New Brunswick Craft Brewers Association
Beer Recipes and Food => Mead, Wine, and Cider Recipes => Topic started by: Richard on July 16, 2011, 02:54:10 PM
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Re-spin on the Frederictonian Mead based on last batch.
Ingredients:
- 20lbs non-pasteurised honey.
- 1 cup lemon juice - the bottled stuff (ascorbic + citric acid)
- 3 tsp Yeast Nutrient (blend including yeast hulls).
- Enough water to make the above fill a 6 gallon carboy with a few inches of headspace.
- Lalvin 1118.
Method:
- Sanitise 6 gallon "wine bucket", and large plastic spoon.
- Pour honey in bucket.
- Add cold water to make to 6 gallons.
- Stir like crazy until you somehow manage to make the damn honey dissolve.
- Add the yeast nutrient.
- Add the lemon juice.
- Transfer to carboy.
- Pitch yeast.
- Wait until visible fermentation has stopped.
- Rack to secondary onto toasted oak chips.
- Wait a month or two (or more as I'm planning)
- Fine.
- Sugar prime (150g dextrose/22L) + Bottle.
OG should be about 1.120, fg should be about 0.995. Total ABV 14-15%.
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Also ended up 1.130 OG.
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Planning to do this soonish, except use 2 lemons, 2 limes for the acids, and the zest because its good. Also planning to add 5# of fresh blueberries, how would you reccomend I sanitize the berries, I'm thinking blender with water, then put in pot, slowly bringing to 170F and keeping there for 15 minutes.
This will give the Lalvin 1118 a run for its money: 5.5 gal batch. I've gone up to about 20% booze-o-hol using that yeast before, and its rated to 21%.
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Suspect you'll be looking at a seriously high aging time for that... Would recommend you bring the whole thing down to a final ABV of 17% or less, or you'll get all kinds of nasty flavours. Use the extra honey for braggot instead :D
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just curious where everyone gets their honey for meads?
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I gave the guy a card; if he doesn't show up in the next couple of days I'll ping him for you. Local bee-keeper does $40/20lbs.
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I gave the guy a card; if he doesn't show up in the next couple of days I'll ping him for you. Local bee-keeper does $40/20lbs.
nice...that's much better than the normal $7/kg :roll: ....there's a guy in maugerville as well, but haven't called for prices yet.
*you can delete my posts if you'd like to keep this on topic to your recipe...sorry for going OT.
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The Bee Store I think give a very very good deal they are local
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The Bee Store I think give a very very good deal they are local
ah yes...that's it....thanks for the name....couldn't remember it but knew it was in maugerville. ph is (506)357-5444 if anyone was interested.
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What kinda rates they got?
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well last year it was cheaper than $2 per lbs
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btw I did something a little different this time with the nutrients - same 3 tsp to start with, but I put a half teaspoon to a teaspoon (mostly eyeballed) in for five days afterwards, every 24 hours.
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so, the yeast nutrient you rolled in a foil ball for me will be sanitary enough, or should I get other stuff?
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Boil it if you're concerned, but it should have only touched the bag and the tin foil.
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will do.
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Just took a thief of this; SG is currently 1.030 (after some number of weeks), fermentation is still rolling along (albeit slower - I may extend my nutrient schedule for future mega-gravity meads). Tastes $#*@ing fantastic :D
This one (and the strawberry sack) are going to be real killers.
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yeah, I just left the hyrometer in my mead, its gone from 1121 to about 1020 in 9 days. I have been keeping an eye on the temp, but it has been rather warm. It smells amazing. The fermentation is still going strong.
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Hmmm.... Might sanitise mine and drop it in now. Nice plan.
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That does seem real fast though... I've had mine at a near-constant 18C.
How did you roll with the nutrient schedule?
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I should mention I made a starter with the lalvin 1118 and I very throroughly aerated the liquid before dumping it into the fermenter.
The nutrient schedule as a function of the amount you gave me was:
1/4 in the brew pot (brought up to 178F)
1/2 on day three
1/4 on day seven
Two cups of blueberry juice was also added on day 6
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I see... yeah that's a much larger nutrient bill than I used. I used about 6-8 teaspoons total... I figure you've used about 2-3x that amount given the golf-ball sized chunk I gave you.
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Re-spin on the Frederictonian Mead based on last batch.
Ingredients:
- 20lbs non-pasteurised honey.
- 1 cup lemon juice - the bottled stuff (ascorbic + citric acid)
- 3 tsp Yeast Nutrient (blend including yeast hulls).
- Enough water to make the above fill a 6 gallon carboy with a few inches of headspace.
- Lalvin 1118.
Method:
- Sanitise 6 gallon "wine bucket", and large plastic spoon.
- Pour honey in bucket.
- Add cold water to make to 6 gallons.
- Stir like crazy until you somehow manage to make the damn honey dissolve.
- Add the yeast nutrient.
- Add the lemon juice.
- Transfer to carboy.
- Pitch yeast.
- Wait until visible fermentation has stopped.
- Rack to secondary onto toasted oak chips.
- Wait a month or two (or more as I'm planning)
- Fine.
- Sugar prime (150g dextrose/22L) + Bottle.
OG should be about 1.120, fg should be about 0.995. Total ABV 14-15%.
So you go from bucket to carboy on day one and the rack sometime after? I've not made mead yet but could you not just ferment in the bucket then rack?
B
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I'm not too hot on the bucket fermenting, but I guess that would work too.
I usually rack from primary after about a month. This time has been somewhat different in that I pushed the OG to silly levels. I suspect I'll wait another couple of weeks for things to calm down a little.
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Brian - I realize this is an old post. I would tend to agree with Richard, that it's better to rack into carboy from beginning, but I have had success with both. As a matter of fact, the sparkling mead I brought to the last meeting, I had forgotten in the primary for ~ 1 year. It had a bit of a musty off-flavor, but I racked into a carboy, mixing with bentonite... let clear, then after a couple of weeks primed (with honey of course) half of the batch and the other half I added chokecherries to (it's still in carboy).
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the reason for the bucket was to stir it all up one would assume
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Like I think I said - I use the bucket for about 10-20 minutes to stir the hell out of the honey. It's pretty much impossible to get honey in the neck of a carboy pre-dilution.
Anyone who still insists on boiling or heating their honey in any way needs to try my most recent batch of Mead :D
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I would love to sample your mead :D