That's because it's been a long time since I made a mead. I haven't bottled one since I bottled my bochet back in 2014.
There's a couple of reasons for that: The adult children have moved out, so we're drinking less than half as much as we used to. And, I've made like 15 gallons of Skeeter Pee, which my wife absolutely loves. If you don't want to hit the link, it's fermented lemonade. Not "hard lemonade" (which is malt liquor with lemon flavoring), but lemon juice, sugar, and yeast. It's super tasty and it'll sneak up on ya.
But I have had a mead working since April of last year--a chocolate cherry mead. I've never done chocolate in a mead before, but everything I've read says that it takes a year for the bitterness to age out. So it's been sitting in a secondary fermenter since 8/14/2015. Today, I bottled.
From my logs:
Recipe: 15lbs costco honey, 1 lb cocoa nibs, Lavlin EC-1118, 'purified' water. Prepare as standard mead: Honey, water, cocoa nibs. No boiling. Made starter with stir plate and lavlin.
Tasting notes: drinking warm on bottling day. The mead is a bit tangy, but the cherry character is very subtle. This is a stark contrast to when I tried making mead with cherry extract and it tasted like cough syrup. I'm not sure I can taste the cocoa, though it did color the mead considerably. There is no bitterness evident. I'll try tasting again later once a bottle has chilled. I do like it quite a bit even at this first tasting.
There's a couple of reasons for that: The adult children have moved out, so we're drinking less than half as much as we used to. And, I've made like 15 gallons of Skeeter Pee, which my wife absolutely loves. If you don't want to hit the link, it's fermented lemonade. Not "hard lemonade" (which is malt liquor with lemon flavoring), but lemon juice, sugar, and yeast. It's super tasty and it'll sneak up on ya.
But I have had a mead working since April of last year--a chocolate cherry mead. I've never done chocolate in a mead before, but everything I've read says that it takes a year for the bitterness to age out. So it's been sitting in a secondary fermenter since 8/14/2015. Today, I bottled.
From my logs:
Recipe: 15lbs costco honey, 1 lb cocoa nibs, Lavlin EC-1118, 'purified' water. Prepare as standard mead: Honey, water, cocoa nibs. No boiling. Made starter with stir plate and lavlin.
- 04-11-2015: started yeast starter
- 04-12-2015: Crushed cocoa nibs slightly with rolling pin. Combined ingredients in fermentation bucket. Pitched yeast
- 08-14-2015: First racking to glass carboy. Stabilized with campden & sorbate. Added Super Kleer 2 days later.
- 02-02-2016: 2nd racking to Better Bottle + 64oz organic black cherry juice + 2c corn sugar. The juice i got had no preservatives and no added sugar, but I wouldn't have cared if it did, since I'd already stabilized.
- 08-13-2016: Bottled. Produced 26x750ml bottles.
Tasting notes: drinking warm on bottling day. The mead is a bit tangy, but the cherry character is very subtle. This is a stark contrast to when I tried making mead with cherry extract and it tasted like cough syrup. I'm not sure I can taste the cocoa, though it did color the mead considerably. There is no bitterness evident. I'll try tasting again later once a bottle has chilled. I do like it quite a bit even at this first tasting.
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