My First Hydromel

I made my first true hydromel today, a traditional one to get a base reading for the process, but in anticipation of making a number of melomels off of it.

I followed the step-by-step guide and added only 1 lb. of honey to the must. When I took a hydrometer reading, it was almost exactly 1.050, which is what I was shooting for, and after adjusting for the temperature of the hydrometer, it came out right on the button. The taste was also very nice as well, but I wonder how it will finish.

If it's anything like the last two traditional meads I made, I'll be very pleased. Using this new step-by-step method so I don't screw anything up, these two meads tasted delicious after a month. Interestingly, one of them had an FG of 1.006 while the other had a 0.996. I did use two different yeasts -- Red Star Premier Blanc and Lalvin EC-1118, respectively -- but I was still surprised at the difference between the two.

I racked them both to a secondary though as they had both turned crystal clear. The benontonite definitely stripped all the flocculant out of the mead and seemingly some of the color as they were now a bright yellow in the glass carboy. I'm looking forward to tasting these in a few months because they were very good as is and I want to see what happens to them as they age.

Similarly, this hydromel should be drinkable with 45-90 days so I'm looking to see how this turns out. The next one I'm going to make is a peppermint one, maybe using candy canes, because it will be ready right in time for Christmas.

Also, I bottled the other hard cider. This one tasted better than the other, but not really what I was expecting. It didn't have as much of a cider-y taste as I expected, but it did taste good. I also broke one of my beer bottles capping one as I didn't realize exactly how the capper was working and I cranked down on it which broke the neck. I was still able to get 3 full bottles from the jar though. In reality, I don't think I should have bottled them yet, but rather transferred them to a secondary. I'll have to keep an eye on these because I may not have sulfated them to stop the fermentation. Of course, from one YouTube video I watched, that seemed to be the way to carbonate them, so we'll see.

Cider Disappointment

I bottled the hard apple cider (No. 14), taking it from the single 750 ml bottle it had been in and putting it into 2 375 ml bottles. I probably should have used the 12 oz beer bottles instead, but I have the other cider cold crashing in the refrigerator so I'll use the beer bottles for that one.

However, I was really disappointed in the flavor of the cider in that it tasted like -- dry mead. There was no apple or nice or cider flavor whatsoever. It simply tasted like ever other mead I've made. When I bottle the other cider I'll see if there's any difference between them in flavor, and if so, perhaps it was the exposure to air that made the difference.

At any rate, I'll age these in the bottles for a few months before opening, maybe around Thanksgiving or Christmas, and see how they taste. Maybe I'll just let it sit for even longer.

I was also going to bottle the other mead I had backsweetened the other day (No. 4), but it still wasn't as clear as I wanted it so I'll keep waiting. It is getting clearer, but really needs to go further. I may try cold crashing it if it fits in the refrigerator after I bottle the cider.

Well That Was Fast

After pitching the yeast on the tart cherry melomel on Monday 8/14, the airlock seemed to have gone still by Friday, 8/18. I was degassing every day, so I degassed it and checked it again on Saturday and the airlock was still quiet. I took a gravity reading and got 1.006. That seemed pretty quick to get all the way down there -- less than a week -- and now I checked it again on Sunday and the hydrometer reading has not changed.

I had checked on the Got Mead? board on Facebook what this might mean, and was basically told the yeast had run through the available sugars and was done. That is the fastest I've ever gone through fermentation, which I rather like as I can now rack it to a secondary, sulfite it, and add actual cherries to sit for several weeks to give more flavor. I imagine within a month it will be ready for bottling.

The mead tastes good too. A lot like tart cherry juice to be sure, but it has an ABV of just below 12%, so giving it some time to age may improve it even further.

But today will be a big mead day. I have several meads that will be bottled (Nos. 4 and 5), though after back sweetening No. 4 it hasn't cleared yet so I may hold of awhile longer. No. 5 is perfectly clear and ready to be bottled.

I'm hoping a mini-freezer I have in the basement can work as a cold crashing refrigerator. I was looking into modifying it, but saw it had a "Warm" setting on it which supposedly should put it in the 37F range, which would be perfect, and while I've turned the temp way down on it (moved it to "warm" today) it has remained at about 30-32F. It could use be because it has been so cold previously it is just taking time to get to that level, but assuming the temp does rise above the freezing mark, I'll add mead No. 4 to it and let it sit in there for a week to see if that speeds up clarification.

Potential Cherry Melomel Problem?

I started my cherry hydromel today (Mead No. 2017-4), but it was quickly clear it  was going to be a melomel anyway. I used two 32 oz containers of tart cherry juice from Stop & Shop and two 12 oz containers of honey figuring 1-1/2 lbs in a 1 gallon carboy would make for half the alcohol.

Of course, I didn't account for the sugar in the cherry juice, so the starting gravity was 1.092, or an expected ABV of 12%. Hardly hydromel territory. I just didn't realize the juice plus the honey would take up all that space; I was only able to use 5 cups of water. I wonder If I split it between two carboys and add water to make up the difference would that work?

I may try that, but first I want to see if my yeast reactivates. I pitched Lalvin 7B-1122 yeast and it seemed to do nothing. When I rehydrated it, the yeast sank right to the bottom of the bowl and didn't seem to mix at all. I stirred it a few times, but no activation seemed to occur. I'll give it a day or two and if nothing happens I'll split the must and pitch additional yeast and see if that can get a ferment started.

UPDATE: At around 8:00 pm I checked on the fermentation, and though it wasn't a rolling boil, it was fermenting, so now I just hope I don't wake to an MEA tomorrow.

Backsweetening Joe's Ancient Orange

I backsweetened Mead No. 4 and I made it more complicated than it needed to by ensuring everything was properly cleaned and sanitized. It's incredibly difficult to find large enough tubs cheaply that I can lay my racking cane in the tub without it sticking up, so everything just seemed more of a problem today when cleaning my utensils.

Then, when racking from the carboy to the one gallon pitcher, the hose came out and poured a quantity on the floor. Of course. I forgot the rule to put the container you're racking into into a catch basin of sorts just in case something like that happens.

In the end, I had to add twice as much honey as I thought I was going to need. According to my calculator, it should have taken slightly less than half a cup of honey to raise the gravity to 1.020, but it ended up taking a full cup to do so. I'll be searching for why that was.

The taste of the mead isn't terrific, though it's not bad. I really need to pay more attention to my technique, though this was one of my first meads and I was experimenting. I'll never use dehydrated orange slices again, however.

Mead updates

With my new meads I'm brewing now, starting with a base mead and then using the secondary to flavor them, I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out. However, I think my next mead will be using fruit in the primary and secondary as I'll be following a recipe from Ken Schramm from his book.

My second batch of hard apple cider seems to have come to an end of its fermentation, or is close to it. After degassing it daily for a week, the balloon airlock isn't standing up anymore so it may be time to set it aside for aging. I think I need to rack it first, then do that.

The first base mead I made, No. 15, also seems to be winding down fermentation, while No. 17 is still going along. Today or tomorrow is the last day that I'll be degassing it.From then on only having one mead a week to degas will be easier. I would like to automate the process so I want to see if I can build something to do that using the small spray paint compress I have.

New Lemon Mead

I started the must for a new mead (No. 17), which I think will be a lemon mead. I saw the Making Mead channel on YouTube had made a Lemon Clove mead, but I'm not sure if I want to add the clove or not. We'll see after I get through the primary fermentation.

Like all my meads from now on, I will make a traditional mead to start following my step-by-step checklist, and after primary fermentation and racking to a secondary, I'll add the fruit or whatever adjuncts need to go in.

This must was almost identical to the cherry mead (No. 15) I'm making, the only difference being I used 3/4 tsp of Bentonite instead of 1 tsp., and I used a generic yeast nutrient instead of DAP. However, the original gravity between the two meads was vastly different: the cherry mead had an OG of 1.115 while the lemon had 1.082 so the expected ABV differed, 15% to 11%.

I did use different yeasts, too, but the gravity readings were taken before the yeast was added.

As a side note, I'd like to make meads going forward that represent the fruit that's in season. So although No. 15 is listed as a cherry mead and No. 17 a lemon, that may switch by the time fermentation is done, depending upon how I feel. Blackberries are in season now (I use picked a good 5 cups worth from my two bushes to make a terrific blackberry pie) and I have a whole bunch left to pick still so one of the meads may become a blackberry. Also, peaches are in season too, along with a number of other fruits so these meads might change.

Of course, I'll be starting another mead next week and could use begin with that one. I do want to get Fermaid-O and begin doing a step nutrient addition regimen following the TiOSNA plan, but that may have to wait a bit yet. While I never thought I'd try to be so precise, the more mead I make, the better I want it to be.

De-gassing Joe's Ancient Orange

I was going to bottle my Joe's Ancient Orange (No. 4), but in looking over my notes, I saw that a month ago I had said I was going to add potassium metabilsulfite to the mead, but never did. So rather than bottling, I committed to do that instead.

Relying upon the Making Mead video on adding PM, I added 1/8 tsp to the mead and also 1/4 tsp of potassium sorbate. The metabisulfite is supposed to be added at a rate of 1/4 tsp per 6 gallons, but MM says adding more does not seem to be a problem so I did half that amount.

I then degassed for 5 minutes and while it foamed, there was never a fear it would bubble over. So I'll let it sit for a week then backsweeten it with honey. We'll see. Maybe I'll first add bentonite because it is cloudy, though it was super clear prior to degassing so maybe by the end of the week it will be clear again.

New Base Mead

I finally got around to make my next mead (No. 15), which is just going to be a straightforward traditional mead (UPDATE: This will be a cherry mead)(UPDATE 2: No, I've decided I'll be making base meads instead, of which this is one, and then in the secondary I'll be fruiting them up). I think all of my meads from now on will start out like this and then I'll use the post-fermentation period to create the flavors I'm interested in.

Essentially, this is a simple mead: water, honey, and yeast. While it's true that's the basics of it, I'm following some additional steps I learned from the Making Mead YouTube Channel (yeah, I'm watching a lot of mead-making videos these days). The differences between what Michael Jordan at the Underground Meadery is doing and what Making Mead is doing really comes down to additives.

Thus far, Michael Jordan hasn't added any nutrients or energizers to his yeast, though I believe he will as he progresses through the year, and Making Mead is making use of them, along with some other additives like acid blend and wine tannin. Making Mead's meads come out looking terrific, so I figured I'd give these additional steps a try.

After pitching the yeast in this batch -- a Lalvin EC-1118 -- I was surprised the must started fermenting within 15 minutes. I can say, however, that mixing and matching the various steps certainly makes making mead a much more complicated process, though I imagine as I do it more often it will get easier.

Step-by-Step Process:

Step 1: After cleaning and sanitizing everything, I poured off 4 cups of water into the electric kettle and heated for 1 min. 30 sec. The temp of the water rose to 130 F. I turned off the machine to let it cool down and went onto the next steps.

Step 2: I brought a saucepan of tap water to a boil, removed from heat, and placed bottle of honey in the water to liquefy.

Step 3: I poured the remaining water in the 1 gallon container into a pitcher, and then added back 1 cup.

Step 4: Swirling the water in the container, I added 1 tsp. of bentonite (it's 4 tsp. for 5 gal so I made it simple and went with 1 tsp.). Shake the container vigorously until the bentonite is well mixed. I then added an additional cup of water to the container and mixed again.

Step 5: With the honey more liquid I poured it into the container using the 2-liter bottle top "funnel." I then took 1 cup of the hot water from the electric kettle and placed it into the honey bottle and shook vigorously to dissolve all the remaining honey in the bottle and poured it into the 1 gallon water bottle. The kettle water temp at this point was about 123 F.

Step 6: I added the remaining hot kettle water to the 1 gallon container and shook vigorously to mix the honey and the water. The combination of the cooler bentonite-filled water with the hot kettle water allowed the honey to mix almost immediately.

Step 7: I filled the 1 gallon container to the shoulders with the spring water reserved in the pitcher and mixed the contents thoroughly.

Step. 8: In 1 cup of the reserved spring water, I mixed 1 tsp of liquid wine tannins and 1 tsp of acid blend and added them to the container.

Step 9: I added 1/2 tsp of yeast energizer and 1 tsp. of DAP yeast nutrient into 1 cup of reserved spring water and added it to the container and mixed thoroughly.

Step 10: Took temperature reading of the must (93.3 F) and hydrometer reading for starting gravity (1.112, or 15% ABV; temp-adjusted reading is 1.115 ).

Step 11: I added 1 package (5 g) of Lalvin EC-1118 yeast directly into the container, no starter created.

Step 12: I drilled a 1/2" hole in the center of the spring water bottle cap and added a rubber grommet to it. I then filled an airlock with StarSan and placed it in the hole and moved the entire container to a dark basement storeroom.

Step 13: I covered the container to block out any light.