#no.060323

[boissonsaumiel]

Did a couple tasting combinations tonight.

The avocado honey mead tastes very good mixed the maple wine. Really smoothes it out. Since the maple has a woody taste, it's almost like mixing it with the maple wine makes the avocado taste more "oaked."

The maple wine also tastes good with that Yosemite wildflower honey I flavored with ayurvedic spices (I just realized I've been misspelling ayurvedic as aryuvedic this whole time). It's not quite a smooth as the avocado honey mead. I mean, it tastes very smooth on it's own, but the maple wine is too astringent to drink and the Yosemite mead doesn't soften it as effectively as the avocado does.

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I think I'm going to try oaking the lapsang souchong infused mead.

I still haven't done a tasting of the forbidden rice wine, or the pomegranate wine. They're both just about 3 months old give or take a few days. The pomegranate hasn't been racked yet. I'm not in a hurry. I might give it another month.

[boissonsaumiel]

I tasted my avocado mead again tonight. I've had some oak chips in it for several weeks. This time I could actually taste the avocado honey flavor as well as a little of the oak this time (the last time I tried tasting it, it kind of just tasted like nothing at all). It's quite nice now. I'm bringing a bottle to my sister for Christmas.

If I did it again, I wouldn't use EC-1118 yeast. K1-V1116 is supposed to do a better job of preserving the flavor of the honey.

I siphoned the forbidden rice wine. I got about 2 liters. It looks a lot like red wine, but darker. It tastes like rice wine. Not exactly the same as the rice wine I made with white rice, but very similar, and I don't really know how to describe the differences. The lees layer was 3 inches thick in the gallon fermenter. I think I can eke some more wine out of it if I let it settle for longer, so instead of just tossing the lees, I poured them into one of my tall glass 65oz milk bottles.

I have one more batch to siphon.

[boissonsaumiel]

I finally taste tested the avocado blossom honey mead.

It is not what I expected.

It has a sweet, very mild honey smell. Initially it feels very soft and smooth and light on the tongue, weightless, and it tastes like ... nothing.

Just a kind of blank non-flavor. Almost a numb feeling.

Then, when I swallow, this sharp, spicy zing hits the throat. Like acid or pepper, but without the actual taste of either of those things, just a flavorless burning sensation.

No aftertaste, either.

Weird.

I think I'm going to try blending this bottle with the rhodomel to give it some personality.

I have another half gallon of this mead that I was planning to set aside and age for several months more. Perhaps I should add some oak chips to that bottle.

[boissonsaumiel]

I feel like the lavender rosemary mead is a mite too lavender-y. It still needs to mellow a bit, though I'm a bit worried because I heard lavender can start tasting soapy after a while instead of smoothing out as other flavors do.

Anyway, it's not bad.

Not my fav.

That particular batch was made mostly with a white honey and it came out perfectly chardonnay colored (most of my meads have been made with darker honey and have come out a deeper amber or brown color). It's not my favorite mead that I've made but I still like it better than conventional white wine. It's got a nicer, creamier mouthfeel than any chardonnay I've drunk.

The avocado mead is clearing beautifully, and I'm excited to try it soon. Though I haven't tasted it yet, it's much sweeter smelling than any of my other mead batches were when they finished. It's definitely the darkest mead I've ever brewed (the avocado honey I used is one of the darkest honeys you can buy and looks like molasses). I absolutely love that deep warm mahogany brown color:

I have another, fuller half gallon bottle that I'm going to continue to age for possibly another full year.

[boissonsaumiel]

Hmmm. Looks like my avocado blossom honey mead is going to finish fermenting before the mulled mead batch I started 2 weeks earlier.

I'm not going to rack the avocado mead. I'm going to try sur lie aging instead:

Preparation for sur lie aging begins as fermentation is wrapping up. The lees should be stirred up every two to three days for the last bits of fermentation. Once fermentation has ended continue to stir the lees once or twice each week for a period of six weeks or so. After that stir it up monthly. [source]

I plan to have some for my birthday this fall, and continue aging the rest until next summer.

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I am going to rack the mulled mead as soon as it stops fermenting. I want to free up that carboy for the Yosemite wildflower honey mead I've been dying to make. The honey is finally back in stock on the online store as of last week, and I'm ordering enough for two 1gal batches.

I got one more 1gal glass fermenter — a wide mouth one this time, since the two I have are both narrow top. Should come in handy for any melomels I make down the line. The pomegranate trees will be ready to harvest in the fall.

That's enough, I think.

No more equipment purchases for at least a year.

I cancelled my netflix subscription to help pay off all this crap (I've barely used it in the last two months anyway), and I've been doing extra gig work all week (music transcription services).

[boissonsaumiel]

My two brews that smell the sweetest also seem to be the most active in terms of fermentation rate.

The one gallon batch of avocado blossom honey mead especially has a ton of yeast settling at the bottom. I think I only put in a ¼tsp when I started the batch 2 weeks ago, so the colony must have been multiplying at an incredible rate.

The airlock is still bubbling every 2 seconds. I didn't even add yeast nutrient or anything. The sweet honey smell is much fainter than it was in the beginning, presumably because most of the sugar has been converted to alcohol at this point.

As for the other sweet smelling brew, I think it's mostly the nutrients in the coconut water that have the yeast so excited. Other people who brewed mead with coconut water instead of regular water have remarked on the supercharged yeast activity.

[boissonsaumiel]

Ordered some pectinase for my rose mead.

Rose petals don't have a lot of pectin, but I put at *least* two cups in that half gallon (I wanted the flavor extra strong, since I intend to use it in a blend when it's done), meaning there's probably enough pectin in there to prevent it from clearing properly unless I give it some assistance.

I'll post pics of all my batches tomorrow.