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Mead Lovers Digest #0946
From: mead-request@talisman.com
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Subject: Mead Lover's Digest #946, 6 August 2002
Mead Lover's Digest #946 6 August 2002
Forum for Discussion of Mead Making and Consuming
Dick Dunn, Digest Janitor
Contents:
Re: Wine yeast alternative ("Geoffrey T. Falk")
Stuck fermentation in strawberry meads. (Laura Osanitch)
Re: Cotes de Blanc vs. Epernay (Ben Snyder)
Mead Day (fjrusso@catholic.org)
Research Question ("Briggs WebDesign")
my Mead-Day mead notes (Dick Dunn)
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Subject: Re: Wine yeast alternative
From: "Geoffrey T. Falk" <gtf@cirp.org>
Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 00:42:49 -0600 (MDT)
LJ Vitt <lvitt4@yahoo.com> wrote in MLD 945
> I have frequently used Lalvin 71B-1122. It does leave some sweetness
> but not as much as the sweet mead yeast.
71B-1122 metabolizes malic acid, producing a softer feel. I used it
for my cranberry batch, which promises to turn out very well. I might
recommend it for any fruit wine or melomel that one intends to age a
while. Since most meads are intended to age, I'd think it's usable even
for a cyser (though my first choice for a cyser would be Lalvin D47).
> Dry champaign yeast is popular with some. I tried it. I don't
> like the "hot" effect I got. "Hot" meaning the alcohol is so strong
> you have a warm mouth feel. This OG of this mead was 1.110.
I just racked a gallon of cyser made with LV 1118; but didn't measure
the OG. Will report how it turns out eventually.
Support those Canadian yeast growers :)
Geoffrey
------------------------------
Subject: Stuck fermentation in strawberry meads.
From: Laura Osanitch <haffpynt@yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 05:29:00 -0700 (PDT)
My friend and I have been trying our hand at
mead-making for a couple of months now. We feel we are
getting the feel for making them successfully with
fruits. Our cherry vanilla, straight honey meads ( the
usual store bought blended honey), blueberry and
varied Berry preserve meads have all gone well.
However, whenever we siphon our strawberry concoctions
from the pot to the carboy for the first time, the
fermentation seems to stop, even though it was going
well while sitting in the pot for several days.
I won't go into the specifics of ingredient
proportions and so forth here. Suffice to say that all
our procedures for making the strawberry and the other
meads are indentical. Is there something about
strawberries in particular that makes them difficult
to work with? Do they have a higher acidity or
something?
Laura Osanitch
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Cotes de Blanc vs. Epernay
From: Ben Snyder <devlyn76@users.buoy.com>
Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 09:56:10 -0400 (EDT)
Red Star Cotes de Blanc is the same as Epernay II, they just changed
the name. This is according to various wine guides and my local brew
shops.
And that's all the expertise I have with yeasts, it's all I've gotten to
use so far :-)
- -ben
------------------------------
Subject: Mead Day
From: fjrusso@catholic.org
Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 15:29:36 -0000 (UTC)
Our local club the ATF, Alcohol Through Fermentation, was thinking about a
Club Brew day for the National Mead Day, but, think about it, it is not
like brewing beer or even making wine from grapes. There is not a lot to
do in making Mead, and since we had a 'May Mead Madness' we simply
decided to have a Brew Buddy Day. That does usually get our members out
as well as stirring interest in the Hobby of Brewing, wine and Mead
included. We will be lifting a class of Mead along with everyone else
celebrating this day.
Cheers.
Frank ATF
Home Brew Club
New Bern NC
------------------------------
Subject: Research Question
From: "Briggs WebDesign" <bwd@coxinet.net>
Date: Sun, 4 Aug 2002 10:09:59 -0500
Greetings all,
I have a simple question, if anyone knows the answer. During the late dark
ages (Circa 1000 CE) how was Scandinavian mead handled after fermentation?
Was it bottled (if so, what type of bottle or jug) or kegged?
I have been unable to find any reference to this process at all.
Thanks and Cheers!
Hos
------------------------------
Subject: my Mead-Day mead notes
From: rcd@talisman.com (Dick Dunn)
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2002 00:22:18 -0600 (MDT)
OK, since I inflicted the suggested recipe for Mead Day on the community,
here are some notes from what I actually *did* (as opposed to what I
suggested).
I used 12 lb honey, 3 oz ginger as suggested. I pushed the fruit (rasp-
berries) up to about 8 lb. Yeast was White Labs champagne (715). Hey,
that yeast is enthusiastic!
Two days after start, I have skimmed most of the fruit and ginger because
the fermentation has been so vigorous. (The fruit is looking depleted
already.) Gravity is down to about 1065. I don't know just where it
started because OG measurements on melomels never work out very well--the
fruit is only starting to release its juice, and you don't know how much
sugar was in it. But it would have been at least 1095, so that's quite a
gravity drop in 2 days. I had it at about 75 F, and I've moved it to a
place that's closer to 70 F to try to slow it down a bit.
Although I just-plain-like raspberry melomels--we grow raspberries, and
I've made a bunch--they also have a significance to me: Sometimes I make
them as a commemorative mead. (In my world, not every raspberry mel is
a memory, but every commemorative has been raspberry.) I don't even know
why. But I make boysenberry to celebrate and raspberry to commemorate.
And this one was for a friend (who liked mead, and raspberry was his
favorite), departed recently and far too soon. See _Sky_and_Telescope_,
August 2002, p.88, if you're curious.
Dick
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End of Mead Lover's Digest #946
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