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Mead Lovers Digest #0694
Subject: Mead Lover's Digest #694, 26 August 1998
From: mead-request@talisman.com
Mead Lover's Digest #694 26 August 1998
Forum for Discussion of Mead Making and Consuming
Dick Dunn, Digest Janitor
Contents:
Re: Mead Lover's Digest #693, 22 August 1998 (Steve Krafft)
Lavender Mead (Charles Hudak)
Lavender II (Charles Hudak)
Re: Mead Lover's Digest #693, 22 August 1998 ("Mike Kidulich")
Re: Fruit flies (Peter Miller)
Re: Mead Lover's Digest #693, 22 August 1998 (Terry Estrin)
nix the dry ice experiments ("Belinda Messenger Ph.D.")
Re: Fruit flies ("John A. MacLaughlin")
dry ice for carbonation (NO) (Dick Dunn)
Help! Cotton candy melomel (Eric Reimer)
adding spices ("Kurt Hoesly")
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: Mead Lover's Digest #693, 22 August 1998
From: Steve Krafft <skrafft@lancnews.infi.net>
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1998 01:50:19 -0400 (EDT)
I am thinking about making a Peach Melomel. I was wondering if anyone has
a favorite recipie that they would like to share . This is the first time
I am attemting a Peach Melomel. Iam concerned about how to keep
the peaches out of the racking tube.
TIA
Steve Krafft
skrafft@lancnews.infi.net
------------------------------
Subject: Lavender Mead
From: Charles Hudak <cwhudak@home.com>
Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1996 00:10:46 -0700
In MLD #693 it was written.
>zemo <zemo@ameritech.net>, otherwise known as Steve Holat, a next-town
>neighbor of mine who I've never met (Hi Steve!) said in MLD #642:
>
>>I love lavender. I have a well established barrel of it outside the
>brewery (read: SO's house). I have a >recipe from either Bees Lee's or
>Cat's Meow for lavender mead, but does anyone have a tried and
>>true recipe? I'm thinking of using the cold extraction method posted in a
>recent MLD, since I've been >collecting the flowers. Please share your
>lavender mead experiences with me.
>
I made a lavender metheglin two years ago. I used a light honey (Sage I
think) and a wee bit of juniper berry, cardamom, some other things that I
can't remember and about 8 six inch sprigs of dried lavender. I simmered
the herbs in the last minutes before I chilled the must (I usually do a
short boil/simmer for sanitation--haven't had a problem lack of honey aroma
yet). Early on, it was undrinkable--most of the other herbs became
sub-threshold, not the lavender. Now it is like a fine sauvignon blanc with
an herbal twist. It just won a first place in the America's Finest City
Homebrew Contest here in San Diego back in March. It is *wonderful* and I
still have about ten bottles!!!!
Let us know how yours turns out.
C--
Charles Hudak
cwhudak@home.com
It's mead heaven in Ocean Beach (San Diego) CA
------------------------------
Subject: Lavender II
From: Charles Hudak <cwhudak@home.com>
Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1996 00:13:11 -0700
Chuck wrote:
>I think that a
>sweet mead would probably complement lavender more.
FWIW, mine was a dry mead (like I said, Sauvignon Blanc-ish) and the
lavender worked perfectly.
C--
Charles Hudak
cwhudak@home.com
It's mead heaven in Ocean Beach (San Diego) CA
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Mead Lover's Digest #693, 22 August 1998
From: "Mike Kidulich" <mjkid@ix.netcom.com>
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1998 12:09:17 -5
> I am thinking of making a sparkling Mead and a friend of mine suggested
> using dry ice for carbonation instead of priming with some sort of sugar.
> Has anyone ever heard of this method? Any ideas on how much to use so I
> don't have exploding bottles or other problems?
I have never heard of this method, but it strikes me as highly impractical.
Dry ice would likely be of dubious purity, as well as being difficult to
measure. Also, adding liquid to a pellet of dry ice in a bottle sounds like
trouble to me. Personally, I would use honey for priming (about 1/2 to 3/4
cup for 5 gallons, depending on the carbonation level desired). Scale this
amount down for smaller batches.
Did your friend give any reason for this approach, or ever tried it before?
>
> Thanks,
> Tony
>
Mike Kidulich
77deg 59' W, 43deg 15' N
mjkid@ix.netcom.com
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Fruit flies
From: Peter Miller <peter@perpetualocean.com>
Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1998 08:59:14 -0000
>From: Steve Daughhetee <sdd6@cornell.edu>
>Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1998 11:33:09 -0400
>
>Dennis suggested fly traps and peter suggested pyrethrums for fruit flies.
>I have to say that Dennis is on the right track, but lacks two key
>ingredients. VINEGAR and SOAP!
Brilliant idea, but can I just ad a caveat to the use of vinegar in the
brewing room? Just remember that the _tiniest_ infection from vinegar in
any of your active meads may start the chain reaction that will turn your
prize mead into salad dressing, so make sure that you don't unwittingly
carry the acetobacter into your brew...
P.
<peter@perpetualocean.com> http://www.perpetualocean.com
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Mead Lover's Digest #693, 22 August 1998
From: Terry Estrin <estrin@sfu.ca>
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1998 20:34:42 -0700 (PDT)
Hello all,
Does anyone know when the Mazer Cup is taking place this year?
I'm finally in the position where I have a couple of entries. Please don't
tell me it's already happened...:)
Terry
------------------------------
Subject: nix the dry ice experiments
From: "Belinda Messenger Ph.D." <belindam@agraquest.com>
Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1998 09:57:45 -0700
>I am thinking of making a sparkling Mead and a friend of mine suggested
>using dry ice for carbonation instead of priming with some sort of
>sugar. Has anyone ever heard of this method? Any ideas on how much to
>use so I don't have exploding bottles or other problems?
You're probably going to receive the mead digest equivalent of a group
scream on this one. Dry ice is extremely volatile stuff...it will explode
out of containers as it comes up to room temp. (It makes very nice lab bombs)
It also gives a funky taste to your beverage (ever had punch with dry ice in
it? yuk!)
my 2 cents,
bEL
Belinda Messenger, Ph.D
AgraQuest, Inc.
Davis, CA
530-750-0150
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Fruit flies
From: "John A. MacLaughlin" <jam@clark.net>
Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1998 15:55:44 -0400
Thanks to everyone who contributed to this topic in the past week.
I figure August is my last chance to brew an Imperial stout for Christmas
and last week I had such a quantity of fruit flies in the kitchen that I was
afraid to try to brew anything. Now, a week after installing four flypaper
strips and three days after adding six wading pools for them, there are
only two visible flies in the whole house. Thank you!
There seems to be a down side to this affair too. The survivors are so
skittish I can't get within two feet of them. Am I selecting for
hyperactivity
in these flies? Should I be lacing these pools with ritalin also?
Best wishes, JAM
------------------------------
Subject: dry ice for carbonation (NO)
From: rcd@raven.talisman.com (Dick Dunn)
Date: 24 Aug 98 22:48:08 MDT (Mon)
Using dry ice to carbonate a mead (beer, etc.) is one of those ideas that
seems to come to the surface every now and then, for no reason I can figure
out. It's a pretty bad idea on several counts:
* You can't measure it accurately. Dry ice doesn't break into nice uni-
form chunks. Even if it did, the chunk of dry ice is going to be
condensing and freezing moisture out of the air as it sits there, so
weight won't mean much.
* You're likely to have some high-pressure problems, because as the CO2
comes off the dry ice in the liquid after bottling, it isn't going to
dissolve right away. It doesn't directly carbonate; it just builds
pressure.
* The quantity of dry ice you'd need for a bottle would be very small,
on the order of a couple grams...thus hard to handle in any case.
* You don't know what impurities there might be in the CO2...although it
is doubtful that there's anything biologically active at that temp, it
is not manufactured to be food-grade.
* There are better ways!
Bottle-conditioning is the time-honored way to carbonate. If you can't do
that (e.g., if you're making a sweet sparkling mead where a renewed fer-
mentation would gobble the rest of the sweetness), carbonate with CO2 in a
keg and counterpressure-fill at bottling.
- ---
Dick Dunn rcd@talisman.com Hygiene, Colorado USA
...Mr. Natural says, "Get the right tool for the job."
------------------------------
Subject: Help! Cotton candy melomel
From: Eric Reimer <eric@etymonic.com>
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1998 08:35:42 -0400
Hi,
I'm currently working on a strawberry melomel. I have allowed the melomel
to completely finish fermenting and allowed it to clear. SG was 0.990. I
had wanted a medium sweet mead, so I have added 2.2 pounds of fresh clover
honey which was heated, mixed with about one cup of melomel, stirred and
heated again. I added about 2.5 teaspoon of potassium sorbate to this
mixture. This mixture was added to a sanitised glass carboy. I then
racked the remaining melomel onto this mixture and sealed with an airlock
and covered with a T-shirt.
My problem.
I checked the melomel about 4 hours later and there was a great deal of
white fluffy looking stuff floating through out the melomel. I checked
again an hour later, and most of the "cotton candy" had settled to the
bottom. There was still some floating on top. It looked like a fluffy one
inch rope of white cotton candy.
What is this? What did I do wrong? What should I do to save my melomel?
Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
TIA,
Eric
------------------------------
Subject: adding spices
From: "Kurt Hoesly" <hoesly@hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1998 14:36:03 PDT
Hello all...
I have a question for those of you who have more experience in
mead-making than I do. I'd like to make a cinnamon mead, but I'm not
sure what would be the best way to go about it.
The options I've been considering are:
#1 make a "cinnamon tea" by boiling water with a cinnamon stick in it
#2 put a stick in the fermenter before inital racking
#2b put a stick in the fermenter after initial racking
#3 add a couple of teaspoons of ground cinnamon directly to the must
during primary (will it settle out?)
Does anyone have any ideas/suggestions as to which would be the best
choice? Or is there another method that works even better?
Also, one of my friends asked me if I could make a spiced orange
melomel, but didn't suggest any spices. Any suggestions for what to
use?
Thanks, and happy brewing!
- -kurt
------------------------------
End of Mead Lover's Digest #694
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