Monday, August 01, 2011

Mead Update!

Since my last posting I've been a busy mazer! Let's get up to speed...

Bottled!
First was a pumpkin pie mead that I started last fall. It's a little dry for my taste, but I've got quite the sweet tooth and i think it makes a nice break from my other sweeter meads. It's got a wonderful spicy aroma and bite to it. For that batch I made pumpkin pie filling from scratch and used that in the must.
I also bottled a traditional sweet mead, basically The Hammer but less sweet and less alcoholic.

Secondary!
I haven't moved anything too exciting to secondary, though I do have a quartet of one gallon batches that are ready for bottling. These include a peppermint mead, a saffron mead, an apple cinnamon mead and a metheglin inspired by a favorite novel of mine. The first two varieties are tastily dry, while the other two have been back-sweetened to taste. The metheglin is quite exquisite if I do say so myself.

Primary!
There have been a couple exciting new experiments slipping into primary. One is a show mead, which is a mead that uses just water, honey and yeast. No nutrients, cleansers or any other additives. It's very slow in brewing, but I'm excited about how it will go.
Another batch I'm particularly excited about is a batch of hops and hibiscus inspired by Viking Blod mead, a delicious Danish mead that I've had on a couple occasions.It started off as a 2 gallon batch but I think it will have to expand to 5 gallons because the hops and hibiscus are currently quite a bit stronger than I had intended. That said, it's still pretty tasty.