Brewing update

[mikekn]

Racked the "Rowan" mead, viognier wine and heather mead on Oct 27th.  The heather mead is pretty dry and very harsh tasting.  It is also still extremely cloudy.  I'll probably be adding some more honey to it as soon as I get around to buying some - probably supermarket clover since I want it to have little effect on the mead other then sweetening it some.  The other two batches are in good shape.  I put the first mead downstairs to age some more, and probably be testing the wine again before the end of the month.

During (well, mostly after) my mead class on Oct 29th I started a five gallon batch with some of the cranberry honey I got at Pennsic.  It had crystallized on me and I hadn't noticed, so I wasted a lot of time trying to figure out how I wanted to deal with it.  Eventually I scoped what I needed into a pot, added water and heated it on the stove until the honey dissolved.  Next time (tomorrow), I'll do that right from the start so it shouldn't effect my class too much.

Speaking of my class, my second mead making "lab" is tomorrow night.  I'll be starting a second batch with the cranberry honey.  Eventually I'll add some cranberries to one of the batches, but only one pound - just to see how much effect it has.

Comments

Cranberry melomel

[msmemory.livejournal.com]

Try this. I have to beat people off the cooler with a club if they know I brought some of this. Yeah, I know "Cranberries aren't period." Too bad, it's real darn tasty. Tart-sweet, and fizzy.
http://www.waks.org/Cookbook/Cranberry_Melomel.html

Re: Cranberry melomel

[mikekn]

Sounds yummy! I'm surprised you could bottle it so quickly. I would expect some fermentation to still be taking place (not much mind you, but enough to blow off corks)

Re: Cranberry melomel

[jducoeur]

We've had surprisingly good results with Caitlin's Meady-Pop. It does continue to ferment a little bit in the bottle, so that it's quite fizzy when you pour it, but we've never had one blow on us, knock on wood. (Although there was one memorable Grolsch bottle that turned into a fountain when I opened it, spraying the entire contents of the bottle six feet straight up. Once in a while, we push the line just a *little* too hard...)