#10 - Basic Mead [Extract]

While the other Mead #7 was brewing I was eager to get another Mead in the pipeline given that a Mead pipeline can be measured in years rather than months for beer. I had been reading around and felt that the previous brew had been unnecessarily complicated. I reduced the amount of ingredients and made my own guide to brewing the must so that it would be clearer in future. 

Simple Mead Recipe

•  1.2kg     pure raw honey                  (for sweet, stronger Mead)

• 5              Litres spring water            (Bottled, not tap unless chlorine free)

• 1              tsp. yeast nutrient            (Citrix Additive)

• 1              tsp. Nutmeg                       (main flavour)

• 5              tsp Mellon balls                (stuff for yeast to eat)

• 3              slices lime                           (stuff for yeast to eat)

• 1/4          tsp. Irish moss                   (to clarify Mead)

• 1/2          packet yeast                      (ale yeast)

Bring 1.5L of water to the boil. Take off the heat, add the honey and stir in until dissolved. Add the nutmeg, yeast nutrient and put back on the heat. Skim off the protein scum as it forms and boil for 10 minutes. Reduce heat to prevent boil overs if necessary. Add Irish moss and continue to boil for another 5 minutes. More scum, protein and clumps will form due to the Irish moss. Skim all of this off. Take off the heat and add all of the fruit. Allow the liquid to cool for 60 minutes.  

Add 0.5L of cool water to a sanitised demijohn; this prevents thermal shock when hot liquid added. Using a funnel and sieve, pour the mixture into the demi john and top up the liquid to the 1 gallon mark leaving enough head space for the krausen to form. Fill a sink with water and ice and gently lower the demijohn into it. This will cool the mixture to a temperature which is suitable for pitching the yeast. Add the yeast once the temperature has dropped below 25oC. 18-20 oC is preferable if you have patience. Bung the demijohn and shake the mixture to mix the yeast and aerate the mixture. Insert air lock and store in a cool, dark location for a month before racking to secondary. 

OG should be in the 1090 – 1100 range, FG should be 1000 or less

I racked the yeast after one month and took a small sample for tasting. If you compare this sample to that from brew #7, it can be seen that this one is a lot cloudier. This is to be expected as it was only fermenting for 1 month and hasn't had the same amount of time to settle. The taste from this recipe was delicious and was completely unexpected this early on! I figure the sweetness was due to an unfinished fermentation and the fact that I used ale yeast this time instead of the nasty champaign yeast. In theory the ale yeast shouldn't be able to ferment to the same level and should begin to die at 8 or 9% volume?  I don't have full faith in that assumption as it didn't work to well with the cider in brew #4. 

I am considering stabilising the fermentation to maintain the flavour as I feel it tastes great now and doesn't need any more. I will leave it go for another month and rack it again and taste it again to see what it is like. If it is still ok I will stabilise and perhaps add some bentonite to clear it further before bottling. 

Stats:
Started - 11.7.11
Racked -  28.8.11
Finished - NA
Bottled - NA
Code - 1010
Yeast Brand - Coopers Ale Yeast
Yeast Code - 19310 IPA
Y-Temp - 25.0
Beer/Product Type -   Basic Mead
Malt/Sugar Type - 1.2kG honey + limited Flavours
Volume -  5L
OG - 1091
FG - NA
Proof  - NA

#8 - Red Wine* [Juice]

At this point I decided I was confident enough to attempt a small red wine batch. I started looking for grape juice in my local supermarket but the closest I could find at the time was a juice which was 70% red grape with the rest a mix of raspberry and cherry. I also bought some blackberries for a late addition. 

Wine Recipe

Wine Recipe & Guidelines

• 1 tsp of allspice

• 550g Caster Sugar

• 4L Red Grape And Raspberry Cherry (Not From Concentrate)

• 500ml Bottled water

• 300g Blackberries  

Add the allspice granules to 500ml of water and allow it to boil for 10 minutes.Then add the sugar in portions while stirring.This will cause the sugar to dissolve into the solution.Leave this solution to boil for 5 minutes.  

Crush, juice or grind all of the blackberries into a pulp. Take the solution off the hot plate and add the pulp to the hot water and stir in gently. Put the solution back on the hot plate and bring to the boil then turn off the heat and take it off. 

Thankfully I didn't go to bed early the night I made this brew. It was the first time I have ever had to use a blow off tube. I was minding my own business, reading home-brew forums probably and I glanced over towards the freshly made brew (2 or 3 hours I would say). Sure enough grape and cherry trub as spewing out though the airlock! Normally I would have started having a heart attack at this point but thankfully my months of reading forums and watching YouTube videos finally paid off. The solution was to simply use a blow off tube and bottle of water which did the trick.

I recently tried the wine after letting it age in bottles for 2 months. It was bloody disgusting! That was what I get for using the last of the champaign yeast for this batch. I now officially HATE champaign yeast and will not buy it again and I really don't know why it is recommended for recipes above a normal wine yeast! The wine itself was very very slightly carbonated but it tasted like champaign which I don't really like at the best of times. Basically it was rocket fuel which homeless men one the street wouldn't even drink. Another batch down the drain unfortunately but valuable lessons learned.

Stats:

Started - 6.6.11
Racked - NA
Finished - 15.6.11
Bottled - 7.7.11
Code - 1008
Yeast Brand - Young's Champagne
Yeast Code - 28032013
Y-Temp - 24.0 
Beer/Product Type -  Red Wine
Malt/Sugar Type - Grape, Raspberry, Cherry & Blackberry Juice with 550g of sugar
Volume -  4.8L
OG - 1094
FG - 998
Proof  - 12.87%

#4 - Pomegranate Honey Cider [Juice]

I can't remember where I got this recipe for this brew but it was really an experiment and my first time to make a smaller batch in a 5Litre Demijohn. I felt a bit guilty that I was making all this beer and SWMBO only really drinks very specific brands of cider. So this was my attempt to make a drink that she would like and I got her to make most of it too. :)

Everything that I used for the recipe can be seen above. I made sure to get pure pressed juice that didn't have any preservatives as this doesn't agree with the yeast too well apparently. It wasn't that much expensive than the concentrate so all was fine there.

Unfortunately after this point everything went to complete shit. I forgot to boil the sugar and honey to pasteurise them and I just dumped the two of them in on top of the juice like an animal! This didn't seem to matter in the long term as no noticeable infection occurred as a result. I gave everything a big shake, checked the temperature, took the gravity reading and then WTF 1081 !!!!! All my gravity readings up until this point had been in the 1040 - 1050 region and this one completely blew it out of the water. I had been expecting it to be on the high side but not that high,  I read around on the internet and deluded myself into thinking it would be fine and the yeast would simply die in the high alcohol content.

It didn't die.

It kept fermenting all the way down to 1004 giving a final alcohol content of nearly 11%!!! I bottled it and thought it would be fine after 3 or 4 weeks 'aging' in the bottles. It wasn't fine. When I opened the first bottle I poured it out into a glass, I didn't even have to sniff the glass I could smell it from a distance. It smelt vile. The taste was out of this world in terms of disgusting things I had consumed! I gave some to SWMBO and I thought she was going to start crying the taste was that bad!

If I was ever to attempt this recipe in the future I would take gravity readings on the 3rd or 4th day of fermentation and see what the gravity was. When it got to a value that would give a 5% alcohol content I would then stop the fermentation by killing the yeast. Unfortunately I don't know how I would carbonate the bottles if I did this.

Stats:

Started - 15.5.11
Racked - NA
Finished - 28.5.11
Bottled - 30.5.11
Code - 1004
Yeast Brand - Coopers Standard Ale Yeast
Yeast Code - 15310W
Y-Temp - 22.5
Beer/Product Type -  4L Apple Juice, 07L Pomegranate Juice
Malt/Sugar Type - 300g Honey, 300g Sugar
Volume -  5L
OG - 1081
FG - 1004
Proof  - 10.8% (Including 0.5% for priming)