06.21.11 Orange Metheglin

This mead was another attempt at the JOAM. Only instead of being tossed together with quick ingredients like the JOAM I used the following recipe that called for more effort and better results.

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f80/malkores-not-so-ancient-orange-mead-50201/

I scaled the recipe down to one gallon and used the below:

½ of an orange juiced
little more then 1tsp zest grated off of orange
1 stick cinnamon
1 clove
4lbs honey (1.814kg ~ used 1.826kg)
½ tsp dap with wort and one day after start
½ tsp Fermaid K with wort and one day after start
Re hydrated Lalvin 71b with Go Ferm

I heated 2 liters of water to just before boiling, added  the zest, juice, cinnamon, and clove – left for 20 mins... This should have been less time but I underestimated the time it would take to clean out the jug. I strained the stepped mixture through some cheese cloth and then added another liter of cold water in order to cool it down before I added the honey.

I tried just adding the honey to the jug through the funnel but it was taking too long. And in order to speed things up I added the rest of the honey to another liter of warm water to dissolve and then add. See what I did here? 4 liters of water and 4lbs of honey has a volume greater then 4.5 liters... As it was I had some must left over that I couldn't fit into the jug... 

But at least I remembered to shake it this time!

My target OG was 1.120 and with the little bit wasted I ended up at 1.116, which makes me happy that I didn't end up too far off. The 71b yeast has a tolerance of 14% so this should finish around 1.007 and be a dry-semi sweet. Which is what I was going for as that the JOAM ended at about 1.008 if I recall correctly.

As it stands I no longer have anything else to blog about after this. The better part of my jugs are filled with mead fermenting away and the ones that are empty I'll need to use when racking. Though I'm thinking about picking up some more jugs and making a couple of different kinds of cider that I want to try. Once I get the jugs and have the recipes nailed down I'll toss up a post.

05.29.11 Habanero Capsicumel

 After my first attempt at a capsicumel failed at obtaining any heat from the jalapeno. I decided to go all out with this time and used a habanero including the seeds and the pith for maximum heat potential.

Will it work? I hope so, it should end up rather sweet and with a good kick. I tasted some that overflowed when I was adding nutrients and after only a day with the habanero I could feel it already. Six months on the pepper should be absolutely wonderful/hell depending on your heat tolerance.

 I ended up using a similar recipe from the home brew forums that inspired the jalapeno capsicumel.

5lbs Honey
Water to 1 gallon
1 habanero with seeds and pith
½ tsp Fermaid K and ½ tsp DAP day after pitch
½ tsp Fermaid K and ½ tsp DAP two days after pitch
Lalvin 71B yeast rehydrated with GoFerm

And in true me fashion I made a mistake with this batch as well. I topped the mixture of water and honey with fresh water, Took a gravity reading, added the habanero, and then pitched the yeast. It wasn't until I looked at the gravity reading and the way that the yeast didn't drop down to the bottom right away that I realized I didn't shake the bloody thing. >.< And so there was a layer of thicker honey and water sitting at the bottom of the jug.

I used the mead calculator over at the Got Mead site and it gave me a suggested SG of 1.150 for 5lbs of honey in a one gallon batch. The yeast is good up to 14% and should give FG around 1.044. With such a high FG it would be considered a desert mead, but if that heat sticks around it'll be quite the quaff. I'm thinking that this will need to be served in shot glasses or something to limit intake.

04.02.2011 Turbinado Cider

When I made the second attempt at the Concentrate cider I also tried making a dryer apfelwien like cider. The recipe was the same as the apfelwien, only instead of racking it and letting it age I gave it three weeks and then primed and bottled it. I tried to guesstimate the right about of sugar to prime it with from looking at beer recipes and came up with 35g. Looking at the finished results it carbed up nicely in about three weeks and maybe could have used just a little bit more. The carb was fine, but when compared to the Concentrate cider it seemed a little lackluster, though the concentrate cider was probably over carbed. When I make this again I'm thinking that I might try it with 40-45g of sugar to see if I can't find the upper limit.

Recipe:

4 cans Allen's apple juice

200g turbinado sugar

Lalvin 71b yeast

(On a side note, it might be worth while to dissolve the sugar in some warm water. Otherwise the foam from shaking takes too long to settle and causes problems when pitching the yeast. Though with saying that it is always possible to pitch the yeast on top of the foam and just shake it again to mix... )

Primary for 3 weeks and then prime with 35g turbinado sugar and bottle condition for 3 weeks.

SG: 1.056

FG: 1.000

ABV: 7.3%

When asking which one people preferred between the concentrate and the turbinado ciders it was always the concentrate one. They said that it had more apple taste where as the turbinado cider was a little bland. Which makes sense because of the concentrate that is used to prime the concentrate cider with. I'm not sure how I can increase the apple flavor of the turbinado cider. I have two idea right now; One is to back sweeten until it reaches the level of the concentrate cider, and the other is to try adding some spices to the primary (like cinnamon or cloves). Of course, I could just try both and see how they turn out.

04.02.2011 Concentrate Cider again

Back in April I started a second batch of the Concentrate Cider that I made in Feburary. This time I decided to not rush it and waited and additional week before bottling it. I figured that the extra week would allow more time for the yeast to fall out as well as clean up after itself. Once bottled I left them for 13 days (compared to 3 last time) before tossing them into the fridge. The caps had started to raise a little and looking back at the ginger beer it meant that they needed to go into the fridge right otherwise they could have become bottle bombs.

In addition to letting the cider sit in primary longer I also used a different yeast, Lalvin 71B. I had heard that it was good at malic fermentation and hoped that it would help with the sour taste that the last one had. It's still to early to tell as that I only had a little bit, I cracked a couple and shared them with some friends and they seemed to like it. It still seemed a little sour to me, but not as much as the first few from the last batch. With any luck when I crack the next one it will have mellowed out some more. Also it was mega carbed, the first sip that I had was all carb and bubbles. Which is a neat experience considering that cider doesn't really have any sort of head retention. I probably left them out too long to carb, but as long as they don't explode I don't mind. I'm holding onto them until the start of June when I'll be getting some friends to help me finish them.

Something that I found interesting was that even with the extra week the cider only fermented down to a FG of 1.000. I'm guessing that the concentrate is providing some sugars that are harder for the yeast to eat and end up being left behind. I also took a gravity reading of the cider after priming, it came out to be around 1.010. I believe that this is at the upper end of the dry range and would be considered a semi-sweet cider. Which, depending on what you like, could be better then the dryer commercial ciders.

04.02.2011 Anniversary Mead

When I was at a friend's wedding last summer I found out that the bride's parents had bee hives and were giving away small jars of honey to the guests. During the reception the day after I was able to mooch some of this honey off of the bride and had planned to make it into an anniversary mead once I felt that I had enough feedback and experience. I had tasted the JOAM and Jalapeno meads in January, and even though they were still pretty young I felt that they had progressed well enough that I would be able to start this without wasting the honey. The only issue was that I didn't have a source in town for the yeast I wanted to try (Lalvin 71B) nor the nutrients needed to help the ferment along (Fermaid K and Go-Ferm).

It took me until the end of March to find everything that I needed, I had no luck online and ended up sourcing some from a local wine u-brew shop. Here is the recipe used:

4.5L Glass jug
Tap water left out overnight for the chlorine to evaporate
1.647kg of honey (it had crystallized quite a bit so I warmed it up in the sink with hot water)
Lalvin 71B yeast
Go-Ferm in the yeast re-hydration water
1/8 teaspoon of Fermaid K after lag time and a day after lag time
1/16 teaspoon of DAP

SG: 1.078

I was hoping to get a higher SG, the recommendation that is given as a standard on the home brew talk forums is 3 to 3.5 lbs (1.36 to 1.58kg) of honey for each imperial gallon for a target SG of 1.090. At the time that I made this I thought that was for the US gallon and upscaled the recipe for that. Only, the honey ended up having more water in it and the SG wasn't nearly as high as I hoped. When I rack this in a few months I think that I'm going to try and add some more honey to it in order to raise the gravity and so that I don't have to top off with water.

My digital scale isn't accurate enough to measure out the grams necessary for the nutrients so I tried to guess how much would be correct. I didn't read this until after the fact, but the one book that I have with mead recipes in it lists 1 teaspoon as the amount a nutrient needed. I ended up adding some more after the first week to try and make up for the difference.

Right now it appears that it has started to clear, I would like to take a gravity reading. But I still need to find a good way of taking one from a jug that doesn't end up reducing the final amount so much. A gravity reading takes from 150ml to 200ml or so. And when you only have 4500ml of liquid readings and rackings can quickly diminish the amount of final product.