PBJ Inspired Mead

[Vigo]

I've had someone take out an property damage claim against the company I work for, for ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- stain removal on his truck after eating at one of our restaurants. He got paid. I doubt it was our food though. He was probably a dude who ate homemade salted meats, moldy jerky, piles of doritos and washed it down with milk jug mead.

[pbj]

Can't say I recall any hijinks with Doritos but I'll defer to your memory on that one.

I am kinda curious what actually got the stains out of his van.  I tried everything.  Thank god I was wearing black pants that day.

[harveybirdman]

Have you had your gall bladder out?  My wife has had similar episodes, she always blames that.

[Vigo]

Can't say I recall any hijinks with Doritos but I'll defer to your memory on that one.

I am kinda curious what actually got the stains out of his van.  I tried everything.  Thank god I was wearing black pants that day.

I thought you had gotten a batch of free doritos from amazon, but I am probably mistaken. You only order food heavy enough to piss off the delivery guy. 

If I remember right, it ended up needing to be reupholstered. Not sure if it was that the professionals couldn't clean it, or just didn't want to clean it.

[pbj]

Oh yeah, that was Pringles.  They shipped me 8 cans of Pringles packaged in 6 different boxes.  About 5 of those cans were chip dust, so Amazon just refunded the entire thing and jacked up the price of Pringles so high nobody in their right mind would order them again.

It's just really, really salty food, fried stuff, and dairy that puts me in the danger zone.  Dairy's kind of a ---smurfette--- because restaurants sneak it into EVERYTHING but the rest of it is easily avoided if necessary.  I generally keep Pepto handy, but my organs are all still intact (I think).

Anyway, that's enough butt stuff.  More mead plz.

[pbj]

Of course, stuff like this doesn't help either



(Yes, that's bacon wrapped pizza with bacon on top)

[BorgDog]

Of course, stuff like this doesn't help either



(Yes, that's bacon wrapped pizza with bacon on top)

Nice!  who makes that? someone at work was telling me about it but didn't know where to get it.

[pbj]

Little Caesar's.  I think it was a test market item until recently.

 

[opt2not]

Any updates from you guys?  I'm going to bottle my batches this weekend since it's a long weekend for us.

Planning on letting it sit in the bottles for another few weeks before trying to drink it.

Right now it's coming along well. The blackberry one has become nice and clear! Looks very much like a Red wine. But the Mango one is looking more like a wheat beer, so I'm planning on throwing some bentonite in that one and seeing how it will clear up.
They both smell delicious, I really am looking forward to having these summer-time melomels

[pbj]

Nah, not really.  All my stuff kinda tastes like it must be the alcohol backfill that manufacturers then dump a bunch of additives into to make taste better.

Surely you can get maple syrup nice and cheap up there.  Ferment any of that?

[opt2not]

Intriguing. There's no reason not to try.

Maple Syrup is cheap'ish up here. Cheaper than Honey that's for sure.  But at the moment I have a work-buddy who's mom is a Bee keeper, so I've been getting hooked up with local honey at a decent price.

For a Maple mead, would one go with all Syrup, or perhaps mix a bit of honey in it too to help with the fermentation?

[Locke141]

My mead came out drinkable but it has quite the strong taste of alcohol. I read it will mellow with time. If I mix it with sweeteners, soda water, of juice its prity good.

I did the bottling on my son's first birthday and ended up with about 13 bottles. I plan to give most as gifts but am thinking of keeping one for my sons 21st. I hope it mellows out by then.

[Locke141]

 .

[pbj]

Yeah, I took out a small bottle of my prison wine last night and added some Equal and club soda and it was actually pretty good. 

 

[Locke141]

Just opened up a bottle and gave it another try. It is much mellower then it was in April. It was not yet what I would call ready so I added some honey to that bottle and it was pretty good. I'll print some labels for the ones I gift with instructions to drink till Christmas or latter.   

[knave]

This thread had me checking out ways to make different types of homemade hooch. I couldn't resist trying the easy way.

2 bottles of 100% juice (64 oz one apple one grape)
1/2 cup sugar each
1 packet of yeast, activated and split between the two.

I left them sit for two weeks, so far I've tried the apple one and it was pretty good, for fun I carbonated it and it is very similar to store-bought hard cider.

I'm less hopeful about the grape but I put it in the fridge for a bit and will let it sit longer.

[Locke141]

Thats great knave.

I opened up at a bottle for a fathers day pool party and its keeps getting better and better.     

[pbj]

Just yesterday I noticed a gallon milk jug sitting on my freezer with a deflated balloon.  Can't even remember when I set that batch up or what the hell is even in it.

I'll try it tonight and see if I wake up tomorrow.

[yotsuya]

Just yesterday I noticed a gallon milk jug sitting on my freezer with a deflated balloon.  Can't even remember when I set that batch up or what the hell is even in it.

I'll try it tonight and see if I wake up tomorrow.

"Can I have your watch when you are dead?"

[Locke141]

Just yesterday I noticed a gallon milk jug sitting on my freezer with a deflated balloon.  Can't even remember when I set that batch up or what the hell is even in it.

I'll try it tonight and see if I wake up tomorrow.

Ohm, When I said better with time I was referring to stuff after it was bottled. I would take a sniff and a sip before a proper drink. Good luck and let us know how it goes.   

[opt2not]

Any updates from you guys?  I'm going to bottle my batches this weekend since it's a long weekend for us.

Planning on letting it sit in the bottles for another few weeks before trying to drink it.

Right now it's coming along well. The blackberry one has become nice and clear! Looks very much like a Red wine. But the Mango one is looking more like a wheat beer, so I'm planning on throwing some bentonite in that one and seeing how it will clear up.
They both smell delicious, I really am looking forward to having these summer-time melomels

So I didn't get to bottle my Mead a month ago like I said I would, ended up letting it sit for a bit longer, then bottled it this weekend.
Last Thursday I added Bentonite to the wine, to help with clearing it up.

Bentonite needs to be prepped before adding it to the wine, similar to how yeast is activated/re-hydrated (except using Hot water, instead of luke-warm).  I vigourously mixed the Bentonite with water, trying to avoid any clumps, and put the resulting "Slurry" into a cool-dark place for 12 hours to sit.  You can let the Slurry sit between 12-24 hours  before adding it in, so that it fully absorbs the water and gets a nice positive charge action going to attract all the negatively charged particles in your wine.

After 12 hrs of sitting I slowly added the Slurry to my mead, mixing it carefully so that I didn't aerate the wine too much. It looked gross, but only after 2 hours of settling in the Mead, the Slurry started to separate and I got a nice division between the two.

Left it alone for 2 days, and the Slurry settled right down to the bottom of the carboys. Here's a couple pics of the bentonite separation right before bottling:




I ended up re-racking the wonderfully clear wine, and bottling it.  In the process I ended up drinking a bit of both flavours. Both wines are dry, and has a very strong alcoholic taste. The Blackberry came out really nice, has a nice subtle flavour, while the other one didn't have much of a mango flavour at all. I perhaps should have added much more mango to the mix to get it to stand out, since mango has more of a lighter flavour to try to bring out.


I'm going to let these bottles sit for a little while to see how the flavours will develop, but all-in-all, my first batch of Mead/Melomel turned out pretty good. 2 gallons yielded 8 bottles.  My next batch is going to be double that.

[Locke141]

Nice,

My batch has improved a lot with time.

[opt2not]

Nice,

My batch has improved a lot with time.

What kind of differences have you noticed with letting it age a bit?  Sweetness changes? Did the alcoholic taste mellow out?

[Locke141]

Nice,

My batch has improved a lot with time.

What kind of differences have you noticed with letting it age a bit?  Sweetness changes? Did the alcoholic taste mellow out?

With mine the taste of alcohol was very string at first. That was April 2 (my son first birthday), today it's a lot less over whelming and is injoyable with out added sweeteners. The meed blogs seem to indicate that with time they keep getting better and better. I going to have 2 or three bottles put aside for his 21st or wedding.

[pbj]

 One year later, my "strawberry wine" is looking pretty clear.

Drinkable with some agave syrup added.

 

[pbj]

Well, this is either an awesome or stupid idea.  Took all the semi spoiled fruit out of my freezer, poured boiling water over it, and blended it.  Added the usual bakers yeast and dumped it into the finest empty 1.75L I had on hand.

30 minutes later, it had spewed out of the balloon pin holes all over my laundry room. 

 

Balloon replaced and it's sitting in a flower bed until this settles down.

[pbj]

Foaming away like crazy this morning.  I took it back inside.

[opt2not]

What fruits did you use? I'm assuming by the colour they're strawberries/raspberries?
I'm curious to what kind of poison this is going to yield. 

[pbj]

Mango, two plums, half a pound of red seedless grapes, half a cup of brown sugar.

[opt2not]

This weekend I opened a bottle for labour day, from my first batch a year-and-a-half ago. It was the White that I made with the mangos, and after aging for over a year it was very aromatic, but light on the taste. It definitely mellowed out on the alcoholic "bite", but the sweetness didn't really change. In fact I think it lost sweetness. It might be due to the cheap honey I bought.

My next batch is going to use some wildflower honey from Abbotsford, BC Canada. A friend of mine's mom is a genetic engineer and has been experimenting with breeding genetically modified bees to boost their productivity. Super bees...or the start of the Killer Bee apocalypse??  I was able to get a bunch of "organic" honey on the cheap, and plan on using it for my next mead.

[pbj]

My stuff never really had much flavor beyond "vaguely tastes like alcohol."  I think most of what we attribute to the wine and mead experience are post fermentation additives...

Need to crack open the last of it or push it onto my friends after they've had a couple.... getting tired of looking at it.

[Slippyblade]

If it lost sweetness, then it gained in alcohol.  That is how the yeast works, it east sugar and craps booze.  Wonderful little microbe.

[opt2not]

My stuff never really had much flavor beyond "vaguely tastes like alcohol."  I think most of what we attribute to the wine and mead experience are post fermentation additives...

Need to crack open the last of it or push it onto my friends after they've had a couple.... getting tired of looking at it.

Yeah I think this time around i'm going to experiment with the post additives, especially if I'm going to go with Mango again. That, and this time I'm going to use the less heavy yeast. My first batch I used the port-style yeast that made the mead really boozy (roughly 16% when I measured it).