higher the alcohol levels, the better the mead will be. That's not to say that there isn't any room for higher alcohol meads, just that they are of a certain type and that can, in turn, cause issues of how they're made, how long they take to make and how long they take to be drinkable etc.

Either that, or they get some strange idea about what ingredients they want to use and then think up some idiotic name "somethingomel" ? Given the minimum amount of info that's available to us about how our historic predecessors actually made their meads, with more info on ingredients and less about how they were used, it stands to reason that the majority of "weirdomels" weren't made for specific reasons. So maybe they should stick to the tried and tested recipes to start with, before increasing their knowledge and skills, and only then try ingredients that don't lend themselves to mead making naturally.....

Ergo, do a search, find a recipe/method etc, read up as much as you can about it, then copy it to make a bench mark version, then search and learn more.

Don't think that because meads are made from honey, that the result is gonna be the same as you might expect from unfermented ingredients, cos it fucking won't. Hell, even just using honey to flavour neutral spirit, is gonna taste different from a properly fermented mead or whatever type......

I still enjoy making meads but.......

When I look at some of the resources out there, I get a bit pissed off.

There are few standards when it comes to meads. The only "official" ones I can think of, are the ones published by the Polish Government, issued to cover the ones that are made there to a specific type and relate to the ratio of honey and water used. A lot of the Polish ones, would appear to be quite sweet. I don't know for certain....

What I find myself getting impatient with, are people who either try to use very unusual ingredients and/or try making some for the wrong reasons.

Now it's fact that while there's very ancient documentation out there, that mentions meads being drunk at certain places/times and for various reasons, there's not actually very much detail on how they were made. The relatively few recipes/ingredient lists available don't really help. So I for one, am quite greatful to the scientific side of modern wine making in helping to provide both materials and method to be able to get a honey must fermented.

That doesn't mean that I agree with the use of some of the more modern ingredients. For example, coffee. The fucking Saxons and Vikings didn't have coffee, plus those who think it might be a good ingredient are obviously idiots, because I suspect they're thinking of something that has coffee, which has been sweetened with honey, but also has some alcohol in it. Almost something like a "Mia Maria" type liqueur. Yet they forget, that sort of drink is probably "manufactured", rather than fermented like that.

The same applies to many other ingredients.

If you take for example, the locations where the honey wine type drink, known commonly as mead comes from, central and northern Europe, including Scandinavia, then that actually limits the ingredients to honey, some fruit and a few herbs (not spices). Yet when you have a dig round the online resources, so many people, wrongly, think of meads as being spiced. Lets face it, even mulled wines that use spices of any kind, aren't more than 200 to 300 years old. We didn't have the spices then, well certainly not in any quantity that made them affordable enough to use in brewing and wine making.

Also, it doesn't help when you get some of the good people of the US, who like to learn/know about the cultures of some of their long gone "family roots", only to mix them up with the fantasy that emanates from fucking Hollywood. Those wankers are responsible for some of the biggest historical travesties out there. The most glaring of bollocks like this is the "viking helmet with horns". It might have been something from either Hollywood or possibly some victorian era romantic novel shit, or by that other "arch-bullshitter in chief" Sir Walter Scott.

It's fucking idiots like these who're responsible for all sorts of bollocks (tartan, a.k.a. plaid, isn't that historical, it was mainly an invention of regency and victorian weavers and made popular by those period British monarchs).

Anyway, yes, so the use of most ingredients in "modern" meads is either just wrong/incorrect/historically inaccurate or the result of something being needed to act in a certain way, to be able to make the honey must ferment.

If that pisses off half of America, then so be it. Weirdomels are just that, weird. Large slices of European history are completely fabricated, by people who have something to sell, something that sells better if it's got some historical connection and a large array of "mug punters" with too much money to sell "it" too....

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

Meads, their making and stupid questions ?

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.....

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.....

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 ?

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

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......

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.....

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.........

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