I've just completed a batch of mead following the recipe from Brewing Mead. It's much better than the peach abomination I made last summer but it's still not as good as a commercial mead like Chaucer's. The new technique to prep the honey paid off and the clarity is much better but my mead is quite dry.
Like I said in the previous article I made not mead but the more advanced metheglin. The difference is the addition of a spiced tea before bottling. I used Anaheim peppers from our local food cooperative. The pepper tea reduced the clarity somewhat so I will need to work on processing the gruit. Perhaps by extracting the flavor at a lower temperature. I'll need a book on canning, I think. Incidentally, the pepper pairs well with the dryness in this batch. I think it is good but it's nothing like the mead you get at a Renaissance Fair.
Some time later, I'll try the sack mead recipe with more honey and sweet mead yeast.
Trademarks are the property of their respective owners and are used for example only and should not be taken as endorsement or advertisement. Please drink responsibly.
Showing posts with label mead. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mead. Show all posts
Thursday, May 21, 2015
Sunday, April 26, 2015
Follow the Recipe
Metheglin is a variety of mead flavored with hops, herbs, or spices. Capsicumel, a hot pepper flavored mead, would be a metheglin rather than a melomel. Melomel is mead flavored with fruit, like the peaches I tried before. I promised I was going to make a capsicumel earlier and so I've started one after getting a great deal on a large quantity of Anaheim peppers. I've had some level of success with mead and also some peach orchard scented abominable failure. The key is following a good recipe and this time I'm using one from Charlie Papazian's Brewing Mead.
This recipe starts with a well-tested effective basic mead that can be brewed and bottled on its own. But I'll be adding in gruit, which is the flavoring that takes this brew from mead to metheglin. I also changed up some of my brewing day technique following guidance in Brewing Mead and elsewhere. This new process stirs together honey and water and heats it to a low boil before adding it to more water in the carboy for fermentation. Later the gruit is boiled into a strong tea and added to the mead at bottling time. I got the peppers early so they are seeded, bagged, and frozen until first fermentation is done.
This recipe starts with a well-tested effective basic mead that can be brewed and bottled on its own. But I'll be adding in gruit, which is the flavoring that takes this brew from mead to metheglin. I also changed up some of my brewing day technique following guidance in Brewing Mead and elsewhere. This new process stirs together honey and water and heats it to a low boil before adding it to more water in the carboy for fermentation. Later the gruit is boiled into a strong tea and added to the mead at bottling time. I got the peppers early so they are seeded, bagged, and frozen until first fermentation is done.
Thursday, April 23, 2015
Ale Aboard
Now that we're wrangling our own yeast for home brewing, let's talk a bit more about this. For the home brewer, it's one less thing to put in the shopping cart when stocking up for brew day. Just take the corral out of the refrigerator, boost the volume, and get ready for a new batch. Of course, you'll either need to set up several flasks, one corral for each species you use, or you'll need to pare down the variety of beer recipes you use, selecting only those that use the species of yeast you're raising. Who am I kidding?! You're opening a ranch.
But now think about what these starter flasks are. It's yeast, water, and malt allowed to ferment. That sounds like unhopped beer. There's evidence that it may even be the original recipe for ale, dating back to Chaucer's day! We're all used to the super hoppy IPA style common today but in 1483, the ale brewers in London wrote a letter to the Lord Mayor petitioning for a law to ban hops and spices from being included in ale. From that, we can surmise that ale as it was made then was only yeast, malt, and water. That's according to research by Lt. Colonel Gayre in his book Wassail! In Mazers of Mead. As opposed to mead which is made with honey, ale is or at least was made with less expensive malt and didn't include hops until the 16th Century. India Pale Ale, of course, dates only to the British colonial period where the excess hops acted as a preservative when shipping beer overseas. So our yeast starters, effective for our regular brewing, are an historic brew in their own right. That's definitely something I'll be exploring on a later brew day.
Wassail, by the way, is a fascinating book. Published in 1948, it traces the history and etymology of mead, wine, and beer. Pick up a copy if you can find it. You're most likely to find it as Charlie Papazian's 1986 book Brewing Mead which appends chapters on equipment and recipes for several varieties of mead identified by Lt. Col. Gayre.
Wassail. To your health. Please drink responsibly.
But now think about what these starter flasks are. It's yeast, water, and malt allowed to ferment. That sounds like unhopped beer. There's evidence that it may even be the original recipe for ale, dating back to Chaucer's day! We're all used to the super hoppy IPA style common today but in 1483, the ale brewers in London wrote a letter to the Lord Mayor petitioning for a law to ban hops and spices from being included in ale. From that, we can surmise that ale as it was made then was only yeast, malt, and water. That's according to research by Lt. Colonel Gayre in his book Wassail! In Mazers of Mead. As opposed to mead which is made with honey, ale is or at least was made with less expensive malt and didn't include hops until the 16th Century. India Pale Ale, of course, dates only to the British colonial period where the excess hops acted as a preservative when shipping beer overseas. So our yeast starters, effective for our regular brewing, are an historic brew in their own right. That's definitely something I'll be exploring on a later brew day.
Wassail, by the way, is a fascinating book. Published in 1948, it traces the history and etymology of mead, wine, and beer. Pick up a copy if you can find it. You're most likely to find it as Charlie Papazian's 1986 book Brewing Mead which appends chapters on equipment and recipes for several varieties of mead identified by Lt. Col. Gayre.
Wassail. To your health. Please drink responsibly.
Saturday, July 19, 2014
Blow Off
I said I'd be back with new homebrewing definitions and this situation brings on some very colorful vocabulary.
Let me set the scene. You've just poured a batch of must into a carboy to ferment and gone off to do something else, like write articles on Blogger. When you return to your brewery some time later, you discover that the fermenting process has knocked the airlock off the top of the carboy and spilled a peach concoction all over the kitchen floor. Yeah, that just happened to me.
Sometimes yeast gets very active and the wort or must can expand in the early hours of fermentation. It's a desired effect in its own way but it works better for rising bread than brewing beer, wine, or mead. It signals that fermentation is happening and the yeast are awake and getting down to work.
There are a few methods for dealing with blow off. To start with, leave some head space in the carboy. Don't fill it too full with wort or must. That will leave the brew some room to expand into before reaching the airlock. Experience will tell you where the fill line is for a particular recipe in your equipment. Additionally, most carboys come with both an airlock and blow off tubing. To use the tubing, sanitize it with the rest of your brewery gear and install one end in the stopper in place of the airlock and sink the other end under water. A reserve of sanitizing solution can be held back for this purpose or plain tap water can be used. You just need to ensure that the hose acts like the airlock and only allows CO2 out, keeping out air and foreign bacteria.
Within a few days, the yeast will settle down and won't be forcing any more material out through the hose. You can replace the hose with the airlock assembly at this point. Good luck!
Please drink responsibly.
Let me set the scene. You've just poured a batch of must into a carboy to ferment and gone off to do something else, like write articles on Blogger. When you return to your brewery some time later, you discover that the fermenting process has knocked the airlock off the top of the carboy and spilled a peach concoction all over the kitchen floor. Yeah, that just happened to me.
Sometimes yeast gets very active and the wort or must can expand in the early hours of fermentation. It's a desired effect in its own way but it works better for rising bread than brewing beer, wine, or mead. It signals that fermentation is happening and the yeast are awake and getting down to work.
There are a few methods for dealing with blow off. To start with, leave some head space in the carboy. Don't fill it too full with wort or must. That will leave the brew some room to expand into before reaching the airlock. Experience will tell you where the fill line is for a particular recipe in your equipment. Additionally, most carboys come with both an airlock and blow off tubing. To use the tubing, sanitize it with the rest of your brewery gear and install one end in the stopper in place of the airlock and sink the other end under water. A reserve of sanitizing solution can be held back for this purpose or plain tap water can be used. You just need to ensure that the hose acts like the airlock and only allows CO2 out, keeping out air and foreign bacteria.
Within a few days, the yeast will settle down and won't be forcing any more material out through the hose. You can replace the hose with the airlock assembly at this point. Good luck!
Please drink responsibly.
Friday, July 18, 2014
Peach Puree
I made up a new batch of mead. My first batch, which was a short mead meant to be consumed right after brewing, was a melomel style, honey with any fruit, in this case oranges. It just misses qualifying as a pyment, which is honey with white or red grapes; I used California raisins with the oranges. Second batch used almost the same recipe as the first, just in larger quantity. Actually, it ended up being almost a bochet, which uses caramelized honey. You see, I had let the honey crystallize and had to turn it back into liquid in a double boiler; that almost didn't go well. Also, I swapped out the raisins in favor of blackberries, pushing the recipe towards a bochetomel.
This new batch is a complete departure from the citrus-fed bread yeast of the past. I am using real champagne yeast, for one thing. That is definitely going to change the flavor of the end product. It's still a melomel mead, using peaches as the fruit.
Oh, this one has been an adventure. It takes a while to ship twelve pounds of honey anyway, but when your order also includes a new recipe kit by famous actor and internet personality Wil Wheaton, well, things get delayed. Parallel to that, I had ordered 25 pounds of peaches from a food coop and when the honey and yeast didn't arrive alongside the peaches, I had to scramble to slice and freeze the fruit. Eventually, all the ingredients were present but then thawing the peaches made a mess due to cheap plastic bags.
Here's where the title comes from. In the middle of laying up the must, I decided to run the thawed peach slices through the blender to make them easier to pour into the carboy. For next time, I think I'm going to puree the fruit first before freezing. I could also can the slices to preserve them that way, in case I don't get all the ingredients together at the same time again.
Anyway, this peach melomel will be a short mead and I'll write a follow-up on my impressions when it's done fermenting in a few months. There's a few other varieties I want to try out in the future. Being so close to Hatch, N.M., a capsicumel is a definite must try. I'd also like to try fermenting a braggot, a morat, and maybe even an intentional bochet. I have a few rose bushes in the yard so a rhodomel is also an option. Keep brewing. Salud!
Trademarks are properties of their respective owners and are used as examples only, without endorsement or commercial consideration. Please drink responsibly.
This new batch is a complete departure from the citrus-fed bread yeast of the past. I am using real champagne yeast, for one thing. That is definitely going to change the flavor of the end product. It's still a melomel mead, using peaches as the fruit.
Oh, this one has been an adventure. It takes a while to ship twelve pounds of honey anyway, but when your order also includes a new recipe kit by famous actor and internet personality Wil Wheaton, well, things get delayed. Parallel to that, I had ordered 25 pounds of peaches from a food coop and when the honey and yeast didn't arrive alongside the peaches, I had to scramble to slice and freeze the fruit. Eventually, all the ingredients were present but then thawing the peaches made a mess due to cheap plastic bags.
Here's where the title comes from. In the middle of laying up the must, I decided to run the thawed peach slices through the blender to make them easier to pour into the carboy. For next time, I think I'm going to puree the fruit first before freezing. I could also can the slices to preserve them that way, in case I don't get all the ingredients together at the same time again.
Anyway, this peach melomel will be a short mead and I'll write a follow-up on my impressions when it's done fermenting in a few months. There's a few other varieties I want to try out in the future. Being so close to Hatch, N.M., a capsicumel is a definite must try. I'd also like to try fermenting a braggot, a morat, and maybe even an intentional bochet. I have a few rose bushes in the yard so a rhodomel is also an option. Keep brewing. Salud!
Trademarks are properties of their respective owners and are used as examples only, without endorsement or commercial consideration. Please drink responsibly.
Thursday, July 17, 2014
Must You
I've been brewing again recently, laying up a melomel. That's a type of mead made with honey and fruit. If I reserve some for aging, the aged mead is a great or long mead as opposed to the short mead consumed immediately after brewing. That aging could be years.
Knowing some of the terminology lets you follow conversations and recipes a lot easier. I've seen many recipes where they just assume you know all their jargon and use that to weed out the people who aren't "serious" about joining them. I worked in IT so I've seen that garbage my entire career. Here's some definitions to get you on top of the curve.
Malt is the roasted and boiled grains used to make beer. Extract kits turn the malt into a syrup to make things easy for beginners. I use extract kits and may never start brewing with all-grain recipes.
Hops are flowers that add spice and flavor to beer. They also preserve beer which is why so many craft recipes and IPA style beers are so hoppy. IPA was a style brewed in England and shipped to their colonies in India, hence the name India Pale Ale.
Wort is unfermented beer. It's the malt, hops, water, and maybe spices but no alcohol because yeast hadn't worked on it yet. Must is unfermented wine or mead. Water, fruit and or honey but again no alcohol.
Yeast normally comes in packets of emulsified live yeast bacteria. It looks like granules. The granules are broken down and release the yeast by soaking in warm water. This is called proofing and gets the yeast ready to turn wort or must into beer or wine.
Brewers need to ensure that only the yeast they've bought get to participate in fermentation. They use special chemicals to wash and sterilize their equipment. The washing process may be abbreviated as CIP, or clean in place. Alternatively, the brewer could let wild bacteria ferment the wort or must and call the resulting product lambic but using unknown varieties of bacteria like that makes it hard to be consistent from batch to batch.
Lees are the tired and dead yeast plus fruit, hops, grain, or whatever left in the bottom of the carboy after fermentation. The carboy is the glass or plastic jug that the fermentation happens in. Racking moves the fermented product into another carboy and leaves the lees behind to be washed away or composted.
That's most of the jargon which slowed me down when I didn't know the definitions. I'll bring you more definitions as I learn them. Good luck!
Please drink responsibly.
Knowing some of the terminology lets you follow conversations and recipes a lot easier. I've seen many recipes where they just assume you know all their jargon and use that to weed out the people who aren't "serious" about joining them. I worked in IT so I've seen that garbage my entire career. Here's some definitions to get you on top of the curve.
Malt is the roasted and boiled grains used to make beer. Extract kits turn the malt into a syrup to make things easy for beginners. I use extract kits and may never start brewing with all-grain recipes.
Hops are flowers that add spice and flavor to beer. They also preserve beer which is why so many craft recipes and IPA style beers are so hoppy. IPA was a style brewed in England and shipped to their colonies in India, hence the name India Pale Ale.
Wort is unfermented beer. It's the malt, hops, water, and maybe spices but no alcohol because yeast hadn't worked on it yet. Must is unfermented wine or mead. Water, fruit and or honey but again no alcohol.
Yeast normally comes in packets of emulsified live yeast bacteria. It looks like granules. The granules are broken down and release the yeast by soaking in warm water. This is called proofing and gets the yeast ready to turn wort or must into beer or wine.
Brewers need to ensure that only the yeast they've bought get to participate in fermentation. They use special chemicals to wash and sterilize their equipment. The washing process may be abbreviated as CIP, or clean in place. Alternatively, the brewer could let wild bacteria ferment the wort or must and call the resulting product lambic but using unknown varieties of bacteria like that makes it hard to be consistent from batch to batch.
Lees are the tired and dead yeast plus fruit, hops, grain, or whatever left in the bottom of the carboy after fermentation. The carboy is the glass or plastic jug that the fermentation happens in. Racking moves the fermented product into another carboy and leaves the lees behind to be washed away or composted.
That's most of the jargon which slowed me down when I didn't know the definitions. I'll bring you more definitions as I learn them. Good luck!
Please drink responsibly.
Saturday, February 1, 2014
Rack 'em Up
Let's kick off this year's Febrewary with a quick post about a new technique you can add to your brewing process called racking.
The concept is pretty simple. After fermentation has run for a couple weeks and the yeast has settled, you move the product into another sterilized fermenter for an additional couple of weeks before bottling. The point is to separate out the lees, the tired yeast, the fruit bits, and whatever other solid waste is left in the primary fermenter. This improves the clarity a lot so it's a good technique to learn if you make wines and meads.
The concept is pretty simple. After fermentation has run for a couple weeks and the yeast has settled, you move the product into another sterilized fermenter for an additional couple of weeks before bottling. The point is to separate out the lees, the tired yeast, the fruit bits, and whatever other solid waste is left in the primary fermenter. This improves the clarity a lot so it's a good technique to learn if you make wines and meads.
You will need
Since you've been brewing for a year you should already have most of the things you will need to take up racking. If you bought a starter kit like the one I linked to in Gathering Supplies you should only need to buy another fermenter and another threaded stopper and airlock to go with it. Keep an eye out for "buy this, get an extra fermenter" deals. They come out every so often from most of the brewer supply houses.
Sanitize... yeah, you know this step
Run up a batch of sanitizing solution and wash and sanitize your new fermenter, threaded stopper, and airlock, along with your auto-siphon and transfer hose. If you're using a smaller fermenter, you could just sanitize a funnel instead of all the transfer gear and just pick it up and pour from one container to the other. Use a coffee filter inside the funnel to catch the lees.
Rack 'em, Stack 'em, Rinse and Repeat
Presumably, since the previous brewing stage was successful enough to add a racking stage, the location you keep your fermenter is good for yeast biology. After you've got the brewing product into the new fermenter, install the airlock according to its instructions and place the new one where the old one was. Then let it do its thing.
Be sure to wash out the old fermenter. That muck in the bottom is still perfect growth medium for all sorts of microbial mischief. But hang on to it; lees are great green for your compost.
You can rack again back into the original fermenter to further improve the clarity of your product. Wait at least a week for things in the brew to settle down and remember to sanitize all your equipment before you transfer.
Adding this new technique into your brewing stages will give your product better clarity and a smoother texture you and your friends will enjoy. Slainte!
Trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Products featured or linked here are used as examples only, without endorsement or commercial consideration. Please drink responsibly.
Friday, March 1, 2013
March Mead-ness
As part of my "Febrewary" series, I wanted to share a mead recipe I came across. There's only a couple of ingredients, commonly available at any grocery store, and the yeast does all the work.
So the recipe is three pounds of honey, half a cylinder of raisins, one orange, one packet of bread yeast, and almost a gallon of water. This fits in a one gallon fermenter. You will also need three bottles of wine.
Like any fermentation, the choice of ingredients will strongly influence the outcome. In this recipe, the water, honey, and yeast you use have the most pull. I use tap water. The municipal water supply here is heavy, but I like to think that particular blend of minerals and metals gives a unique character to my brew that can't be copied. Mesquite, clover, and alfalfa are the most common honey varieties here, along with house blends from some of the local apiaries. I specified generic bread yeast because this is supposed to be a simple recipe; most grocery stores don't stock brewer's yeast.
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| Almost mead |
Sanitize all the things
The first step is, obviously, sanitize everything. Making a lambic (yeast wrangled from the wild) mead could be a fun bucket list activity but that's not today's goal. I use a no-rinse sanitizer available at any brewing supply house. Do your fermenter, cap, and airlock. Also do scissors, a knife and cutting board, the outside of the yeast packet, a funnel, and a beaker. There's no brew stage so you won't be sanitizing your siphon, hose, or bottle filler here.Like any fermentation, the choice of ingredients will strongly influence the outcome. In this recipe, the water, honey, and yeast you use have the most pull. I use tap water. The municipal water supply here is heavy, but I like to think that particular blend of minerals and metals gives a unique character to my brew that can't be copied. Mesquite, clover, and alfalfa are the most common honey varieties here, along with house blends from some of the local apiaries. I specified generic bread yeast because this is supposed to be a simple recipe; most grocery stores don't stock brewer's yeast.
Rise and Shine
Next step is to wake up the yeast so it's ready to ferment. Fill your sanitized beaker with a quarter cup of warm water and stir in the yeast. This will activate the dormant yeast and get it ready for work.
Cut and Run
Fill the fermenter about a third of the way with water. Peel and cut up the orange and dump it and the raisins into the fermenter. Pour in the honey; this is where the funnel comes in handy. Now pour in the activated yeast and fill the fermenter the rest of the way with water. Install the cap and airlock per the included instructions and place the fermenter somewhere warm and dark. I leave mine on the kitchen counter with a dish towel over it.
Now comes the hard part. Sit back and let the yeast do all the work for two or three weeks. Drink the wine you bought and keep the empty bottles. When the airlock stops bubbling, the yeast has eaten all that sugar, turned it into alcohol, and gone back to sleep. It is now bottling day.
Sanitize all the things, again
Sanitize the two or three empty wine bottles you've accumulated along with stoppers. Also, sanitize your auto siphon, hose, and bottle filler. Following the instructions for the siphon, hose, and filler, transfer the mead from the fermenter to the bottles. Or, since the fermenter is small enough to pick up, just pour it into the bottles through a sanitized funnel. Doing it that way, with a coffee filter in the funnel, can improve the clarity of the final product. I kind of like the unfiltered style and the siphon won't transfer much goop anyway.
Enjoy the fruits of you labor
I like to let my bottled mead sit in the refrigerator for at least a week before decanting but it is ready to drink now. So invite your fellow vikings to join you at your hall and tell epic poems over a couple flagons. Enjoy!
Trademarks are property of their respective owners. Products featured or linked here are used as examples only, without endorsement or commercial consideration.
Trademarks are property of their respective owners. Products featured or linked here are used as examples only, without endorsement or commercial consideration.
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