Mead Journal: Rockbiter Part 2

Just put together 2 batches of Rockbiter, my normal honey brew.  With the 3 batches of flavored and the 2 batches of Rockbiter this puts all my carboys in action.  I have 1-5gal plastic, 1-about 6 gal palstic, 2-5 gallons glass, and 1-6 gal glass for 5 possible batches at once.  I started marking the gravities, I suspect that the alcohol content for my previous batches are going to peak out at better than 15% alcohol content, those that tasted them agree that they are potent and you can't really taste much alcohol taste, well maybe in the still green ones.  But over all my process and the amount of honey I use keeps it dessert sweet.  Like I want it.  Yeah, go me.  But I have a feeling that with the same proceess I am going over the amount of alcohol tolerance for the yeasts I am using.  All in all, I think that I am getting more like 17% to 18%, which is a big wow.  I probably would use less honey if I wanted to take the time to do the primary fermentation with less honey and then back sweetening it.  It is a bit much on work but then the alcohol content could be lower.  The few that I asked said,"No keep it the same alcohol content, it tastes great and because it has a High alcohol content you can sip and enjoy and don't need to drink much."  Almost an exact quote.  Hmmm.  I don't know.  Now I have heard that aging with oak also improves the flavor of mead.  So with these two meads I am going to do an experiment, Age one with oak and the other without.  Bottle, then age some more and then see how it is changed.  Talking to a few people over at homebrewtalk.com they figure that 2 of my 12 oz bottles is equlivent to 1 regular bottle of wine.  Hmm, wow, do I have a lot to get schackered.  My wife thinks that this is a phase that I will eventually stop brewing.  Perhapse, but not until I run out of ideas for flavors first.  How likely is that?  I already have ideas for like several dozen meads if not around a hundred.  Hmm, A hundered botles of mead on the wall...er Ok, I will stop that thought right there.  More motivation to keep good storage space is the ability to store and keep the finished product.  It will be an interesting day when I can have a choice of several dozen meads and at that point, I may just decide to have a tasting party.  Much drunkeness may be a hazardous result but tasty.

So to reiterat:
2 more rockbiters in carboy, which is 4 cases worth or 16  sixpacks that should be ready end of next summer at earliest.
1 normal rockbitter
1 oak rickbitter
to see what the diffence is in MY mead.

I have about 40 pounds left in a bucket from te 3 42 pound buckets I bought in September-ish.