8 januari 2009 bij 14:31 (Brewing)
Today I bottled a batch of mead which had been in the carboy since February last year. I’m not sure how it will turn out eventually, but so far it is alright but not spectacular. It is the first mead that I back-sweetened and I find I really like the honey taste this produces.
I also started a new batch, very small, on the basis of 2 L of blueberry juice which I took home from vacation last year from Croatia.
7 maart 2008 bij 21:19 (Brewing)
The honey wine I started on 2 February (see this post) is progressing nicely. I’ve racked it last week and put it outside for cold-crashing (killing off the yeast cells by exposing to low temperatures). I’ll leave it outside a bit longer, but took a pic for the nice colour. There’s clearly an effect on the colour because of the orange in the recipe.
1 maart 2008 bij 21:04 (Brewing)
Started a new mead today. Had actually planned to make it on Leap Day, but I didn’t get around to it. It’s got 1/3 heather honey and 2/3 wildflower.
For recipe and procedure: brewlog
6 februari 2008 bij 12:24 (Brewing)
Today I bottled a cyser (apple-honey wine) which I started last October. As I don’t use sulfite to stabilise, there’s always the risk of remaining sugars fermenting in the bottle. So I use beer bottles, which can handle the pressure of any CO2 production taking placee after bottling.
’t was a 5 liter batch, so it’s only a few bottles.
2 februari 2008 bij 19:08 (Brewing)
Today I started a new carboy of mead. If it turns out well, I will post the recipe on my blog. But before I know about that, several months will have passed. The first amount of fermentation and after that a few weeks to a few months before the beverages drinkable. It is a recipe that is supposed to yield drinkable mead fairly quickly. For impatient brewers…
The nice thing about the recipe is that the ingredients can easily be obtained in the supermarket. I would not go without some equipment like the carboy and fermentation lock, if I had the choice. At less than €10 in total, I chose not to.
19 januari 2008 bij 15:47 (Brewing, Cooking)
For brewing as well as cooking I lacked a scale for weights of a few grams.
14 januari 2008 bij 8:09 (Brewing)
Tags: honeywine, mead
Yesterday we had some friends over and they were curious about mead. So I opened up a small beer-type bottle which had been bottled last october. I thought for sure it would be too green to be palatable, but wanted to show off anyhow 
Psssssht. That’s what I heard when I uncapped it. And it had gone all sparkly. Taste wasn’t too bad, either. Even if I don’t fancy sparkling alcoholic drinks. Friends were suitably impressed and left with a slightly larger bottle tucked in their bags. I’m glad almost all bottles were beer bottles and the other one hasn’t popped the corck.
Now I prefer not to sulfite and sorbate, but if this is going to happen more often I might. I KNOW I should have left the mead longer, in hindsight, though it was really nice and clear when I bottled it. I was convinced it was done. However, I wondered if one of those filter systems which work on gravity (like racking) with a ‘sterile’ type filter would *reliably* prevent this from happening. Birthday coming up in a few monhts….
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