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Mead Lovers Digest #0967
From: mead-request@talisman.com
Errors-To: mead-errors@talisman.com
Reply-To: mead@talisman.com
To: mead-list@talisman.com
Subject: Mead Lover's Digest #967, 8 November 2002
Mead Lover's Digest #967 8 November 2002
Forum for Discussion of Mead Making and Consuming
Dick Dunn, Digest Janitor
Contents:
pumpkin mead, 2 year report (PHREDLESS@aol.com)
Agave Mead ("David Craft")
Re: Rhodomel (Marc Shapiro)
Re: pectolase after fermentation (Marc Shapiro)
Braggot ("Asher Reed")
rhodomel (MIUKAT@aol.com)
1000 or so (Dick Dunn)
Eucalyptus ("Peter Nolan")
Measuring TA in Honey and Mead (long) ("Dan McFeeley")
Re: Mead Lover's Digest #966, 2 November 2002 (Christopher C Carpenter)
what could this big lump be? (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Hrafnkell_Eir=EDksson?=)
jeez!!! (Anemone1978Polyp@aol.com)
AboutMead.com ("Christopher Hadden")
1st. time question (DLebeck@aol.com)
NOTE: Digest appears when there is enough material to send one.
Send ONLY articles for the digest to mead@talisman.com.
Use mead-request@talisman.com for [un]subscribe/admin requests.
Digest archives and FAQ are available at www.talisman.com/mead. There is
a searchable MLD archive at hubris.engin.umich.edu/Beer/Threads/Mead
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: pumpkin mead, 2 year report
From: PHREDLESS@aol.com
Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2002 16:06:03 EST
Howdy folks,
I made a pumpkin mead 2 year ago. It was great at 1 year, and actually
pretty dry. Now and a little over two years old, it has sweetened up again.
Hmmm... I am wondering if there is something in pumpkin that breaks honey
down slowly. The brew was... 10 pounds sage honey, 10 pounds orange honey
plus 10 pounds of pumpkin flesh cooked in the water used for the batch.
Filled up to five gallons and let the flesh sit 2 days while fermenting.
Remove the flesh, add up the rest with water to make the batch 5 gallons
again.
It took awhile to ferment, but gotta say, some of the best mead I've made.
Doug Thomas
------------------------------
Subject: Agave Mead
From: "David Craft" <chsyhkr@bellsouth.net>
Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2002 19:53:08 -0500
Greetings,
I started an Agave mead in August. Sorry to bring this up again. It seems
stuck at 1.10 starting at 1.11. It fermented for about a month and quit.
It has some nice yeast slurry on the bottom but has almost cleared and no
activity that I can tell. I have roused quite a few times.
I started some Sherry yeast and pitched that a few weeks ago, nothing.
Should I wait, I have heard it can take a year, but at this rate, never!!
Regards,
David B. Craft
Battleground Brewers Homebrew Club
Crow Hill Brewery and Meadery
Greensboro, NC
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Rhodomel
From: Marc Shapiro <mshapiro@inetone.net>
Date: Sun, 03 Nov 2002 09:42:22 -0500
> So wrote Vicky Rowe <rcci@mindspring.com>
>
> >Good Evening,
> >Vicky and Christopher are waxing poetic on the virtues of Rhodomel. I have
> >a batch that's in mid-process. My plan is to use rosewater rather than
> >rose petals. One thing I noticed with the rosewater is that it gets
> >"soapy" if left exposed to oxygen. I'll be adding the rosewater and some
> >antioxidants at bottling time but the "test bottle" with a sample of the
> >base mead and some rosewater added was quite nice.
> >nathan in madison, wi
>
> Hey Nathan!
>
> I actually used a gallon bag of frozen rose petals, then after the
> first ferment was finished, poured in a bottle of rose water from
> the local Middle Eastern deli/restaurant (after scarfing down some
> faboo food).
>
> Wassail!
Vicky,
That is just about exactly what I did when I made a rose petal wine (no
honey there), except that I added the rose water before fermentation
(and just after opening the bottle, so there was no soapiness problem).
I spent just over a month collecting the rose petals from the two bushes
that I had at the time. I rinsed the petals off and put them in plastic
bags, with the air expressed, in the freezer.
Wassail!
- --
Marc Shapiro "If you drink melomel every day,
m_shapiro@bigfoot.com you will live to be 150 years old,
Please visit "The Meadery" at: unless your wife shoots you."
http://www.bigfoot.com/~m_shapiro/ -- Dr. Ferenc Androczi, winemaker,
Little Hungary Farm Winery
------------------------------
Subject: Re: pectolase after fermentation
From: Marc Shapiro <mshapiro@inetone.net>
Date: Sun, 03 Nov 2002 09:55:50 -0500
So wrote Hrafnkell <he@klaki.net>
>
> Hi
>
> Is it ok to add pectoalse (enzyme to break down pectin) to mead/wine
> after fermentation is complete? I heard something about pectolase
> not working well in the presence of alcohol.
>
> Thanks
> Hrafnkell
Yes, you can add it after fermentation, but it will take more of the
enzyme and will probably take longer to do the job. Pectic enzymes will
work in the presence of alcohol, just not as well.
Wassail!
Marc
- --
Marc Shapiro "If you drink melomel every day,
m_shapiro@bigfoot.com you will live to be 150 years old,
Please visit "The Meadery" at: unless your wife shoots you."
http://www.bigfoot.com/~m_shapiro/ -- Dr. Ferenc Androczi, winemaker,
Little Hungary Farm Winery
------------------------------
Subject: Braggot
From: "Asher Reed" <clvwpn5@hotmail.com>
Date: Sun, 03 Nov 2002 20:08:35 +0000
I threw together a Braggot for the first time yesterday and would to hear
from others who have made one before or better yet I would like to hear from
people who make Braggot on a regular basis. Here is how I made mine. Mind
you, I just started the fermentation yesterday so I'm not sure how it will
turn out -- I can't imagine it turning out badly though.
for a 3 gallon batch:
1/4 lb 10L crystal malt (cracked)
1 lb light dry malt extract
4 lb clover honey
2 tsp yeast nutrient
1/2 tsp irish moss
1/2 tsp gypsum
1 packet Danstar Nottingham ale yeast
bottled artesian water
Starting Gravity ~1.060
Brought 1 gallon of water, gypsum, and crystal malt (tied up in a muslin
bag) to a boil, removed the crystal malt just as it started to boil and
lightly squeezed out the juices. Removed from heat and mixed in the light
dry malt extract, put it back on the heat and boiled for 30 minutes.
Removed from heat and mixed in the clover honey, put back on the heat and
boiled for and additional 30 minutes. Boiled the irish moss for the last 15
minutes. Added yeast nutrient and chilled as rapidly as possible. Strained
it into a 3 gallon glass carboy with 1 gallon cold water, shook to aerate,
topped off with more water, pitched rehydrated yeast. Using a blow-out tube
for the first few days to allow the release of the kraeusen, then will use
an air lock to complete fermentation. I will probably prime it with corn
sugar at bottling time to carbonate.
Like ale, it will probably be ready to drink in a few weeks -- I will post
the results come drinking time. But, in the mean time I would like to open
up a dialog on the subject of Braggot.
------------------------------
Subject: rhodomel
From: MIUKAT@aol.com
Date: Sun, 3 Nov 2002 16:03:42 EST
hi, in reference to the rhodomel and freezing rose petals, wouldn't the
petals lose some potency and color after thawing, and could you make a rose
syrup based on x amount of honey and water taken from the original recipe and
add petals to it throughout the blooming season until you are satified with
the strength?
just wondering, i would love to make it myself, but have no access to fresh
roses at this time. i made rose brandy. it is a few years old, but the flavor
is still good, even though the color has oxidized a bit. has this happed in
the rhodomel after a while, too? thanks, christina
------------------------------
Subject: 1000 or so
From: rcd@talisman.com (Dick Dunn)
Date: Sun, 3 Nov 2002 23:41:15 -0700 (MST)
<vince@scubadiving.com> wrote:
> On another topic, I noticed that 35 MLDs from now (still a few months away
> but fast approaching) we will reach MLD #1000...
I'd noticed that too, in particular since the slightly-older Cider Digest
passed issue 1000 recently.
It seems to me that 1000 issues would be a good place to stop. I mean,
look, the MLD has been going for just over ten years already. A decade and
a thousand issues?!? What more needs to be said...what more *can* be
said...if it hasn't been said yet? Isn't it time to shut it down and get
on with life? Even for mead-making, isn't it time to stop talking so much
and just *do*?
Wearing my "digest janitor" cap for a moment: How many thousands more spam
messages do I have to filter out? How much more hotmail barf-back do I
have to sort out?
>...Dick, you should have a "special" with your favorite recipe or something
> to celebrate.
Why? It ain't my digest! Besides, I don't believe in recipes. OK, I had
that one raspberry mel recipe served up for the make-mead day thing, but
that's a special case. Honey and ingredients are so variable, a recipe is
nothing but a starting point. Meadmaking by recipes is like playing music
strictly by the score. You gotta get some feeling into it! Sure, jot down
a "recipe" (a sketch), then look at your ingredients. Smell the roses, pet
the cat, decide how you feel today, and go make the mead that fits. Then,
a year or two down the road when you open a bottle, maybe the quirks of
that particular mead will remind you of a pleasant day when you made it.
Pursue consistency and follow recipes until you get your mead-making chops
down, of course. But that's the point where the apprenticeship ends and
the fun begins. I keep a log of every mead I've made, and there is a part
you could call the "recipe", but it's _post_ _facto_! It's like the way
most software is documented: You don't say what it will do or what it's
supposed to do; the documentation is written after the fact to describe what
it does.
(Note that this approach is *NOT* recommended for starting a meadery! Yes,
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds" but there is
nothing foolish about consistency once you give a product a name, put a
label on it, and start selling it!)
Dick
PS: Just kidding about shutting down. As long as you keep writing, you've
got a digest.
Dick
PPS: NOT kidding about recipes. I don't think they are the path to better
mead.
Dick
------------------------------
Subject: Eucalyptus
From: "Peter Nolan" <pnolan@bigpond.com>
Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2002 17:49:45 -0600
Unless you're Australian, or a botanist, you probably don't realise that
there are over five hundreds of different species of Eucalyptus ranging
from straggly mallees well under a metre to forrest trees up to a ninety
metres.
Most have, to some degree, Eucalptus oil in their leaves - it is a type
of poison to discourage chewing insects. The flowers of the trees don't
have any of the oil so it has no affect on the honey.
There is no such thing as Eucalptus honey. You get honey from different
types of Eucalypt, such as bluegum honey, ironbark honey, yellow box
honey etc. The honies from these trees are quite different from each
other and range from strongly flavoured to mild, from very dark to very
pale.
At the moment honey is getting very expensive in Australia because we
have a severe drought on top of widspread bushfires last summer; the
trees are waiting for better conditions to flower. Typically Eucalypts
tend to flower seriously only once each two or three years. They are
wonderful and beautiful trees.
The Leatherwood, Eucryphia lucida, isn't a eucalypt nor is it related to
them.
New Zealand and Australia, close as we tend to be in culture and
interest, are very unrelated botanically. New Zealand has some magic
honies, certainly more renowned than Australian ones, but from
completely different flora.
Peter N
------------------------------
Subject: Measuring TA in Honey and Mead (long)
From: "Dan McFeeley" <mcfeeley@keynet.net>
Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2002 10:50:35 -0600
Hello all --
This is meant to be a follow up to my earlier post in MLD 952 on
the reaction between gluconolactone and gluconic acid found in both
in honey and mead. Warning in advance -- this is a long post!
Just a brief recap -- the acidic properties of honey
are much more complex than that found in the various wines, ciders,
country wines, etc. Gluconic acid is the primary acid in honey,
however, it co-exists in a pH dependent relationship with its lactone,
gluconolactone. The two are produced during the process by which
bees convert flower nectar to honey.
It was found that it was extremely difficult to measure total acidity
(TA) in honey using standard titration methods. The pH endpoint
was unstable and as a result, it was impossible to obtain accurate
TA measurements in honey. In an article published in 1958, John
W. White jr. identified the source of the unstable endpoint as due
to a reaction between gluconolactone and gluconic acid. Raising
the pH of the honey during titration caused the gluconolactone
to convert to gluconic acid, thus lowering the pH and distorting
the final figure for TA in honey. White developed a method for
measuring TA in honey that accounted for the lactone reaction.
It was used in his landmark 1961 study of U.S. honeys and
accepted by the AOAC as a standard method of analysis in
1977.
What is particularly important for meadmakers is that, because the
lactone reaction persists in mead (see _Bee Culture Sept. 2002),
the standard acid testing kits used in winemaking do not give
accurate results. They use the standard titration method for
measuring TA which White demonstrated cannot be reliably
used in measuring TA in honey.
I want to outline the method White developed for measuring TA in
honey and propose that as a method for measuring TA in mead.
First, a ten gram sample of the honey is diluted in 75 ml of distilled
CO2 free water and the initial pH recorded. Two 10 ml microburets
are used in the titration process. The first is used to titrate the
solution to pH 8.5 using 0.05N NaOH at a rate of 5 ml/minute.
Immediately on reaching pH 8.5, 10 ml of 0.05N NaOH is added,
then the pH is brought back to pH 8.2 using 0.05N HCl from the
second microburet. A blank determination procedure is run using
85 ml distilled CO2 free water and used to provide a corrective
figure for the formula for free acidity.
Free acidity is ml 0.05N NaOH from the buret minus the blank correction
in ml. Lactone is 10.00 - ml 0.05N HCl. Total acidity is free acidity plus
lactone content. To convert to miliequivalents, multiply by 50 and then
divide by the weight of the honey sample (ten grams).
This is a difficult procedure and probably best suited for commercial
meaderies. Brenda Mossel, of the Australian Honey Research Unit,
University of Queensland, in a private e-note,said that she found that
at times she had to run the blank determination more than once in order
to obtain a figure for the blank correction. The lactone reaction itself
occurs too quickly to be observed. I've used acid testing kits and
never noticed anything amiss, but with an electronic pH meter and
adding the base all at once, rather than by slow titration, the lactone
reaction was dramatically obvious. At high pH levels, the reading
dropped like a stone.
I think you can say that, in a fashion, the acid testing kits used in
winemaking worked for mead, but only empirically. For instance,
if you've been using a wildflower honey from your local beekeeper
consistently, found that for the most part you get around 6.0 gm/l
TA and like to add a little acid blend to get it up to about 7.0 gm/l,
this will work. The 6.0 gm/l isn't the true measure of the TA of the
mead, but so long as it serves as a guideline for making adjustments
and you like the results, it works.
Just a quick word of thanks to Brenda Mossel for helping out with
the formulas, also Marcia Cardetti of the National Honey Board
who was kind enough to send me copies of some of the reference
material available on honey at the NHB.
I'm still working on other material on honey and meadmaking, I'll
post a report once I get it finished.
Wassail!
<><><><><><><><><><>
<><><><><>:<><><>
Dan McFeeley
mcfeeley@keynet.net
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Mead Lover's Digest #966, 2 November 2002
From: Christopher C Carpenter <chris.carpenter@ndsu.nodak.edu>
Date: Mon, 04 Nov 2002 18:29:40 -0600
This question has had me curious also,
If you can prime a dry mead with sugars to raise the
gravity, thus stimulating the fermentation, why can you not
add more water to a mead to lower the gravity (and alcohol
content), to a level it will start fermenting also?? I
would think you could do this in as controlled a manner as
priming.
Please comment on this concept, for I also would like to
make sweeter carbonated meads instead of dead dry.
Donato
PS. I have bottled batches very near the end of
fermentation, in the clarification process, that have
become mildly carbonated. I would not reccomend this
unless you go out of your way to get the highest quality
bottles possible and go through the effort to bottle it
assuming grenade bottles are going to happen. I always use
Cooks Champaigne bottles.
- --On Saturday, November 02, 2002 1:44 PM -0700
mead-request@talisman.com wrote:
> Am i correct to assume if the yeast can't survive due to
> the % alcohol then adding the priming sugar before
> bottling will only make it more "syrupy" in the bottle?
> -and adding more yeast will only make it taste yeasty?
------------------------------
Subject: what could this big lump be?
From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Hrafnkell_Eir=EDksson?= <he@klaki.net>
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2002 21:05:15 +0000
Hi
I have a melomel made with berries. When adding a stabilizer
when the SG had reached .995 (kalium sorbate and kalium metabisulfate)
a BIG lump formed. I've taken a few digital images of it.
Please have a look at http://myndir.he.klaki.net/2002/11/05/pectin
I'm wondering if this could be pectin as I forgot to put pectolase
in before fermentation (hence my last post). I've added that now.
The yeast has settlet out and the wine is clear except for this
big lump.
What could it be?
Thanks
Hrafnkell
------------------------------
Subject: jeez!!!
From: Anemone1978Polyp@aol.com
Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2002 13:50:35 EST
as a beginner im bound to make mistakes and my personal record shows im sure
to make more than most...... instead of fitting the airlock in my rubber
stopper prior to putting it in the carboy i mashed mine while the stopper was
in causing the stopper to fall in the carboy!!! doh!!!! now ive got a stopper
in the bottom of a one gallon batch of cyser in its secondary fermentation
period and now way to get it out. should i rack out into another carboy or
leave it in and if i leave it will will it impart a rubbery tatste on the
the cyser?????
doh!!!
brian
------------------------------
Subject: AboutMead.com
From: "Christopher Hadden" <chadden@contecrayon.com>
Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2002 14:55:05 -0600
Hi all, I just launched a new version of www.aboutmead.com . It's still very
much a work in progress but there's enough new content that I decided to get
it out the door.
The purpose of the site is to energize and educate people about mead. If you
could help spread the word about the site, I'd appreciate it.
Thanks,
Christopher Hadden
------------------------------
Subject: 1st. time question
From: DLebeck@aol.com
Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2002 19:24:53 EST
Greeting, this is going to be my first Mead. I would like to make a still /
sweet mead. I have a good supply of honey, but most of it is from last years
harvest and has frozen over the winter. For eating this does not seem to be a
problem. It is all crystallized, but we just heat it up a bit and eat it. Can
I use this honey? Also, what yeast would be best for a sweet mead?
Thanks
Doug
------------------------------
End of Mead Lover's Digest #967
*******************************
