#no.110523

[boissonsaumiel]

Pomegranate season is upon us!

Fun fact: If you’ve only ever seen pomegranates in the grocery store, you’ve probably never seen a ripe pomegranate.

Pomegranate seeds expand inside of the pomegranate as they ripen until they get so big the pomegranate bursts open. A pomegranate isn’t truly ripe until the shell starts to crack. Underripe, uncracked pomegranates are much safer and easier to pack and ship, for obvious reasons, so you’ll almost never see cracked pomegranates sold commercially.

[boissonsaumiel]

THE GIRLS ARE FARTINGGGG

11/5 Pomegranate Wine | 11/6 Maple Wine

[boissonsaumiel]

I bottled the pomegranate wine today. The flavor is much milder than I expected. Not nearly as intensely pomegranate-y as the unfermented juice. It reminds me a lot of drinking a rosé. I got four 16oz bottles out of it.

As you can see in the photo, the color of the pomegranate wine (right) is almost exactly the same as the forbidden rice wine (left).

I also racked the blackberry blossom honey mead from a gallon wide mouth fermenter into 2 half gallon bottles. One ended up much fuller than the other, and there were about 16 oz of pomegranate wine+lees left in the pomegranate fermenter after bottling, so I added the pomegranate dregs to the less full half gallon bottle.

Technically that makes that bottle my first attempt at a melomel.

I'm going to let those two half gallons continue aging under airlock.

[boissonsaumiel]

Pomegranate wine!

Just started this batch today. The juice is freshly juiced from the pomegranates we picked in my earlier post. There's a ton more juice where that came from, but I probably won't brew more than this one bottle of wine. It's holding just shy of 2 liters.

I'm not putting an airlock in just yet. The bottle is really full so I'm leaving the top open until fermentation slows down enough that I don't have to worry about it overflowing, with just a tissue over the mouth to keep out bugs.

You might be wondering, if I only started the batch today, why there's sediment at the bottom. That's actually undissolved white sugar. The yeast'll get to it one they consume all the sugar in the juice.

I added pectic enzyme, yeast nutrient and extra sugar this morning and then waited for a few hours for the pectic enzyme to do its work before adding in the yeast.

I'm using Lalvin D47 yeast.

Pomegranate juice should naturally have tannins, so I'm not adding any tannins like I would with mead.

[boissonsaumiel]

I racked the December batch of hōjicha tea mead yesterday. It tastes young. There are no off flavors, but it needs more aging to help the flavors mellow. It has a sharp alcohol kick that you feel but don't really taste. Just a burning sensation in the throat as you swallow.

I tried experimenting with some acids I bought (lactic, malic, tartaric). I determined that this mead doesn't need any acid additions after all. Of the three, the tartaric acid was the only one that didn't make it taste worse, but it also didn't make it taste better. Hōjicha tea naturally contains gallic acid, which is also found in oak apples (the fruit of the oak tree), aka gall nuts according to its wikipedia page. There's actually a tannin powder brewing suppliers sell made from gall nuts.

The mouthfeel is a little thin. I'll wait until June to see how much it improves on its own and then maybe add some maltodextrin if I'm still not happy with it.

I plan to submit this one to the Mead Stampede competition.

.

A while ago I split the blackberry blossom honey mead into two batches, and blended one with my pomegranate wine.

I bottled the blended batch now that it has almost entirely cleared.

It is also going to need quite a bit of aging to mellow out properly. The unblended batch is still quite cloudy, so I'll wait to bottle it.

[boissonsaumiel]

Transferred the forbidden rice wine to a new container with a proper airlock. Made a slight mess on a rug, but managed not to lose more than a couple tablespoons. This isn't quite all of it. I have a 1 lb honey jar with the remaining rice wine. I expect the volume to go down a great deal once it's finished fermenting and properly strained, but I'm hoping to get at least ~100oz out of it.

I've ordered a large "nut milk bag" for the straining.

On the right, the maple syrup wine is still happily bubbling away.