Mead Journal: Strawberry
Sep. 18th, 2008 06:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matrix4bWell I bottled the strawberry mead. It went well, I ended up with one bottle shy of 2 cases. A quick taste of it was good. This one will age very well. The back sweetening with honey and more strawberries worked well. It is still a bit green but I would say that it is passable and drinkable at bottleling. I would chill it to improve the flavor though. A few months aging should bring this mead into it's own. It is however the last time I put fruit in the primary. If I put it in the secondary the flavor would not have gotten ripped apart and needing reconstruction theapy. Ah, well. Hmm, a Strawberry Vanilla, with all the flavor in the secondary. That sounds really good. Ok, I am happy at the deal I got on vanilla and am iching to use it.
The blueberry is a bit too hot flavored, meaning too much alcohol flavor and too little blueberry flavor. It is one that is going to take some sweetening. I plan on doing that this weekend and then possibly bottleing. I sweetened the watermellon up a bit and it seems fine now. I gave it 1 week after sweetening before bottling. Ya know, Unsweetened watermellon is not very good tasting. But once you add sugar, it really takes off. Hmm, Perhapse using wild flower honey wasn't a good idea. I should stick with my robust alfalfa for this. The wild flower honey is so subtle of a sweetness it gets lost in big flavors and that is fine but the more subtle flavors like watermellon it was not a good complement. At least it was savable. I though it had a good mouth feel when I tried it, just the flavor was off. Should be fine now. I hope the sweetening of the blueberry will go as well.
With my honey source I found that they raised the prices to $2.89 a pound. Ouch. Now if I can convince them that I don't need a wholesalers liscence to buy in bulk because I am just making it for personal use then I can get a 42 pound bucket for about $75.00. That is going to make it more affordable. This brings my prices to be about that of a slightly more pricy imported beer. Which you find for around $14.00 a six-pack.
I will try to get it. They said that they just wanted samples of my mead to do so. I though that they were kidding and just wanted the mead at first. It may be a combination of the two. I may bring in a bottle of the Lime mead for them.
They also mentioned that if you buy 90+ pounds wholesale then it may be even cheaper price overall but they would need to set up a date for the pouring. That makes sense, I mean 90 pounds or more is quite a chunk of honey. Going the bulk route I would need to do the measuring for each batch and this would simply getting all the mead for a set of batches at once. Basically 4-5 batches worth is over 100 pounds of honey. Going the bucket route that would be $225 for 3 buckets. Now they said that $4 of that $75 was a bucket deposit. So Let's see $213 for 126 pounds of honey? That's about $1.70 a pound. Not bad. I wonder what the pouring would be If I just go with over 90 pounds at once. I wil try to talk to them on Saturday.
The blueberry is a bit too hot flavored, meaning too much alcohol flavor and too little blueberry flavor. It is one that is going to take some sweetening. I plan on doing that this weekend and then possibly bottleing. I sweetened the watermellon up a bit and it seems fine now. I gave it 1 week after sweetening before bottling. Ya know, Unsweetened watermellon is not very good tasting. But once you add sugar, it really takes off. Hmm, Perhapse using wild flower honey wasn't a good idea. I should stick with my robust alfalfa for this. The wild flower honey is so subtle of a sweetness it gets lost in big flavors and that is fine but the more subtle flavors like watermellon it was not a good complement. At least it was savable. I though it had a good mouth feel when I tried it, just the flavor was off. Should be fine now. I hope the sweetening of the blueberry will go as well.
With my honey source I found that they raised the prices to $2.89 a pound. Ouch. Now if I can convince them that I don't need a wholesalers liscence to buy in bulk because I am just making it for personal use then I can get a 42 pound bucket for about $75.00. That is going to make it more affordable. This brings my prices to be about that of a slightly more pricy imported beer. Which you find for around $14.00 a six-pack.
I will try to get it. They said that they just wanted samples of my mead to do so. I though that they were kidding and just wanted the mead at first. It may be a combination of the two. I may bring in a bottle of the Lime mead for them.
They also mentioned that if you buy 90+ pounds wholesale then it may be even cheaper price overall but they would need to set up a date for the pouring. That makes sense, I mean 90 pounds or more is quite a chunk of honey. Going the bulk route I would need to do the measuring for each batch and this would simply getting all the mead for a set of batches at once. Basically 4-5 batches worth is over 100 pounds of honey. Going the bucket route that would be $225 for 3 buckets. Now they said that $4 of that $75 was a bucket deposit. So Let's see $213 for 126 pounds of honey? That's about $1.70 a pound. Not bad. I wonder what the pouring would be If I just go with over 90 pounds at once. I wil try to talk to them on Saturday.