Caramel Apple Mead

After several discussions, my simple, very naive meads went over well with Convergence group. I’d seen a recipe for Caramel Apple Mead prior to the weekend and it was lurking around in the back of my brain. I have an innate issue with mead — I do not know much about them, they are trivial to brew and they take a lot of time to age in comparison to beer.

Ignorance is bliss. I will push further into the mead brewing process without worry. If a few people like what I produce, it cannot be all bad. Rather, I use those people as reinforcement and expect them to spit crap out when it turns out badly.

Fall and Winter are brewing seasons at my house. I do not worry about minute differences in fermentation temperatures. I just shift one room to be at the appropriate temperature for a few weeks. Or the whole house if I have multiple brews fermenting in tandem. The spring and summer are much more difficult seasons — I don’t use AC, a freezer, refrigerator, etc. I just pause brewing due to inappropriate temperature differentials.

The mead recipe is based off the one found on homebrewtalk.com. I do not plan to change the overall structure of the recipe. I may tweak it a bit, I may not. I am going to go full bore and actually brew a five gallon batch. My mind keeps saying that is far too much mead. My heart says it has great reviews, just do it.

Once I am committed to the recipe, I will add it in.

Bottling the Blackberry Mead

After five months, my test batch of blackberry mead has finished fermenting. One gallon batches take quite a while to bottle given the small volume of end product. Sanitizing absorbed the bulk of the time.

The mead tastes decent but is still raw. Hopefully it will mellow with age.

Continue reading »

Mead Update: Blackberry Melomel Racked Again

My latest brewing supply order arrived today. I picked up another two 1-gallon jugs, some caps, and an auto-siphon. The blackberry mead fermentation has slowed down and I wanted to do one more racking to eliminate the majority of the sediment. I’ve avoided buying an auto-siphon due to mixed reviews. Mine worked wonderfully even if it was designed for full carboys and not minimal 1 gallon batches of mead.

The blackberry mead tastes okay. Likely needs a lot more ageing. The singular task before I bottle is patience. I also spent a couple extra dollars and bought additional cheap airlocks and drilled stoppers. The happy balloons worked okay but I trust airlocks. Especially since the mead wont hit the bottles until late fall. In the spring, I can have a mead tasting / gaming session.

Cell phone images will have to suffice. The other camera batteries need charged. Again.
Continue reading »

Mead Progress

After five weeks, the two batches of mead have clarified nicely. The blackberry will need to be racked at least one more time. The layer of sediment from the fruit and yeast is substantial. I may have been too eager and racked early.

Mead Progress

Back on May 17th, I started my original batch of mead based on the grocery store items recipe. A week later, I ventured further with another variant using blackberries. After 3 weeks, the fermentation of the original batch has definitely slowed. I plan on racking it into a secondary fermenter either this weekend or early next week. It still looks rather hazy but I expected nothing less.

The blackberry batch continues to ferment at a reasonable clip. The “airlock” balloon continues to work well. I was dubious of the effectiveness of the balloon system. Much to my surprise, it works wonderfully.

The rodajas de naranja do not appear anything like oranges other than the peels in the blackberry mead. The meat of the fruit is an off-white color and puffed as you would expect from something floating in liquid for 3 weeks. The raisins have retained the original color. Within a few days, they rehydrated and now seem more like puffy, dark grapes.

I need another gallon jug to rack both gallons. After that, all I require is more patience until bottling in the fall.

Grocery Store Mead

Conversations at Convergence always vary widely. Randall and I were talking about brewing at one point and I mentioned I’d been thinking about trying a batch of mead. From what I’d seen, brewing mead was far simpler than beer but thought it took quite a while longer for the fermentation and ageing. He thought it would be nice to try. The idea was still ticking about in the back of my head on Monday so I did some research.

Mead is an interesting drink. I like it on occasion but really didn’t want to start with a five gallon batch. Several sites I read mentioned 1 gallon batches as an easy way to get started along with a variety of recipes. The primary components for a batch of mead are water, honey, and yeast. Yeast varieties vary for beer brewing and mead brewing has several choices as well from what I read. Then I stumbled on stormthecastle.com’s page: How to make some Mead today -the cheap, fast, and easy way.

I already needed to visit the grocery store. So along with the other necessities, I picked up the water, yeast, honey, balloons, oranges, and raisins. The total additional cost was $14.78, the bulk of which was honey. A Colorado brand was on sale so I chose it over the store brand, which added a minor amount of cost. Also, it turned out one of my beer airlocks fit the water jug nicely so I didn’t need to buy the balloons.

The instructions are pretty clear except for one thing. I wasn’t sure if the orange was sliced with or without the peel. After watching one of his videos, I discovered its peel and all. Mine is missing the peel but the orange is apparently optional. The omission of the peel will likely not add as much acidity but should be fine. I also added a cinnamon stick and a bit of vanilla bean. Spices are crazy expensive but both were on sale. For the amounts I used, the cost elevated by a couple of dollars.

Continue reading »