Not that anyone's really reading this, but....
I fail at the whole "keeping a blog" thing. I really do. I don't have any pictures, but I do have a few updates and a new batch!
The prickly pear is coming along VERY nicely. It didn't actually go all the way to dryness, thanks to using the Montrachet yeast which only has about a 13-14% ABV tolerance, so fermentation stopped when there was a still a decent amount of sugar left. It's sweet, but very drinkable! And getting FAR darker now that the yeast is falling out. Not quite a red wine, but not a blush or a rose. Just.... prickly pear. This one won't need any backsweetening at all, and probably won't need too much bottle aging, either.
Speaking of bottles.... yeah. So... stabilize your wine before backsweetening. I didn't. I have 7 bottles of delighful peach banana sweet wine......... soaked in to my carpet thanks to the corks popping. It is sad, and I need a carpet cleaner, now. So from now on, potassium sorbate it is!
As for the new batch, I wanted to try mead. Mead is, essentially, wine but made with honey instead of sugar. A true mead is JUST honey and water, where the addition of fruits or spices changes the name. A pyment is a mead made with grapes. A cyser is made with apples. Melomel is witih fruit other than grapes or apple. Metheglin is spiced. Hippocras is a pyment (made with grapes) and spiced.
And tons tons more.
I decided I wanted to try an "apple pie" mead, as that seemed to be a pretty common one to try on, and I hadn't made anything with apples yet so far. While researching, I found this recipe on a deviantart page:
http://emptysamurai.deviantart.com/art/Honningbrew-mead-recipe-281711080
And I just had to. It's Skyrim!! But... there were a few issues right off the bat:
1) I do 3 gallon batches, not 5. This made the amount of honey and juice a bit.. awkward.
2) No way to get fireweed honey here in Georgia, and the only other honeys were rather bland.
3) There's more than just cinnamon in an apple pie.
4) The recipe would make a rather low(er) alcohol mead than I wanted.
So I changed things up to fit my needs. This is what I ended up going with:
9lbs wildflower honey
2 1/2 gallons apple juice
10-15 cinnamon sticks
10-15 whole nutmeg
small handful whole cloves
1 1/2 tsp yeast energizer
3 tsp yeast nutrient
Lalvin EC-1118 yeast
Also unlike most mead recipes, I did my fermentation like a normal wine fermentation. Getting things started in the primary, and then transferring to a secondary after the violent fementation has subsided.
First I added the honey and apple juice in small quantities, alternating honey, then juice, stopping to stir and get the honey all incorporated. I Also would pour some of the juice into the "empty" honey containers and shake violently to try and get as much honey out as possible. The 2 1/2 gallons wasn't really decided on until I took specific gravity measurements and saw how large a volume I was getting after then 9 lbs of honey was added. That put me a bit over 3 gallons, and a starting specific gravity of 1.13. If it went to dryness, the ABV would be 17.7%. Within range of the yeast I was using.
Initially I only added 5 cinnamon sticks, as mine are old, and the original recipe didn't call for a lot. I also added 5 whole nutmeg as that goes in an apple pie. Sprinkle the yeast over the must, leave it for a night to get going, and then stir once a day vigorously for a few days until the main fermentation is over (3-4 days). I then put it in my secondary and watched the airlock bubble massively for a while.
And I mean for a LONG while. It was STILL actively fermenting a month later! I racked it, tasted, and...... was not impressed. Strong, yes (SG was about 1.012 now) but very very little spice taste, not a lot of apple, and just the barest hint of honey. It was mainly yeast and alcohol. I decided to add more cinnamon, nutmeg, and then some cloves because I just can't resist cloves in anything. And then hope for the best.
It continued to ferment for another two weeks. I was wondering if it was ever going to STOP! Then one day it did. And I noticed it started to look oddly clear in the top inch or so. Over the next 24-48 hours, the yeast just.... sank. All at once. You could almost watch it clear on its own. It was magical.
I decided it was clear enough to try and get a reading and take a taste. The yeast had petered out around 1.008 or near 16.5% ABV. And the taste.... my word the taste. Strong as ever and will put hair on your chest, but the spices come through wonderfully, and without the sour yeast flavor, the apple and honey are very present as well! Honestly, it's one of the best tasting things I've made thus far, and this includes the prickly pear AND the backsweetened peach banana!
I couldn't wait 2 more weeks to get it off those dead yeast and away from those spices. The yeast by this time were all at the bottom, but they were covering a good 3 inches all over the bottom of my carboy, which would be impossible to siphon up and away from them. I decided to try gravity filtration with some 5-10µM (5-10 micron) filter pads I'd.... um... liberated from work.
That... did not go so well. It took WAY too long to get even the nearly yeast free mead through. I gave it up and just poured it all into a new carboy, and disposed of the spices. At least half of my plan worked. I then watched the yeast sink again, leaving deliciously clear mead up top, but SO MUCH YEAST on the bottom. I decided to try a different tactic.
I siphoned off as much as I could that was relatively clear. I couldn't avoid ALL the yeast, but it was pretty good. I'd say barely more than a "normal" first racking. I then fiunneled the rest of the yeast concentrated mead into a smaller 1 gallon container. This left me with about a half gallon of very very murky yeasty mead.
Boyfriend had bought some smaller funnels when needing a TINY one for a hobby of his, so I grabbed the largest one there, and it just so happened to PERFECTLY fit on top of one of my huge plastic cups! Grab some filter paper, make an inverted cone, and I have a filter funnel! As I only had about a half gallon of liquid this time, I could take my time. And boy did it ever. It took 5 days to filter out that 1/2 gallon of liquid. One. Drip. At. A. Time. But it did eventually filter! After using about 5 pieces of filter paper, too as it would get clogged with the yeast very quickly. But I ended up with probably over a quart of mead filtered out. It didn't get rid of ALL the yeast, as yeast can go smaller than 5 microns, but it got rid of a LOT of them.
I'm getting a "spare" paycheck in May, and I've already decided to get a wine filter pump. You can filter your wine through a 1 micron filter as long as you've racked it at least once, but twice is better. If I can bottle wines within 4 months of starting, I can make more wine more often, and not have to keep my carboys occupied!
Here's hoping that by my birthday (mid June) I can sit down with a glass of Honningbrew Mead!
