Mead Journal: Ned's Happy Place

Well I got the Watermellon Mead going.  A lot more volume than I accounted for.  By the looks of it a bit ofer 6 gallons so I put it in my bigest plastic container.   I put the Juice, one gallon of water, and the about 1 gallon and a quart of Wildflower honey.  as well as the Yeast Nurtrient and Yeast Energizer.  Wow does watermellon juice not smell good.

I heated it up to 158 degrees for 5 min, although It did go to 164 before taking it off.  Shoud be well pasturized.  It took forever to cool down.  I finally pitched one packet of Lavin V1-1114 into it.  The Yeast had been rehydrating and activating for about 2 hrs total.  Set that to start when I started heating the must.  I pitched the yeast at 104 degrees, the yeast does have a temp tollarance up to 106 so I felt safe.  I am begining to see the attraction to the messy emersion chiller.  To cool things down for pitching the yeast so it doesn't take all day to do.  Ofcourse on other batches adding Ice to the hot must is something that probably helps.

Other Batches:
The Limey: We after raking it for the first time it settled a bit.  After 2 hrs after racking it I had visible about 1/8 inch sediment.  That was fast.  No apreciateable change in color.  Maybe just a bit more yellow in the carmel color.  Oh, and it seems to have started up fermenting again.  A bit slower but visible.  A small bubble every few seconds, so overall that is significant.  

Strawberry: The mead is still and has very little sediment in the bottom, just some strawberry fuzz.  I think that Next racking should be with more honey, potassium sorbinate (to stop it from frementing out the sweetness) , and a bit more water with about 2 pounds of just chopped strawberries, for a bit more flavor.  This will sweeten it up again and make it less wine-like.

Blueberry:  It seems to be very potent, a very pretty dark color, still sedimenting a bit.  Will wait until end of June to rack it again and do a little more water and honey to sweeten it up.  It is very wine-like now. I preferr very sweet mead.

All told the Strawberry should be almost ready to bottle and age properly, if it wasn't for sweetening up and strawberrying a little again.  Blueberry is 1-2 more rackings even after sweetening up a bit.  Maybe 3 on outside.  The Limey is still very fresh.  I should be bottling 2 batches in July or early August.  Hopefully.  And then it should be nicely aged in November or I may just wait until spring to get it good and aged.

Future batch plans are not until september/October.  I think that I decided to do a Pumpkin spice and a Pear Nutmeg.  Hold off the Cranberry until next year or mid winter, thinking on mixing blueberry with cranberry for a more mellow flavor.  I know that the strait mead went over well.  Possibly another batch of that over winter.  I think that I would like 3 batches going at a given time.  I also saw a recipie for a chocolate mint batch.  Hmm, possibly a batch of chocolate mint with a vanilla bean in it.  That sounds good.  I have heard that chocolate batches do take 2 years to age properly.  Not sure.  I don't think that I will have a storage issue of the mead.  I have even heard that a few people like the standard mead so much that they may be willing to buy it.