Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
Mead Lovers Digest #0231
Mead Lover's Digest #231A 7 November 1993
Forum for Discussion of Mead Making and Consuming
Dick Dunn, Digest Coordinator
Contents:
NOTE: This may be a duplicate copy - PLEASE READ THIS FIRST
Re: Sterilizing (Ralph Snel)
Re: Mead Lover's Digest #230, 26 October 1993 (Joyce Miller)
Re: sterilze (STBLEZA@grove.iup.edu)
Milk and Honey (COYOTE)
Strong woodiness in a hydromel? (Jan-Willem Maessen)
re: Comments on Digest relocation (Dick Dunn)
Re: Honeyjack? (Tom Brady)
Send ONLY articles for the digest to mead-lovers@eklektix.com. Send
subscribe/unsubscribe/admin requests to mead-lovers-request@eklektix.com.
There is an FTP archive of the digest on sierra.stanford.edu in pub/mead.
------------------------------
Subject: NOTE: This may be a duplicate copy - PLEASE READ THIS FIRST
From: Dick Dunn <rcd@eklektix.com>
Date: Sun Nov 7 19:10:28 MST 1993
Sorry, folks; I hate to do this...
THIS DIGEST may be a duplicate of one you've already received, except for
this first article. A regional nexus for email failed catastrophically
a week ago, leaving us (and about 350 other small sites) incommunicado for
most of a week. The failure began just as Digest 231 was going out, and
the failure mode was such that there was no way to tell what failed. The
only recourse is for me to re-send 231 to everyone (via a different path!).
I have been receiving mail (slowly), so I expect the next issue to go out
within a day.
Dick
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Sterilizing
From: Ralph Snel <ralph@astro.lu.se>
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 93 9:48:24 MET
dbmartin@acacia.itd.uts.edu.au (-s90064445-d.martin-ele-60-) wrote:
"I have used sodium metabisulphite to sterilise my equipment, and
campden(sp?) tablets, which i am lead to believe are a sulphur dioxide tablet,
to sterilise the must. However my girlfriend is asmatic and just coming within
a few hundred yards of the tight;ly sealed bags of said substances is enough to
send her reaching for the medication. So my question is this - are there any
alternatives to sodium metabisulphite and sulphur dioxide?? I realise that I
could boil the must to sterilise and avoid the SO2 but the book I am using
(making mead by two authors whose names escape me at the moment) advises against
i.
Any suggestions??"
I Usually boil my honey in an equal volume (or more) of water. Never had any
problems. The few times I didn't boil I noticed it didn't clear that easily.
An alternative you could use for sterilizing equipment is using soda (not
the kind you get in an aluminium can, but Na2CO3) and make a concentrated
solution to rinse out your equipment with. This stuff will effectively
dissolve cell membranes (turning it into soap and other stuff) so don't
soak your hands in it too long. It's not poisenous at all and in the worst
case it produces carbon dioxide which should not give any problems with
astma. Don't ever use it to sterilize your must! I've never tried it, but
I guess it will taste disgusting.
If you don't want to boil your honey you can just heat it to 70 degrees
centigrade (get your calculator to convert it, I'm too lazy) and keep it
there for 20 minutes. You'll have pasturized must then. It won't kill off
all the nasties, but it gives the yeast you add later a chance to get a
head start and later the alcohol will do the rest.
BTW: Campden tablets are potassium metabisulphite as well.
Ralph
ralph@astro.lu.se
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Mead Lover's Digest #230, 26 October 1993
From: jmiller@genome.wi.mit.edu (Joyce Miller)
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 93 09:40:58 -0400
>From:
>Geheym der Wynen ontdekt
>of
>Kunst om alle Blaauwe, Rosse, Lange Verwaayde
>en andere onzuyvere Wynen, binnen korten tyd,
>zonder mangel schoon te maaken.
>
>Printed by Reynier van Kessel,
>in 's GraavenHaag
>1730
>Recipe to make mead.
>
>Take 90 stoop (1 stoop equals about half an imperial galon) rainwater
>and 10 stoop clean and white honey. If you could not get any white
etc.
This sounds exactly like one of the Kenelm Digby recipes. I tried one of
his 9 parts water to 1 part honey recipes, and it was terrible. It took
months to mellow, and when it did, there was no flavor left at all. I
found that I had 6 gallons of Coors-light-style mead. Blech!
> I have used sodium metabisulphite to sterilise my equipment, and
>campden(sp?) tablets, which i am lead to believe are a sulphur dioxide tablet,
>to sterilise the must. However my girlfriend is asmatic and just coming within
>a few hundred yards of the tight;ly sealed bags of said substances is enough
>to send her reaching for the medication. So my question is this - are there
>any...
>The Hippy
>Alias Dave B Martin
>dbmartin@acacia.itd.uts.edu.au
And you call yourself a hippy? For shame! I use bleach to sterilise the
equipment that my must/wort will come in contact with _after_ the boil, and
I just pasteurize the mixture itself. No chemicals needed at all.
Sauf wieder ehen!
--- Joyce
==========================================================================
Joyce Miller jmiller@genome.wi.mit.edu
Whitehead Institute / M.I.T. 617-252-1914 (phone)
Center for Genome Research 617-252-1902 (FAX)
1 Kendall Square, Bldg. 300
Cambridge, MA 02142
------------------------------
Subject: Re: sterilze
From: STBLEZA@grove.iup.edu
Date: 26 Oct 1993 12:24:24 -0400 (EDT)
In Mead Lover's Digest #230, 26 October 1993, dbmartin@acacia.itd.uts.edu.au
(-s90064445-d.martin-ele-60-) says:
>Greetings All
Allo'
> I have used sodium metabisulphite to sterilise my equipment, and
>campden(sp?) tablets, which i am lead to believe are a sulphur dioxide tablet,
>to sterilise the must. However my girlfriend is asmatic and just coming within
>a few hundred yards of the tight;ly sealed bags of said substances is enough
>to send her reaching for the medication. So my question is this - are there any
>alternatives to sodium metabisulphite and sulphur dioxide?? I realise that I
>could boil the must to sterilise and avoid the SO2 but the book I am using
>(making mead by two authors whose names escape me at the moment) advises
>againsti.
>
> Any suggestions??
Yes, a couple. First, for many things, cheap vodka or Everclear (grain alcohol)
works well. Remember, all the things we don't want (microbiologically speaking)
can't live in strong concentrations of alcohol, so why not use it? We know that
it's not going to hurt us, etc... Just put what you want sanitized in a
container, and cover it with vodka. Soak a few hours, and your done. At most,
you need to rinse a couple of times. Alternately, in stead of boiling your
equipment, you could steam it in your oven. Put a pan of water in the bottom of
your oven (this is optional, really, I've done it without and it works well
enough) at 375 - 400 degress F for two or three hours. I do this with bottles
(but not always, see above). When I put them in, I put aluminum foil caps
loosely over the openings, and when I remove them, I clamp down the foil. The
hot air cooling decreases pressure, very slight vacuum, and I get a seal
preventing any nasty entering the bottle. Groslch bottle don't work for this
(it's hard to get a seal because of the bail on them, and they are too thin for
the heat, and break), as are non-returnable (again, too thin). Returnables take
a bit a care to get to work, but wine and champagne bottles seem to work well.
At any rate, heat and cool all equipment SLOWLY, or it WILL break. Also, do
this will only all glass or metal equipment, plastics, rubber, etc. will either
melt, or be otherwise ruined.
The SCA according to the FBI: Mostly Harmless Monarchists... MOSTLY HARMLESS?!?
+*****************************************+***********************************+
| WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! |1,000,000 Lemmings Can't be Wrong! |
| The Surgeon General has declared that |-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-|
| conversing with this Internet user can |Jacobus Jager Draake |
| lead to cronic health problems that can |(AKA J. Hunter Heinlen) |
| result in disfunction of the brain, |(SCANet:1640.Netherlands.Cavalier) |
| heart, nervous system, and bowels. |(Internet:STBLEZA@GROVE.IUP.EDU) |
+=========================================++==================================+
I can prove, demonstratably, that if none | The SCA... A Dream to Some,
of us looks at the Moon, it does not exist.| A Nightmare to Others!
------------------------------
Subject: Milk and Honey
From: COYOTE <SLK6P@cc.usu.edu>
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1993 13:06:05 -0600 (MDT)
Hope this helps. Hey! how is your milk and honey mead?, I think I'll go check
mine.
DanMcC
Ugh. Dan...did you try that? I didn't have any luck with mine.
It tasted REAL sweet at the beginning, and got to look nasty and taste
foul after feremntation. Must (ha) not have done something right.
GRAPE UPDATE: I scrubbed and scrubbed my toes and squished them into
all those foxy grapes. Yes- they are Concords...I've had confirmation.
They are quite tart. Very high acid, low sugar. It'll need sweetening.
Boy it smelled good upon feremnting! First like grapes, then cider. Hmm?
I separated the pulp/skins after 5 days and am going to make the
pyment (TRUE!) off the skins. I got almost a full 5 gallons of juice
from 50 # grapes without pressing the skins. Just squishing. It was
kinda fun. It did make my skin burns and itch a bit. Must be the acid.
Now the LOOOOOOONG wait. It is pretty well fermented out already.
But I think I'll boost the wine (1st runnings) with some sugar and let
it ferment more. It had OG of 1.065. Pretty low! I've had stonger beers!
BTW I love my Mulberry Mead. Yum. Tastes like a sparkling burgundy!
Brew on Fellow Fermenters.
PS I like the idea of forwarding this to rec...wine. Seems like a
good crossover. Might improve postings. Broaden reception...etc.
John (The Coyote) Wyllie SLK6P@cc.usu.edu
------------------------------
Subject: Strong woodiness in a hydromel?
From: earwig@juicy-juice.lcs.mit.edu (Jan-Willem Maessen)
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 93 17:14:20 EDT
Greetings, all!
I recently brewed a gallon batch of hydromel using a couple of pound of
clover honey and the peels and juice of several (3, I think) limes.
Having simmered the above for a half hour or so and cooled, I pitched
Red Star Epernay II yeast (which I had previously re-hydrated and mixed
with a half teaspoon of Crosby&Baker yeast nutrient).
That was in late August. At the end of last month, I bottled the
resulting mead after a normal-to-vigorous fermentation. The resulting
mead was crystal clear within a week; I left it to age for a bit longer,
and opened the first bottle a couple of days ago.
It tasted pretty odd. I was expecting a fairly dry mead with no
discernable sweetness, and only slight notes from the limes. And
indeed, I got just that---but with an overpowering woody flavor, as if I
had saturated the mead with sawdust during fermentation! There are no
obvious signs of contamination---as I say, fermentation went smoothly
and the mead is crystal clear and pale greenish-gold. In addition, the
mead seemed to taste pretty ordinary (if young and raunchy) at bottling
time.
So...
Is this contaminated? If so, by what? Or is it just a function of the
yeast I'm using combined with the low starting gravity? I know that Red
Star's beer yeasts have quite a bad rep., but I was under the impression
that their wine yeasts were supposed to be pretty clean (I've never used
their Epernay II before, just the Montrachet and the Pasteur Champagne).
Thanks to anyone who can shed light on this,
-Jan
PS- the mead remains drinkable when chilled, and some folks really like
the taste; nut their exposure to mead is mostly through me, and I just
don't think it tasted right this time.
Jan-Willem Maessen
jmaessen@mit.edu
Hapless M.Eng. guinea pig
------------------------------
Subject: re: Comments on Digest relocation
From: rcd@raven.eklektix.com (Dick Dunn)
Date: 27 Oct 93 01:11:38 MDT (Wed)
Greg Owen suggests:
> ...Now that there is a newsgroup for
> wine which allows mead questions, how do people feel about gate-ing
> the digest to rec.crafts.winemaking? That would cut down on the
> digest's mail distribution, as usenet readers could get it that way.
I think this is a tough call; there are substantial pros and cons. Here's
what comes to mind off the top of my head:
- The digest distribution is manageable at its present size (about 360).
- Gatewaying will inevitably bring in more noise.
- ...but it will also locate more people who are interested.
- Would it make more sense to gateway to r.c.winemaking or r.c.brewing?
Mead is mead, with connections--styles, techniques--to both (e.g.,
pyment and bracket). I can see gatewaying to one or the other, but
I balk at both.
> The precedent for this is homebrew digest; they've been gatewaying
> to rec.crafts.brewing for as long as I've been reading.
Actually, HBD went a long time before gatewaying, since it existed long
before r.c.b was created. There were some stormy moments at the start of
gatewaying, and there's still a bit of feeling that the gatewaying has
drawn people to the mailing list who like to babble and argue. But over-
all, I think you'd say it worked well.
Greg pointed out that r.c.winemaking would have to agree that it's reason-
able for us to gateway to them. I think the (present!) low volume of the
digest would mitigate the tenuous connection to r.c.winemaking's main
subject. I'm undecided. Other thoughts?
---
Dick Dunn rcd@eklektix.com -or- raven!rcd Boulder, Colorado USA
...Simpler is better.
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Honeyjack?
From: Tom Brady <BRADY@VTVM1.CC.VT.EDU>
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 93 08:17:44 EDT
I haven't had the opportunity to try making mead brandy, although I've
been told it approaches ambrosia. For a fascinating (and useful) discussion
on how to put together a still in your kitchen, check out Annie Proulx'
"Sweet and Hard Cider" (I don't have it with me, but e-mail me if you would
like the ISBN, etc.). In addition, you get an excellent beginner's treatise
on the making of hard cider from the tree to the glass.
-Tom
brady@vtvm1.cc.vt.edu Dept. of Chemical Engineering
Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA USA
------------------------------
End of Mead Lover's Digest #231
