Mead Lovers Digest #0020

Published in

· 8 months ago

 

Mead Lover's Digest #20                     Sun 18 October 1992 

 
        Forum for Discussion of Mead Brewing and Consuming 
               John Dilley, Digest Coordinator 

 
Contents: 
  re:Mead Lover's Digest #19 (October 17, 1992)  (R.) Cavasin" <cav@bnr.ca> 

 
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Date: Sat, 17 Oct 1992 10:41:00 +0000  
From: "Rick (R.) Cavasin" <cav@bnr.ca> 
Subject: re:Mead Lover's Digest #19 (October 17, 1992)  

 
John Gorman posted a very informative discussion on maple 
wines and meads.  Regarding maple wines, I've always wondered 
if a more optimal approach would be to obtain the raw maple 
sap and use it undiluted as opposed to taking maple syrup 
and diluting it.  In theory at least, one would hope to retain 
more of the subtle flavours and aromatics that would be boiled 
off in the process of making syrup.  The only recipes I've 
ever seen using 'sap' are birch beers made from birch sap. 
Does anyone have any experience or anecdotes about brewing 
with sap?  Of course, this would only be feasible for those 
living near maple country. 

In the previous digest, Dick Dunn posts his experiences with 
fruit meads.  To some extent I agree with Dick about fruit being 
a pain in the primary.  I had trouble with my first two 
batches (strawberry and pomegranate) in that the fruit bits 
were suspended throughout the must (expecially in the case 
of the pomegranate) and therefore were next to impossible to 
separate out by racking.  However, with my third batch of strawberry 
mead, I found that the fruit bits either settled on the bottom 
or floated in the krausen.  I was able to rack the mead without 
any bits coming through.  My current batch of cherry mead seems 
to be behaving similarly (although the cherries were ground and 
pressed so there is only a small amount of fruit particles in 
the must).  If you are going to put the fruit into the primary, 
the trick may be to rack off the fruit while the fermentation is 
still fairly active. 

Cheers, 
Rick C. (these are not the opinions of my employer) 

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End of Mead Lover's Digest 
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