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Mead Journal: I GOT HONEY
Aug. 23rd, 2010 11:19 amOk so I am a bit energetic and overly happy about being able to put together more mead. A large financial drop has severly limited my supply of money for honey. I got a bit of a windfall and am able to buy it. I also bought some peaches (34 pounds) but that is for later. So I bought 3 buckets of alphalfa honey, nice robust flavor that is good for general mead makery. I like to have a good standard and work the flavors from there. I suppose I could pay more money for some varital honeys such as orange blossom, raspberry honey, tulupo honey, or many others. Me, I don't have much money.
So, I finally got a comission. Well, Not a comission as it would be illegal to sell the mead beings I don't have an alcohol liscence. More like, My expertised is being used by someone else to assist in creation of mead, and that means paying for the supplies, I am just an ACTIVE CONSULTANT. Yes, that will work.
So it is for Raspberry mead. The problem is raspberries are a bit expensive. More so than strawberries. I missed the raspberry season by a little so I am left with the bulk from costco. I also need to do some reasearch for some pick your own farms in the area so that I can get items cheaper and better quality than at the grocery store. Mostly it is the cheaper that is needed. But anyway. Acording to the information that I am able to dig up for a nice strong raspberry flavor I should used about 8 pounds of raspberries. Costco has 2 1/2 pounds for $9.99, aka $10. I haven't purchesed them yet.
After buying Honey and peaches on Saturday, I made up 2 batches of mead on Sunday. Got them all buttoned up and they are fermenting now. Slowly but that's OK.
What are the batches destined for? one is the Peach Spirimint and the other is for a Raspberry Thyme. The Thyme will be provided by Ziz which is going to be the benifactor of my ACTIVE CONSULTATION on the mead. A few leaves from their garden, when it's time. heh, heh, ok, didn't mean that pun. But I figure 2-3 leaves bruised up a bit to let the extraction take place should lend a very light complexity to the flavor when alls said and done. This will be a still very sweet mead, hence the thyme will balance out the flavor compent a bit as thyme is a sweet spice as well. But for a 5 gal batch 2-3 leaves should be enough to lend a bit of character and complexity to the mead without overpowering it.
The other batch is for my peach spearmint. I think that 2-3 leaves would be fine here too as peach flavor is a very suble one, much like the pear. Better to underdo the spices than overdo it.
I only labled the 2 batches by gravity so far, haven't decided which will be which. The gravities are as follows:
1: 1.20
2: 1.16
This is actually very heavy from what I have found. The higher the number the higher the sugar content (or rather in technicality the higher the disolved solids, aka sugar) The Gravity goes down as the yeast eats sugar and produces the much lighter ethonal. Ethonal is actually ligher than water. From what I understand the gravity reading for pure water would be a 1.00. If I don't add anything and keep things the same volume, then the way to calculate Alcohol By Volume (ABV%) is by taking SG minus FG then Times 1.61. SG is starting Gravity and FG is final gravity. So what this means is if you go from 1.16 to 1.00 with no volume changer you end up with 25.67% ABV. that being: 1.16-1.0=.16, .16 * 1.61= 25.76%. I don't believe that I will that low.
That's all for now.
So, I finally got a comission. Well, Not a comission as it would be illegal to sell the mead beings I don't have an alcohol liscence. More like, My expertised is being used by someone else to assist in creation of mead, and that means paying for the supplies, I am just an ACTIVE CONSULTANT. Yes, that will work.
So it is for Raspberry mead. The problem is raspberries are a bit expensive. More so than strawberries. I missed the raspberry season by a little so I am left with the bulk from costco. I also need to do some reasearch for some pick your own farms in the area so that I can get items cheaper and better quality than at the grocery store. Mostly it is the cheaper that is needed. But anyway. Acording to the information that I am able to dig up for a nice strong raspberry flavor I should used about 8 pounds of raspberries. Costco has 2 1/2 pounds for $9.99, aka $10. I haven't purchesed them yet.
After buying Honey and peaches on Saturday, I made up 2 batches of mead on Sunday. Got them all buttoned up and they are fermenting now. Slowly but that's OK.
What are the batches destined for? one is the Peach Spirimint and the other is for a Raspberry Thyme. The Thyme will be provided by Ziz which is going to be the benifactor of my ACTIVE CONSULTATION on the mead. A few leaves from their garden, when it's time. heh, heh, ok, didn't mean that pun. But I figure 2-3 leaves bruised up a bit to let the extraction take place should lend a very light complexity to the flavor when alls said and done. This will be a still very sweet mead, hence the thyme will balance out the flavor compent a bit as thyme is a sweet spice as well. But for a 5 gal batch 2-3 leaves should be enough to lend a bit of character and complexity to the mead without overpowering it.
The other batch is for my peach spearmint. I think that 2-3 leaves would be fine here too as peach flavor is a very suble one, much like the pear. Better to underdo the spices than overdo it.
I only labled the 2 batches by gravity so far, haven't decided which will be which. The gravities are as follows:
1: 1.20
2: 1.16
This is actually very heavy from what I have found. The higher the number the higher the sugar content (or rather in technicality the higher the disolved solids, aka sugar) The Gravity goes down as the yeast eats sugar and produces the much lighter ethonal. Ethonal is actually ligher than water. From what I understand the gravity reading for pure water would be a 1.00. If I don't add anything and keep things the same volume, then the way to calculate Alcohol By Volume (ABV%) is by taking SG minus FG then Times 1.61. SG is starting Gravity and FG is final gravity. So what this means is if you go from 1.16 to 1.00 with no volume changer you end up with 25.67% ABV. that being: 1.16-1.0=.16, .16 * 1.61= 25.76%. I don't believe that I will that low.
That's all for now.