Mead Lover's Digest #59 Fri 18 December 1992

Forum for Discussion of Mead Brewing and Consuming
John Dilley, Digest Coordinator

Contents:

Bentonite (John Gorman)
Curds Awhey! (John Gorman)
rack and ruin (Mark. Gooley)

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Date: Thu, 17 Dec 92 16:18:58 EST 
From: john@rsi.com (John Gorman)
Subject: Bentonite 

Thanks for the suggestion to use bentonite. I had five gallons of
stubborn mead that hadn't even begin to clarify after 4 months.

I then added bentonite. Boil 2 cups of water in a saucepan.
While boiling, slowly sprinkle and stir in 5 tsp of bentonite.
Cover and let stand for 24 hours. Add during racking.

After a week, it had clarified some. I thought that maybe the
mead had too much stuff in it to flocculate in one shot.
I was right! When I racked and added bentonite a second time,
the mead suddenly became crystal clear within 15 minutes!

Perhaps a bigger jolt of bentonite would do the whole job at once?

John Gorman john@rsi.com
Relational Semantics, Inc. 617-926-0979
17 Mount Auburn Street Watertown MA 02172 USA

Nothing happens.

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Date: Thu, 17 Dec 92 16:40:53 EST
From: john@rsi.com (John Gorman)
Subject: Curds Awhey! 

I tried a gallon of "milk and honey" mead. I used skim milk
to avoid greasy equipment. Since milk is already pasturized,
I mixed the ingredients cold: skim milk, honey, fermax, yeast.

Milk sure is nutritious! Within 24 hours there was a boiling
ferment. It curdled the milk and blew off 1/4 of the total
volume including most of the curds!

So, I will have "whey and honey" mead. As a further experiment,
I poured some milk into a glass of completed mead. It curdled.
Maybe cream can handle alcohol, but milk can't.

I'll let you know how it tastes!

John Gorman john@rsi.com
Relational Semantics, Inc. 617-926-0979
17 Mount Auburn Street Watertown MA 02172 USA

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Date: Thu, 17 Dec 92 22:23:12 MST
From: Mark. Gooley <mgooley@advtech.uswest.com>
Subject: rack and ruin 

A few weeks ago I began this:

Topical [sic] Melomel

5 quarts wildflower honey (about 15 lbs)
2 tsp gypsum
3 tsp yeast nutrient
1 tsp Irish Moss flakes
12 oz. can pineapple juice concentrate (Dole)
16 kiwi fruit (medium-large), peeled and mashed
1 lb ginger root (put through blender until fine, unpeeled)

20 minute boil of evrything but fruit & juice with 1.5 gallons water.
Concentrate and kiwis added at end and allowed to sit 15 minutes.
Dilution to 5.5 gallons in plastic bucket
Yeast: 2 packets (@ 5 grams) champagne yeast, Lalvin EC-1118,
reconstitued in 100ml 45 C water.
O.G: 1.099 at 80 F (say 1.105 at 60 F).

After a week, per Papazian (basically this is Barkshack Gingermead
with excess honey and ginger), I racked this to a 5-gallon carboy
though fermentation was still active. I'm beginning to think I
should have waited. Fermentation, nine days later, has slowed
and the yeast is sedimenting.

Advice needed do I need to rack this again once fermentation has
apparently stopped? should I bottle it and age it in bottles, age it
over the sediment, or rack it and age it in a fresh carboy? Also,
what's a good temperature for aging a mead of this type?

If this one works out okay, I plan to try it again with more fruit
and maybe a bottle of molasses. The added fruits are supposed to
be tropical, but the melomel will probably be more like topical (external
use, not for ingestion) at least for a while.

Mark.
mgooley@advtech.uswest.com

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End of Mead Lover's Digest

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