OK, so it's been a while since I've posted anything here. Brewing slowed down during the winter as the room in the basement that I was using was also the furnace room. Which means that it was a pretty much a constant 25 degrees Celsius. And that is way too hot for a lot of the things that I was making at the time. So until the summer when the AC is on I've managed to find some space in a closet in the basement, it is a lot cooler than the furnace room, 20 degrees Celsius or so. And has allowed me to continue brewing small batches of cider and mead.
For the first post this year I'm going to talk about the Joe's Ancient Orange (JOAM) and Jalapeno (Capsicumel) meads that I made last July. I left them in primary until about October, I didn't have anything smaller to rack them into and wasn't really sure how to proceed. This was when I noticed that they appeared to have cleared and decided to bottle them. Which wasn't the greatest idea, they ended up clearing a little more and dropping some lees in the bottles. The current mead that I have going I'll be sure to rack it at least once and give it as much time as it needs to clear before bottling to avoid this. For eye candy the image at the top of the page is from today (JOAM on the right and Jalapeno on the left), and the images at the bottom of the page (JOAM, Jalapeno) are how they looked at the time of bottling. Looking at the images I don't really know how I thought that they had cleared all the way...
Now onto the good stuff, I got four 750ml bottles and two grolsch 500ml bottles of the Joe's Ancient Orange mead and three 750ml bottles and two grolsch 500ml bottles of the Jalapeno mead. I used the grolsch bottles as tasters so that I didn't need to open and waste an entire bottle in the event that the mead wasn't ready to be drank.
All four of the grolsch bottles are now gone, the first two went sometime in January and the other two in mid April. As for the tasting notes, the JOAM has a nose that contains some of the orange, clove, and cinnamon that it was brewed with. It tastes similar to the nose but is still hot and burns just a little on the way down. If or when the honey starts to come through it should get a whole lot better. Since I only have the 750ml bottles left I'm going to try and save at least one for the two year mark to see what it is like then.
The Jalapeno mead has a very peppery nose with a very peppery taste. The last time that I had some I was able to detect just a hint of honey coming through. With any luck the change in taste will continue and make it a little more likable for me. At least that's what I'm hoping, I'm a little disappointed with this one. I wanted something that had a bit of a zing to it, but it currently only tastes of pepper with no zing at all. Which isn't a bad thing if you really like peppers like my one friend, he really likes it and has asked that a I brew another batch for when this one runs out. I might try that batch with a habenero in an attempt to kick up the heat a little bit more.
Oh, and we can't forget the ABV. The JOAM had an SG 1.076 of and a FG of 1.008 making it 8.9% ABV. And the Jalapeno had a SG 1.068 of and a FG of 0.996 making it 9.5% ABV.
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