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 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.

05.16.2011 Basic Mead Update

I had a lot of issues with this mead and I think that part of the problem was that I was still new had yet to learn that it's best to forget about it and come back in 6 months. It started out in a brown jug, which meant that I couldn't see what was going on inside. And when I noticed that some lees had formed and looked pretty thick I racked it out too soon being paranoid that it was going to cause off flavors. As it was there ended up being very little lees and it only looked to be a lot from the way that it stuck to the sides of the jug... I believe now that this early racking took away a lot of the healthy yeast and if not directly caused all the fermentation issues it certainly didn't help. I now know that it's best to wait until at least primary fermentation has been completed before racking to secondary. Another problem with this mead is that I don't think that I used enough nutrients and that I should have taken more care to allow the yeast to adjust to the half fermented must I was adding it to. But oh well, learning is what makes things exciting right?

Back in October of 2010 when I bottled the JOAM and Jalapeno meads this one was still cloudy and looked the same as it did when I first racked it into the clear jug. I can't remember if it was still fermenting or not, but I put it in the very back of the closet and pretty much forgot about it. I had thought about throwing it out at the time, but a lot of advice given on the home brew talk forums says to never toss something out unless it tastes really bad and that in a a lot of cases giving something time can help out with just about anything.

I pulled it out for a look sometime before April and was rather surprised to see that it had cleared! The next time that I was at a LHBS I got what I thought was a smaller jug to rack it into. I don't really like the idea of topping up with something other then what I'm making, which was the reason for the smaller jug. As it was the new jug was either the same size >.< or only slightly smaller and I ended up topping it off with some water anyway. In the end topping the mead up with water ended up being a good thing, I kept an eye on the airlock and about a week or so later noticed that it had started fermenting again. I'm thinking that introducing the water diluted it enough to un-stall the fermentation and kick the yeast into action again. And I'm also wondering if the closest may be too cool for the yeast and that adding room temperature water warmed it up to a more agreeable level. If I remember I will pick up some thermometer strips to stick to the side of the jug. Also given the gravity at the time of racking, 1.026, the yeast still had the potential to ferment out the rest of the sugars and end up below 1.000. I'm not sure how long it will go for, but I'm willing to forget about it until fermentation has been completed.

And for the gravities and the like.
OG: 1.118
FG: 1.026
ABV: 12.14%
Expected FG .998~
Expected ABV: 15.84%

At least in a prefect world, I topped it off with around 750ml of water. So everything has been diluted and the ABV will be somewhat less. But considering that it was already at 12% this is going to have some kick to it when it's fully done.

05/02/2011 JOAM and Jalapeno (Capsicumel) update

 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.

Brewing Update - 09/05/10

Apfelwein
The Apfelwein has cleared and I've racked it into another 4.5L jug. Which may cause problems because it was only 4.2L to begin with and with two gravity readings taken it really should be in a smaller jug. But I don't have anything to put it in at the current point in time >.<
The FG is .998 which gives it an ABV of 7.6% or so and since it finished dry is very tart. I'm hoping that once it ages a bit this will fade. If it does I can see myself liking this very much. I'm going to see about getting some smaller jugs and maybe putting in some potassium metabisulfate to preserve it as it ages.

Basic Mead
I brought this upstairs for a few days to see about kicking the yeast into action with a little more heat. It showed signs of renewed fermentation and I tossed into a few raisins in hopes of further coaxing the yeast into doing their job. After some rearranging in the basement it is now sitting in a slightly warmer closet. This should allow it to fully ferment and be out of sight so I should be able to leave it alone until it finishes.

Jalapeno Mead
The newest gravity reading is 1.018, which means that it's dropped .018 in the last two weeks. Gave it a taste and its still really really jalapenoy, I would really like it if aging this mead brings out the heat and reduces the jalapenoy taste. I'll check it again next week and if its 1.010 or below I'll try cold crashing and racking into a smaller jug. (At least if I have any) 

JAOM
It appears that the fermentation has more or less stopped on this one. And some of the orange peel has started to sink to the bottom,  with any luck it will clear by the end of the month. I'm hoping that this turns out well, as it stands the other two meads are disappointments.

Ginger Beer
Still tasting good, it seems that the sugar has lessened some and the ginger has come to the front. Of course that could be because the yeast is still active and carbing the bottles. I had two explode last Sunday breaking the bottom of the PET bottles it is in. Good thing that it was in the basement :P Next time I'm thinking a little more ginger, a little less sugar and a sharp eye to make sure that none blow.

Brewing update - 08/22/10

Apfelwein
I've been reading a lot about cider of late and decided that I needed to give this a taste. It still has a fair amount of krausen on top and is very cloudy. The nose was fairly strong with the scent of alcohol with a hint of apple in the back. The taste was bitter/tart upfront with an overly bitter/tart finish, not undrinkable but something that would need to be paced. The funny thing was that after I had taken a sample the krausen started to dissipate. Which I thought may have been due to either the k-meta that I used to sanitize the baster or opening it up. But when I went back down 15 minutes later it was back where it was before the sample. 

Basic Mead
Has an unpleasant medicine nose that's just as bad if not worse then it was before, tastes rather sweet and fuzzy with a sour and unpleasant after taste. Somewhat disappointed with how it's come along. I may have made a mistake and stressed the yeast or it could be the yeast itself. So far I haven't been too impressed with the EC-1118 and hope that the Afpelwein turns out ok.

Jalapeno Mead
Took a gravity reading and did a taste. The gravity had fallen down to 1.036 from the 1.045 it was on the 13th, hopefully it will keep fermenting. I'll try and not touch it for two weeks and then give it another test. As for the taste, it had a peppery nose that didn't really appeal to me. If I try this again I'll look for a pepper that smells good on it's own instead of the jalapeno. It was very sweet with a cloying mouth feel with a jalapeno after taste and no heat at all. So far this has been a disappointment, but I'm hoping to catch it somewhere in the 1.002 – 1.010 range and cold crash it and bottle. Maybe some time in the bottle will improve it.

JAOM
I didn't touch this at all as per the instructions... perhaps that's what I need to stop playing with things. Recipes that say walk away after installing the air lock. The bubbling has slowed down a bit over the last few days and some of the orange zest has started to fall. Only a month to go on the 25th, so I'm hoping that it will start to clear soon.

Ginger Beer
This is one of the few things that has turned out nice. I chilled a couple of bottles and took it over to a friends place for some testing last night. It's fairly sweet with a nice ginger taste and nose, And it's not zingy like some of the commercial brands that I've tried, but it's refreshing none the less. I opened one today to get a gravity reading and it fizzed up all over the place. It seems that the yeasties did a good job carbing it. I did notice quite the difference from it being chilled though, it was a lot sweeter (almost cloying) and was really really carbed. As for the gravity it was still at 1.044... which would mean that it didn't fall at all in the bottles. So I have not idea what the abv would be it there is any at all. I suppose that I'll have to try one on an empty stomach to see if there is any alcohol it in or not o_O.

Mead updates and such

I've learned that mead is something you need to be willing to forget about and then come back to in 6 months or so. Over the past few days I've taken gravity tests of both the basic and jalapeno meads, the basic seems to be stuck at 1.030 and the jalapeno was only down to 1.045. If I hadn't messed with the basic by racking it I'm sure that it would have kept going. Next time I'm in the LHBS I'll see about picking up some of the same yeast and re-pitching.

As for the jalapeno, I wrote up some tasting notes. (even though I don't really know what I'm doing with tasting...). It had a mild jalapeno nose with a slight jalapeno taste and a rather sweet and cloying mouth feel. I'm hoping that with age the jalapenoness will recede and lend the mead a hotter mouth feel and taste.

Also, I've resolved not to touch any of the meads (except for adding more yeast to the basic) until they clear. Whenever that may be. 

07/25/10 Jalapeno Mead (Capsicumel)

I read about Capsicumel (don't ask me how to pronounce it) on the home brew talk forums here:
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f80/habanero-capsicumel-60272/

Being someone who likes some spicy food every now and again I decided that this would be next on the list of things to try. It also didn't help that I had bought too much clover honey for the JAOM... So I picked up some more and made this on the same day.

The poster had made his with habaneros and thought that it came out too hot in the end. Not wanting to kill myself on my first try I decided to go with a safer chile, the jalapeno. I would have made another 4.5L batch, but I didn't have the right size of jug on hand and only had around 1.2kg of honey so I went with a 4L batch.

Jalapeno Capsicumel
1 jalapeno cut into quarters (in order to fit into the jug) with the seeds and pith removed.
1.2kg clover honey
4-5L of spring water
Muntons Preminum Gold Active Brew yeast (I used the rest of the pack from the ginger beer, may have been a bad idea but we'll see)
1 tsp yeast nutrient

I boiled 3L of water, removed the pot from heat and let the it cool a little. Then I mixed the honey in making sure to keep stirring until it had dissolved just in case the bottom of the pot was too hot. I chilled the must down before placing it into the jug and topping off with fresh water. Took a gravity reading (1.068) and then tossed in the jalapeno. I left the cap off for 24 hours to allow the yeast some oxygen for breeding and then realized that I forgot to add the yeast nutrient. Which I tossed in right before capping, the must went crazy and it was lucky that it stopped before overflowing.

I tried giving this a taste tonight, I was interested in how it turned out and wanted to see how far the gravity had come along. I had read somewhere that fermentation should be done around two weeks and sought to confirm. I was disappointed with the gravity reading of 1.045, since the fermentation had quieted down I believed that it would be a lot lower. I don't believe that it's stuck or anything, just slow. Perhaps it's the munton's yeast, I tried looking on their web site for the alcohol tolerance and suggested temperature ranges and got nothing. I think that I'm going to stick with Lalvin yeasts from now on.

Also, only two more blog posts and then I'm caught up! Yay!

07/25/10 JAOM

So this is my attempt at a pretty well known (in the mead circles at least) beginners mead. Joe's Ancient Orange Mead, or JAOM for short, is a melomel (fruit mead) that uses basic materials that anyone can get at a grocery store anywhere. Well, maybe not the jug and air lock, at least the standard issue ones.  I've seen pictures of some pretty makeshift airlocks and carboys before on forums.

Here is the link to the recipe that I used:
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f80/joes-ancient-orange-mead-49106/

I made it pretty much to a T, only I used the imperial gallon (4.5L) instead of the US gallon (3.7L). This may have had an effect on my OG, which was only 1.076 as opposed to the 1.100 that the poster had. Also I snapped the cinnamon stick in half and only put in 1 clove and no nutmeg or allspice. And by reading through the comments I saw that a number of people we complaining about a pithy taste to the mead, so I zested and then peeled the navel orange that I used. The handful of raisins I used were 30ish golden ones that I had on hand. And the most important ingredient (the honey o_O) was 1.6kg local clover honey.

I'm going to stick by the recipe and not touch it at all. It's been 19 days and the airlock is still dropping every 6-8 seconds. The basic mead slowed right down after about the first 7 days. Hopefully all goes well, I can't wait for September 25 to roll around.

08/02/10 Racking the Basic Mead

 The first jug that the basic mead was in was an amber one, which meant that I couldn't really tell what was going on with it. How much it was still fermenting or how much lees (sediment) had build up. The latter of the two made me really paranoid. I could sorta see what I had thought was a large build up of lees and after reading in several places that leaving the mead on the lees too long it could ruin it I decided to risk racking it early just to get it out of the amber jug. Then I learned after racking it that some people leave their musts on the lees for extended period of times without any negative effect and that racking tends to be more personal preference/opinion then anything else.

During the first week or so of fermentation the airlock was giving off this sweet delicious scent that I hoped the mead would retain. But I was rather disappointed when I popped off the airlock and smelled a rather brutal medicine like scent. I had head about this before and it should be (I hope) something that can be aged out. I racked it into the jug that was shown last post. And as I got to the bottom there was hardly any lees at all! I guess that I over reacted for nothing and should have stuck with the home brewing expression DWRAHAHB (Don't Worry, Relax and Have a Home Brew).

I took a gravity reading as I racked it and got a 1.030, the yeast I used should bring it all the way down to 1.000. So I'm going to take another reading this weekend to see if it's finished or not. One thing I learned after I racked it was not rack until fermentation had finished completely... because if you rack it too early you end up leaving behind a lot of the healthy yeast that would be fermenting away. I also tossed in some more nutrient in order to help the yeasties out, to only learn today that you shouldn't put any in after the mead has gone more then half way >_<

Oh well, it's the first batch and I can't expect everything to smoothly. I just hope that it doesn't take forever to age the suck out.

Next post will be about the ginger beer plant I made.

7/17/10 Basic Mead recipe

This will be a two parter, I'll deal with the racking in another post.

I don't know what it was about mead that caught my attention. But to me it seemed like it would be something to try, it seemed pretty basic and low cost and I could could get the ingredients pretty easy. (not like partial mash/all grain brewing or wine making)

So I called around town looking for some 4.5L jugs, or demijohn as the book I picked up called them. I would later learn that the book was printed in the UK and demijohns were all over the place there and some what a pain in the ass to find over here. I managed to find some, picked up some champagne yeast, acid blend and some creamed honey from the grocery store.

Here is the basic mead recipe that I was going off of.

5L unchlorinated water
1.5kg honey
1 tsp acid blend
1 tsp yeast nutrient
1 packet champagne yeast

For the water I filled the jug up with tap water and then left it out over night for the chlorine to evaporate out of it. A foodie friend vouched for the method and I decided to give it a go. The honey was just a creamed no name brand, it ended up giving me a higher gravity then the clover honey I used for later attempts. Which would mean that it had more sugar in it, whether this is because it was creamed or not I'm not sure. I'll be sticking with the organic stuff from now on. The acid blend, yeast  nutrient and yeast (Lalvin EC-1118) I picked up from a LHBS (local home brew store).

I re-hydrated the yeast by boiling ¼ cup of water, mixing in some honey and then pitching when it was around 35C ish.  I left it for 70 minutes or so before pitching it into the must.

I boiled around 3L of water in a 11L stainless steel pot, it didn't need to be that big of a pot but it didn't hurt having the extra room. And I'm sure that one day down the line I'll end up using it to full capacity. I let the water cool a bit and then started stiring in the honey a little bit at the time. Making sure that if the bottom of the pot was too hot it wouldn't get burned. 

I made the mistake of thinking that the 3L of water and 1.5kg of water would be enough to fill the jug. I had placed aside around 1.2L of water but then poured the rest out in order to empty out the jug for filling with the wort. I also took a gravity reading at this time... which was 1.146. This ended up being a mistake as that the wort was short of the 4.5L I needed to fill the jug, even with the 1.2L I had put aside I'm not sure that I made it to the full 4.5L. The other issue with this is that I didn't realize at first that adding water to the wort would mess up the gravity reading. So I ended up taking another and got 1.118.

The yeast was pitched when the must reached 35C and I gave the jug a good shake in order to make sure that the yeast had enough oxygen to reproduce. I then left the airlock off of it for 26 hours with a piece of cheese cloth on top to keep out bugs and the like while still giving the yeast access to oxygen. I gave it another good shake when I put the air lock on and my notes state that it frothed up a whole hell of a lot and I ended up stopping before the full minute.

By the time I put the airlock on it seemed to be bubbling away happily towards a good fermentation. I'll let you know about the racking next post.