Mead updates
June 30th, 2009Mead making is easy, juggling fermentations and rackings is tricky. While I have enjoyed putting together many different meads, I forgot the extra commitment there is during fermentation and subsequent rackings (as compared to beer, which is nil). I have six meads right now that I have to track on a spreadsheet in order to know when one is coming up for racking, or a nutrient addition, or general stirring. So far, it has been a great experience and I have learned a ton about honey, dry yeast (dry wine yeast in particular), and managing the fermentations of.
Cherry Melomel notes
I initially racked two gallons of Orange Blossom honey mead onto four pounds of stemmed and pitted Tulare sweet cherries. All of this went into a 2.5 gallon corny keg for three weeks. I pushed the liquid off of the cherries via CO2 to keep things within a closed environment. New carboys were backfilled with CO2 as well. I estimated the original gravity (amount of original sugars in the must), with cherries, to be about 1.106. Final gravity is 1.000 giving about a 14% ABV alcohol level. The kitchen was filled with the smell of cherries and alcohol.
I had read on the web that sweet cherries should be avoided due to “cough syrup” tastes. I also read that those flavors will dissapate over time. I didn’t have any cough syrup notes at all. The melomel seems pretty balanced with firm tannins (felt like my gums were getting cleaned). One of the reasons I pulled the cherries off after three weeks was to avoid any issues with long skin contact time. The tannins I did get much more mellow with time. This one seems to be shaping up well.
JAO
It seems that when you are new to a topic and you start exploring it, you run across an acronym that everyone refers to but you have now idea. Searching on the acronym in the forums ususally leads to “your search term is too short” or something to that effect….probably a by product of spammers searching forums. With mead, it was “JAO”.
So I finally found the answer: Joe’s Ancient Orange. This is a pretty intriguing, simple to put together recipe that uses bread yeast….hence the ancient part(?). Many users swear that after a couple months you are left with a very tasty beverage for not much work. I have one gallon now sitting under my desk at work. If anything, I’ll name it “office hooch” and I’m sure we will all enjoy it. FWIW, fleischmanns bread yeast is a vigorous fermenter. The orange and raisins help but as you can see the airlock is full of yeasty must and some has even settled out in it. I actually left some headroom in it. When the vigorous portion of the ferment subsides, I plan to top up with honey water.























