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Mead Lovers Digest #1537
Subject: Mead Lover's Digest #1537, 3 August 2011
From: mead-request@talisman.com
Mead Lover's Digest #1537 3 August 2011
Mead Discussion Forum
Contents:
RE: prise de mousse ("Wout Klingens")
Re: Habanero Mead (jay mollerskov)
Re: Habenero Pepper Mead (Alex Flinsch)
Re: Mead Lover's Digest #1536, 30 July 2011 ("Dennis Key")
Re: Mead Lover's Digest #1536, 30 July 2011 (Tim Bray)
Re: My honey supplier is about to raise prices (MeadGuild@aol.com)
Re: The Subject is Ginger (MeadGuild@aol.com)
hot pepper meads (Micah Millspaw)
Habanero Pepper Mead (Luke Kostu)
ginger quantity/effectiveness (Dick Dunn)
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Digest Janitor: Dick Dunn
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: RE: prise de mousse
From: "Wout Klingens" <wout@nivo-media.nl>
Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2011 18:01:22 +0200
Wout Klingens wrote:
"These algae containers act like filters and the yeast cells stay inside.
That way the clear wine stays clear.
After this in-bottle fermentation is done, the bottle is turned and the
pills simply roll out into the temporary closing capsule.
My question: does anybody know where to get these pills?"
I think I found it. To answer my own question:
This seems to be a new technology that can be done easily at home.
Kids seem to do this with chemistry/biology experiments.
Here it goes. European volumes, do your own math :)
1. Warm 50 cl water
2. add 2 gr Sodium alginate en solve while stirring
3. solve 2,5 gr of dried yeast in 50 cl water
4. add sodium alginate solution to yeast solution, when cooled
5. solve 1.4 gr of CaCl in 100 cl water
6. drip the alginate/yeast solution into the CaCl solution.
Done. Maybe wash pills in clean water.
This appears to be part of an experiment called: "Make your own breezer". A
way to ferment, without any yeast sediment.
The process is called: "immobilizing yeast". World leading beer brewers seem
to be experimenting with this procedure.
I never heard of this, but I never understood chemistry.
So does any of you chemistry geniuses have any experience with it? Any
comments?
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Habanero Mead
From: jay mollerskov <jaymollerskov@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2011 14:18:28 -0500
While I haven't personally made a habanero mead, several friends of mine
routinely make chili pepper mead, usually with ghost chilies lately. My
experience is with homebrewed chili beers. I grow many habaneros each year,
some of which go into these batches. I much prefer using whole, fresh
chilies for the flavor profile, whereas dried seem to give more heat than
flavor in my experience.
About the highest heat level that most others seemed to tolerate when
judging was 1 ghost chili per gallon. You could certainly even move down
from there.
For habaneros, I found around 3 fresh peppers per gallon added in the last
minute of the boil worked well for beer and even the "wimps" could tolerate
the heat, while it also had great habanero flavor. I'm not sure how well
that translates to steeping peppers for mead making, but hopefully it at
least gives you some starting places to consider. I definitely am an
advocate of fresh peppers for flavor profile purposes though. Good luck!
Jay Mollerskov
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Habenero Pepper Mead
From: Alex Flinsch <avflinsch@verizon.net>
Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2011 16:23:54 -0400
> The objective in making a Habenero Mead is to get as much as possible of
> the pepper taste with as little as possible of the pepper heat. It ain't
> easy as I've judged Capsicum Meads that were undrinkable even with my
> cauterized throat.
Perhaps picking peppers pretty early, post flavor development, but pre
heat development would produce a potent, but palatable product.
Another option would be to use low heat varieties like "Fooled You",
for Jalapeños, or use something like an Aji Dulce in place of habaneros,
then add a minimal amount of the hotter variety to give it a bit of kick.
- --
Alex Flinsch / AB2RC
My rechargeable batteries are revolting
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Mead Lover's Digest #1536, 30 July 2011
From: "Dennis Key" <dione13@msn.com>
Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2011 17:38:35 -0600
> Subject: Habenero Pepper Mead
> From: MeadGuild@aol.com
> Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 16:56:37 -0400 (EDT)
<snip>
> The objective in making a Habenero Mead is to get as much as possible of
> the pepper taste with as little as possible of the pepper heat. It ain't
> easy as I've judged Capsicum Meads that were undrinkable even with my
> cauterized throat.
<snip>
> Does anyone else make Hot Pepper Meads?
I made an habenero mead a few years ago that came out nicely. I'm sorry I
can't find my notes, so this is from the senior citizen wingit memory bank.
I made a three gallon batch using three quarts of honey and two habenero
peppers finely diced. At the time I was still pasteurizing the honey/water
mix so I added the diced peppers to the hot mix and let it steep (covered)
overnight. I strained it into a three gallon carboy and pitched a Champaign
yeast starter. Somewhere in the process, I added about 1 1/2 cups of
fresh-squeezed lime juice. During fermentation, I pushed the batch with two
additions of 3/4 cup of honey causing fermentation to stop.
The result had a nice citrus flavor with a pepper back taste. A glass or
two produced a pleasant burn around the lips and back of the throat. Since
I'd pushed the batch to around 18% alcohol, two glasses is about all a
prudent person would want to drink at a time. (Can you imagine the hangover
from overindulging?!)
BTW, for the past few years, I bring the appropriate amount of water to a
boil, turn the fire off and mix in the honey. It has worked very well. I
suppose when I make another batch, I can simmer the habeneros in a cup of
water then strain the result into the primary.
Dione Greywolfe
Dragonweyr, NM
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Mead Lover's Digest #1536, 30 July 2011
From: Tim Bray <tbray@wildblue.net>
Date: Sun, 31 Jul 2011 19:53:51 -0700
I don't get it. To me this seems contradictory: the stated goal is
to get more pepper taste and less heat, so why use the hottest
peppers? There are lots of peppers with more flavor than Habs and
far less heat. Since the Scoville scale is nonlinear, the Habs are
going to contribute mostly heat and very little flavor, in
comparison with almost any other pepper. So why the fixation on
Habaneros? I've never understood this.
Does anyone make meads with, say, Padrones? Or maybe Chocolate
Bells, or Red Fresnos, or any of the other medium-to-low-heat
peppers that are used in cooking precisely because they have more
flavor?
Cheers,
Tim
> Eight years ago Red Savina Habeneros had the highest Scoville heat units
> rating.
>
> The objective in making a Habenero Mead is to get as much as possible of
> the pepper taste with as little as possible of the pepper heat. It ain't
> easy as I've judged Capsicum Meads that were undrinkable even with my
> cauterized throat.
------------------------------
Subject: Re: My honey supplier is about to raise prices
From: MeadGuild@aol.com
Date: Sun, 31 Jul 2011 22:58:03 -0400 (EDT)
Lauren Cohen writes that her honey supplier, Bee Folks,
is about to their prices.
Bee Folks appears to be a honey re-packager selling
5 gal pails in the range of $250!
So, my advice is to check out the prices at Dutch Gold,
(http://dutchgoldhoney.com/store/prod_bulk.asp) , where
a five gal pail of Orange Blossom honey costs $115.80.
Dick
- ---
Richard D. Adams
Ellicott City, MD 21042
------------------------------
Subject: Re: The Subject is Ginger
From: MeadGuild@aol.com
Date: Sun, 31 Jul 2011 23:38:03 -0400 (EDT)
Eric Holzhauer wrote that he had used 2.5 lbs
of ginger in a Mead and felt using 3.25 lbs was
not unreasonable.
David Vachon disagreed stating he thought 2.5
ounces in a 5 gal batch was more appropriate.
While my personal opinion is "It's your Mead;
make it to your tastes". My experience from
judging Mead leads me to the conclusion that
Ginger, like Cinnamon, is a very strong spice
that is often overused. It is an acquired
tastes that is not shared by all.
Dick
- ---
Richard D. Adams
Ellicott City, MD 21042
------------------------------
Subject: hot pepper meads
From: Micah Millspaw <MMillspaw@Silgancontainers.com>
Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2011 16:11:03 +0000
>Subject: Habenero Pepper Mead
>From: MeadGuild@aol.com
>Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 16:56:37 -0400 (EDT)
> Eight years ago Red Savina Habeneros had the highest Scoville heat units
> rating. I planted enough to get almost four pint jars of crushed Habeneros.
> This year I planted 23 Bhut Jolkia plants. They were planted late and
> just started to bloom. Based on observation, a few of them may not make it
> The objective in making a Habenero Mead is to get as much as possible of
> the pepper taste with as little as possible of the pepper heat. It ain't
> easy >as I've judged Capsicum Meads that were undrinkable even with my
> cauterized throat.
> Most Meadmakers with whom I've discussed this use fresh peppers rather
> than crushed peppers. I add crushed pepper just before clarification
> and would >not add whole or minced peppers until then. On one hand, it's
> always trial and error. OTOH,with crushed peppers, you know how much you
> added last >time. Also that way I can engage in Quality Assurance Testing
> (QAT), i.e., drinking from the carboy. As my childbride says "You can
> always add more."
> Does anyone else make Hot Pepper Meads?
> Richard D. Adams
I have made some pepper meads(capsimels?) from time to time and have taken
several approaches.
For that fresh chile bouquet without the burn, I have poured the warm must
over a colander full of fresh jalapenos just sliced in half lengthwise.
Also tossed halved cerranos into the must.
I think my best pepper (IMHO) meads have come from using smoked or dried
peppers, I have been very happy with smoked red savinas added to fermented
out mead. Poblano also has a nice flavor. It seems like getting the right
residual sugar level and more important the ph low enough to balance the
peppers (both flavor and ph) is the real trick.
Bhut Jolkia ! should be interesting!
Micah Millspaw
------------------------------
Subject: Habanero Pepper Mead
From: Luke Kostu <lkostu@yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, 2 Aug 2011 18:11:32 -0700 (PDT)
The advantage to using dried peppers is the play of trial-and-error and
the consistency of a tested recipe. I have had success with a blend
of ancho and chipotle peppers. Added in the secondary of a five gallon
batch, it all goes in (stems, seeds, skins) for approximately 12 days.
The 2 oz. of Ancho (2000 scoville) and .5 oz Chipotle (70,000 scoville)
work in tandem with the aroma and flavor of ancho up front and the heat of
chipotle on the finish. This must be supported by a solid honey profile
to strike a balance. I've used mesquite honey because I thought it would
sound cool (chili-mesquite) but it could not hold it's end of the deal.
Use a strong honey you think will meld well with a metheglin. New on the
scene is a bag of oak chips from our friends at Tabasco. They are chards of
barrels formally used to age hot sauce and typically used for smoking bbq.
Loaded an ounce in a gallon test batch and it seems to be progressing nicely
after only a few days.
Luke
------------------------------
Subject: ginger quantity/effectiveness
From: Dick Dunn <rcd@talisman.com>
Date: Wed, 3 Aug 2011 12:32:58 -0600
I've been following the ginger-quantity discussion and trying to figure out
how people can be so far apart in the amount of ginger required to get good
character.
My ginger(ed) meads have been in the mid-low part of the overall range
people are talking about. The most I ever used was 21 oz for a 5-gal (US)
batch. I had only planned to use 16 oz, but we had some extra from what
we'd used for cooking, so I tossed that in too. The result was extremely
gingery--and we like ginger and use a lot in cooking, so we're not spice
wimps.
So now I'm starting to think that the vast range of amounts people are
using is not so much a variation in tastes as a variation in effectiveness
of extraction. Perhaps small variations in how the ginger is prepared and
handled during fermentation result in much larger variations in rate of
extraction? Perhaps also there's some upper limit of what can actually
be extracted?
Are any of you folks who are on the ends of the spectrum of ginger quantity
anywhere near one another, where you could get together and try some side-
by-side tastings?
- --
Dick Dunn rcd@talisman.com Hygiene, Colorado USA
------------------------------
End of Mead Lover's Digest #1537
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