Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
Mead Lovers Digest #0330
Subject: Mead Lover's Digest #330, 18 July 1994
From: mead-lovers-request@eklektix.com
Mead Lover's Digest #330 18 July 1994
Forum for Discussion of Mead Making and Consuming
Dick Dunn, Digest Coordinator
Contents:
Re: yeast nutrients and aging ("Dave Polaschek")
(chile) pepper mead (Dick Dunn)
Gelatin in mead//braggot//vanilla beans (Kirk Williams)
pronunciation (Michael Wolter)
Re: Mead Lover's Digest #328, 13 July 1994 (Luigi P Bai)
yeasts for mead (Dick Dunn)
Send ONLY articles for the digest to mead-lovers@eklektix.com.
Use mead-lovers-request@eklektix.com for subscribe, unsubscribe, and admin
requests. When subscribing, please include your name and a good address
in the message body unless you're sure your mailer generates them.
There is an FTP archive of the digest on sierra.stanford.edu in pub/mead.
If you have email access but not ftp, it will accept "listserv" requests.
Send email with message "help" to listserv@sierra.stanford.edu.
------------------------------
Subject: Re: yeast nutrients and aging
From: "Dave Polaschek" <DAVEP@leonardo.lmt.com>
Date: 18 Jul 1994 9:11:08 CST6CDT
rcd@raven.eklektix.com (Dick Dunn) writes:
> Earlier this week, Richard Fugate <richard_fugate@msgw.mayo.edu> wrote:
> > I have made about 10 meads using the ammonium phosphate salt type
> > nutrients.
> > What I'm beginning to suspect is that this is imparting a strong bitter
> > taste
> > that takes months to mellow...
> I used to wonder a lot about that connection, but more recent experience
> says that's not it. I've used both the ammonium-type (intentionally being
> nonspecific here since the formulation seems to vary) white granules or
> powders, and yeast hulls. I've had good luck with both.
>
> The consistent differentiator, in what I've done in the past few years,
> has been the yeast: Some yeasts have consistently produced mead which is,
> quite literally, drinkable at any time after it has finished fermenting
> and
> settled. Other yeasts have consistently produced mead which requires long
> aging...some yeasts being worse than others. (I'll *never* use a "Montra-
> chet" type yeast in a mead again!)
I agree with our esteemed coordinator here. I've used the ammonium-mumble
type nutrients with no need for long aging. The two things that I try to
do is use a minimum amount of nutrient. If there's any fruit in the
recipe, which is most of my recipes, I'll use no more than a tsp of the
stuff, and usually less. More is definitely not better.
The other thing that I've found is that I seem to be somewhat alone in
routinely using Red Star Champagne yeast for my honey-brews. I've heard
repeated rumors about this being a wildly variable yeast, and having a
strong tendency to produce off flavors, but I've never had any such
problems. The other yeast that I end up using quite a bit is the Edme
(dry) Ale Yeast. I usually pitch the yeast dry, too. It takes a day or
so to get started and then goes like crazy. When it stops bubbling, I
let it sit until I get spare time (usually a week or two), then bottle
or keg and as soon as it's carbonated and clear, I start drinking it.
I think the one last thing that makes a big difference is that I tend
to keep the meads/melomels/methyglyns somewhat light. I typically brew
with 1-2 lbs honey/gallon, which may be the biggest factor of them
all. Less honey means less work for the yeasties to do, and they can
get it done quicker.
---------------------------
Dave Polaschek - 6129439204
work:davep@county.lmt.com
personal:davep@eworld.com
------------------------------
From: Richard B. Webb <rbw1271@appenine.ca.boeing.com>
Date: Mon, 18 Jul 1994 08:42:26 -0700
Subject: Obsessive symurgy
Hello. My name is Rich W. and I am a cumpulsive zymurgist. I've been a
zymurgist for a couple of years now. I know I have a problem, and I
know that I need help...
Ha. Now that I've got your attention, here's the real stuff. I (OK, rather
compulsively) bought 20 lbs of blueberries this weekend. Now I'm open to
suggestions as to what to do with 'em (keep it clean...) My own thought
was to make a 5 gallon batch of mead and add the pasturized and crushed
fruit to the secondary. It's quantities that I need. I have plenty of
honey, and obviously plenty of fruit. Temperatures are none too high
yet, although I could wait a while before starting this stuff. For now,
the berries have been washed and frozen in anticipation. I await
the conventional wisdom / consensus view of this august body. In july...
Don't even get me started talking about the 40 lbs of cherries in
the freezer...
p.s. I entered the pepper mead as a spiced mead. I rationalized this
by figuring that even though the peppers were technically a fruit, it
was only the spice from the fruit and not the fruit themselves which
were being added to the mead. No fermentable sugars from fruit, not
a fruit mead...
Rich Webb
------------------------------
Subject: (chile) pepper mead
From: rcd@raven.eklektix.com (Dick Dunn)
Date: 18 Jul 94 11:46:31 MDT (Mon)
jmiller@genome.wi.mit.edu (Joyce Miller) asks...
> >Subject: Hot Stuff Pepper Mead
>
> This sounds pretty good, if you like that sort of thing, so I guess I
> should include it in the next Bee's Lees. But should it appear under
> "Methyglyn" or "Melomel"?
Given only the choice between those two, definitely "melomel". Chiles
aren't herbs or spices, so metheglin doesn't fit. We use them as vege-
tables; the botanists will tell us that they're correctly identified as
fruits. That makes the case for melomel as well as any term.
But why can't we invent a new term? It seems that people through the ages
have invented all sorts of names for honey+<xyzzy> fermented--morat,
rhodomel, and a handful of stranger ones as well as the names we know.
So how about something to name the class that's hard to categorize. (For
example, what existing mead-style name would you use for my maple/birch/
sarsaparilla mead??:-) How about "weirdomel"?
I would suggest using the phrase "chile pepper" or just "chile" (instead of
just "pepper") for that mead to make it clear that you're talking about
the capsicum peppers and not the black-pepper spice.
---
Dick Dunn rcd@eklektix.com -or- raven!rcd Boulder, Colorado USA
...Simpler is better.
------------------------------
Subject: Gelatin in mead//braggot//vanilla beans
From: williams@dracaena.lanl.gov (Kirk Williams)
Date: Mon, 18 Jul 94 10:51:27 MDT
Gelatin in mead:
i have a question for those of you who have used gelatin as a clairifying
agent in your mead.
with my last gallon that i made (mesquite cinammon), i only had time to add
a bit of gelatin into the batch immediately before i bottled it. my problem:
when i added the disolved gelatin, the mead went from an incredibly clear
brown to a milky opaqueness, much as though i had poured creame into coffee.
ick.
its been a week now, and it hasnt cleared at all. i added the gelatin to
help clear out the bentonite that i utilized earlier to clear the mead. the
bentonite never likes to completely settle out...anyhow...
i made mead as per normal, then before i bottled (before the addition of the
gelatin) i took about a cup of 100pf vodka/cinammon excract (used the vodka
to extract cinammon out of a bunch of cinammon sticks...it worked quite well,
btw) and poured it in.
any ideas? or should i just wait? (it tastes GREAT, cant wait to let it age
another couple of months! perhaps my best batch yet, *knocks on wood*)
Braggot
im looking to make a gallon or 2 of braggot (combo of mead and beer, using
some malt and honey in conjunction for the fermentation)...as traditional as
possible (whatever that means...:) does anyone have any good recipies?
(perhaps mr. Gordon Olson of Los Alamos can help me out on this...he was
brewing a few gallons of this last time i was over at his place...)
Vanilla beans
last question: does anyone know how i would extract flavour from vanilla
beans? i am going to try a mesquite (what the heck, i have a ready source,
better use it while im in the SW) and vanilla mead...and would like to find
a way around using vanilla extracts (although i have 2 4-oz bottles at my
disposal).
Thanks in advance!
k.
=======================================================================
Kirk K Williams, TSA-5 | "Do not commit the error, common among
Los Alamos National Laboratory | the young, of assuming that if you
williams@dracaena.lanl.gov | cannot save the whole of mankind you
505.667.9662 | have failed." - Jan de Hartog
=======================================================================
------------------------------
Subject: pronunciation
From: Michael Wolter <WOLTER@dickinson.edu>
Date: Mon, 18 Jul 94 14:32:32 est
This may be a silly question, but what is the proper pronunciation of
"pyment?" Does it have a long i (pie) or a short i (pig)? I've always
wondered...
-Michael Wolter
wolter@dickinson.edu
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Mead Lover's Digest #328, 13 July 1994
From: lpb@sugar.NeoSoft.Com (Luigi P Bai)
Date: Mon, 18 Jul 94 21:31:40 CDT
Mitch -
We've also used the Wyeast Mead Yeast (3363) with those results.
The first tasting after two months or so fermenting yieled the
phenolic smell/taste (which we at first attributed to possible
contamination!) and a metallic taste (one of our brewing pots
is aluminum, the other, stainless steel). Happily, after 6 months
both flavors are gone. We used no sulfites to kill the yeast so
we've now got dry, effervescent bottles of mead.
I think we'll use Lavlin next time.
Cheers;
Luigi
-------------------------------------------------------------
Luigi P. Bai Focal Point Software, Inc.
lpb@focalpoint.com 3907 Richmond, Suite 188
Oh boy! Right ... again! Houston, TX 77027
(713) 668-0350
------------------------------
Subject: yeasts for mead
From: rcd@raven.eklektix.com (Dick Dunn)
Date: 18 Jul 94 22:32:30 MDT (Mon)
An issue or two of the MLD ago, talking about off-tastes, long aging, and
the difference in nutrients (yeast hulls/ghosts _vs_ the ammoni{a;um} type,
I said that I'd had good results with both types of nutrients but had found
the yeast to be important in determining whether I'd get a readily-drinkable
mead or one that would require many months to age. Dolt that I sometimes
am, I left it at that and didn't say anything about which yeasts gave me
good or bad results...and various readers [gently] took me to task for this
in email. OK, here's my results, and I *REALLY* hope other folks will
respond to this with their experiences because I think the "suitable yeast"
question is one that mead-makers have barely begun to explore.
Red Star "Prise de Mousse"--which has apparently been renamed "Premier
Cuvee" (and I've had results consistent between the two) has been my
overall best. It produces no off-tastes that I can detect; it ferments
very fast and is fairly tolerant of rude/careless behavior (high/low
temps, inadequate acid or nutrients, etc.) In my experience this is very
attenuative.
Wyeast mead yeasts - sweet (3184) and dry (3632) have both given me good
results, although I don't have a lot of experience with them. The one
possibly problematic characteristic of the sweet (3184) is that it really
seems to shut down early. I'd be interested to know what other folks have
experienced with relatively high starting gravities with this yeast--did it
leave you with too much sugar?
I've used Wyeast 1056 (American Ale) in a bragot (malt/honey combination)
and it turned out very nicely, ready to drink almost as soon as you'd
expect an ale. It would be interesting to try this with just honey.
Red Star Champagne has done well for me in the past. I haven't used it
recently. The characteristics I've seen have been minimal off-tastes and
high alcohol tolerance...I've made some rather strong, quite dry sparkling
meads with this one.
Red Star Flor Sherry has also given me some fairly strong meads, with some
unusual character but not anything overtly objectionable, not the medicinal
aftertaste. I've had to age some of these meads a bit. The yeast is
usefully alcohol-tolerant.
Lalvin 1118 is consistently fast and highly attenuative, but I've gotten
some of the "Listerine" character (I don't know what other folks call it).
The off-taste is not that bad, and does age out, but it annoys me because I
don't think it should be necessary.
Red Star Montrachet I've only used twice, and each time I've gotten an ex-
treme medicinal character that takes forever to go away. This is the basis
for my earlier statement that I'd never use a "Montrachet" named yeast
again.
I'm annoyed that yeast producers are so unwilling to part with any useful
information about their products. For example, it was only with some con-
siderable poking around that I got the (tenuous!) connection between Red
Star's "Prise de Mousse" and "Premier Cuvee". I've heard claims that
Lalvin's K1V-1116 is a Prise de Mousse, and other claims that it's a
Montrachet. Whom to believe? I dunno! While I understand the interest in
proprietary yeast strains, cautious labeling, and an attempt to distinguish
brand-name products, when it comes to the point that customers can't tell
what they're buying or what it will do for them, we're on the wrong side of
the sanity-boundary.
---
Dick Dunn rcd@eklektix.com -or- raven!rcd Boulder, Colorado USA
...Simpler is better.
------------------------------
End of Mead Lover's Digest #330
