This first foray into the realm, just trying a plain jane recipe, and seeing if clean, but not sterile, is really a viable approach. How sterile is a Viking longhouse, anyway?
* approx 12 lbs. Wildflower honey
* 30 chopped raisins (steeped 5 mins in the big tea ball)
* Wyeast Activator smack pack - 4184 Sweet Mead
* a couple tsps of Acid mix to taste (to add, mayhaps, after filtration and into 2nd fermentation)
A straightforward boil in a 4 gallon pot on the U-boat conn. Added in the honey, and let it roll for 20 minutes or so, skimming off the scrudlyfoam; when that thinned out, just killed the heat and added in the raisins and 4 tsps of the yeast fuel (ammonium, not the dimmonium). Cleaned stuff up, poured into the corney with 1 gallon of chilled. I wish I would have broken out the wort chiller, instead I spent a few minutes swirling the corney and hosing it down with cold tap water in the outside shower.
I wish I could have seen my face when the hydrometer went into the tube, and never sank. I've not seen sugars like this before. OG of 1081 /21 balling. We're looking at 11.5% potential nitro. This will sit in one of Charlie's new corneys with the release open (guess this will be the fermenter corney - it's a leaker) but should be perfect for letting mead sit for 4 months.
So, no clue where this is going, but the process is a lot quicker and easier than even extract brewing. The price is paid over the long fermentation and conditioning? We shall see.
Day 21: I was thinking to only ferment for 2 weeks, but was busy all week. Fermentation stopped a week ago, pretty much. I don't know about the yeast attenuation, but found the gravity at 1040. Is that normal?
Ran filtration today, took the reading on the way out of the first pass through the 1 micron cartridge. The preliminary taste-test outta a grimy hydrometer tube says: yum. All the honey is still there, with no watery body, or any of that light-grapey wineyness. It's mead, FTW.
Notes to self here: as long as you're filtering, and having to clean the filter and tanks anyway, you might as well filter outta the fermenter into a spare tank, then filter again from the spare back into the fermenter. This way you catch the initial burp of gunk on the rebound. Then you can keep the spare full of BLC (after a back-flush pass through the filter, keeping the filter and hoses full of the BLC for storage).
Also, be sure to gas the tanks full of C02 before filtering into them: all the gurgling won't oxygenate the must if there's no oxygen in the area. Seems obvious, but if you're not thinking about it...
Now to wait for 4 months? I don't think so. I hope to get my hands on some bottles and I'll test out some sparkling mead and some old school Wednesday's variety.
It's the one on the left - in the easy squeeze bottle. The old one has the straight sides. Guess it looks more grabbable off the shelf? They did a logo redesign a while back and nuked their trademark "Tailed-K" as seen at left in the thumbnail. Since Karo makes pancake syrup and other drippy stuff, appears that they're trying to offset the brand name into its own realm, and set the "light corn syrup" descriptor apart from the brand name. Also, looks like they're trying to play up the fact that they're TRUSTED and use REAL vanilla. And if you can't trust your gooey sugar to use the real vanilla, you're misplacing your trust.
