TONS of work, touched it all tonight

1 September 2011

Erick Bousman mead , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Thanks to the help of one of my friends, I got a lot of work done tonight. Direct to the work:

Racked both peaches, stats:

  • Started: 10 Jul 2011
  • First Rack: 30 Jul 2011 (onto 10lbs of peaches, pureed and sanitized)
  • Second Rack: 1 Sep 2011 (off of peaches and yeast, mostly)

Racked blackberry off the blackberries. The blackberry taste is just barely there, need to use more next time. Stats:

  • Started: 11 Aug 2011
  • First Rack: 1 Sep 2011 (off of blackberries)

Racked Chai#3 off of the spices and yeast. Has all the right flavors, the cardamom is coming through more strongly in a delicious way! Stats:

  • Started: 11 Aug 2011
  • First Rack: 1 Sep 2011

Also added clarifiers to the blueberry and the thyme mead. So they’re set to bottle after Labor Day weekend. So excited–it is all delicious! I have tried each of these meads tonight so I am a little drunk!

 

 

Thyme in a bottle

15 August 2011

Erick Bousman mead , , , , , Leave a comment

So I racked the metheglin I started about a month ago…the airlock was bored and it seemed fermentation had stopped so I considered it good to go. I tasted it and passed it by my sister and a friend, who both approved. My friend immediately suggested “thyme in a bottle?” and on the spot I decided it was destined to be the name of this batch. It’s coming along nicely as always, well-fermented, tasty, and alcoholic. No doubt though that it tastes very strongly of thyme–not in an overbearing way, but it is distinct. No hinting at anything. Racked it today and avoided most of the yeast and spices so it should mellow out nicely over the next couple months. A good change from the other (sweeter, fruitier) meads I’ve brewed this summer. Stats:

  • Started: 14 July 2011
  • First rack: 15 Aug 2011

Spent a lot of thyme on this batch

30 July 2011

Erick Bousman mead , , , , Leave a comment

So I started a batch I think a week ago. I’m guessing on this because sometimes I’m a bad homebrewer and don’t always log every thing I ever do. Shame on me, I will try to set up the recipe and stats regardless. It is currently bubbling away happily and it smells like I haven’t overdone it on the spices. For those paying special attention, I am going to start referring to mead with spices by its technical term, a metheglin. I’m also tagging this under “crazy ideas” since I’ve never done a batch with such savory spices before…the agave mead had sage in it (much to its benefit!) but the main flavor there was the agave.

Recipe:

  • 1gallon+1qt wildflower honey from bee well honey farm
  • 5tsp fermax yeast nutrient
  • 1/4tsp irish moss
  • water up to 5 gallons
  • 1/4c whole thyme
  • 2tbsp ground sage
  • 1 packet Lalvin EC-1118 “Pris de Mousse” yeast
Stats:
  • Started: 14 July 2011