I bottled four 1-gallon batches, three meads and an apple wine, yesterday.<\/p>\n
2005 Apple Wine<\/strong><\/p>\n I harvested 13 lb of Liberty apples from my backyard, in 2005, and turned them, along with a gallon of Trader Joe’s Gravestein apple juice, into a batch of apple wine. It’s got a rich golden color, a wonderful aroma, and it’s very smooth with just a hint of apple. <\/p>\n My first mead – with genuine Costco honey!<\/strong><\/p>\n The meads were each a little different. One of them was part of the first batch of mead I ever made. The fermentation stuck at SG = 1.030, and it was three years old in February 2006. I decided to split the batch, stabilizing and bottling half as a sweet mead, and oaking the other half. It began to ferment again after I racked it onto the oak chips, and by the time I bottled yesterday it was a dry oaked mead that’ll be five years old in February. Even though it was dry (SG = 1.000), it had a lively sweet taste to it, possibly because of the high alcohol content (about 14%, by volume). The aroma was wonderful and powerful. <\/p>\n A mead like Brother Adam used to make<\/strong><\/p>\n I made the next mead the way Brother Adam made his. He was a monk at Buckfast Abbey, famous for keeping (and breeding) honeybees and making mead. His method was to make it in large batches and age in oak casks for 7 years. He used soft (distilled or rain) water and a mild honey, like clover. He aimed for a lower alcohol content than most \u00e2\u20ac\u201c about 8 or 9% ABV \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and shunned most additives, though he often used cream of tartar and, for dry meads, “a little” citric acid. He boiled the honey-water mixture for 1-2 minutes and fermented cool (65F \u00e2\u20ac\u201c 70F) with a pure yeast culture like Madeira or Malaga.<\/p>\n I didn’t have an oak cask handy (or the honey to fill it, or the space to store it, or …), and I have<\/em> seen the inside of a rain barrel. So I used tap water and fermented in a plastic pail. I decided that 0.5 tsp = “a little” citric acid for a 1-gallon batch, and I added 1 tsp of cream of tartar. 2 lb of clover honey brought the SG to 1.074, which at about 10% potential alcohol, was slightly higher than the 8-9% I was aiming for. I boiled the honey-water mixture for about a minute and fermented cool with C\u00c3\u00b4te des Blances yeast (I had never heard of Madeira or Malaga). So far, it has aged for a little over 3 years, including 9 months on oak chips. I don’t think I’ll be able to wait seven years!<\/p>\n I thought I could smell<\/em>, not taste, the oak in this one. It was smooth and I enjoyed it.<\/p>\n A wine-like mead<\/strong><\/p>\n The last batch of mead was the most wine-like of the lot, and the only one I didn’t oak. I started this one in March 2004 with clover honey from The Honey Store. I added tannin and tartaric acid to make a dry mead with 12% alcohol. The aroma was distinct from the other two; I would say “fresher” and I thought there was a hint of sweetness in the taste.<\/p>\n So now I’ve got twenty bottles of four different wines and meads to enjoy. Time to stop writing and start sipping!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I bottled four 1-gallon batches, three meads and an apple wine, yesterday. 2005 Apple Wine I harvested 13 lb of Liberty apples from my backyard, in 2005, and turned them, along with a gallon of Trader Joe’s Gravestein apple juice, into a batch of apple wine. It’s got a rich golden color, a wonderful aroma, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,22,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apple-wine","category-mead","category-tasting"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t