NEXT! (the to-do list)

[Chevette Girl]

As of today I have a page and a half on my becoming-infamous Brew To Do list. I've got honey, I've got time, and in a week or two after I rack the red currant but before I harvest the wild grapes this year, I will have empty primaries. Now I'm trying to figure out what to do next... so, any votes on what brewlog you'd like to see next? Are there experimental results you'd particularly like to see? Some of these will require that I bottle or rack other batches to make room so I'd best pick one or two and get on it

This is just the 1-pg mead list, the wine list is the half-page, and I didn't include the wild apple cyser because that's pretty much inevitable once I get the apples thawed and squeezed...

Traditionals at 10% and 15%, clover and goldenrod side by side (should have goldenrod honey by mid-September)

Make a dry mead so I can figure out if I like it yet, lower-ABV so it doesn't need too much age

pH test – traditionals - one with lemons like I’ve done before, one with no acidity, one with controlled pH once meter is calibrated, track fermentation progress and pH (need to finally break and get pH meter calibrated)

yeast test, big batch of traditional, divided into 6: EC1118, K1V 1116, DC-47, 7B, bread yeast and whatever one I’ve forgotten, or maybe an ale yeast.

Braggot with the bottled cerveza wort

Water test – city out of tap, city boiled or left sitting, britta or softened, distilled, hard well water, track pH, SG and rehydrate yeast in appropriate waters

Backsweeten vs target SG with age – start two batches, one at lower grav than the other, stop the higher-grav one with chemicals and then stabilixe and backsweeten the other to match, bottle in small bottles, open in pairs to compare at 6 months, 1 year, etc, with age

Syllabub

Hopped tea mead

Big metheglyn

JAO side by side with clover and goldenrod

Jasmine mead

Coffee mead

Tannin experiment, tea vs grape tannin

Mustard powder in something, maybe with marshmallows (maybe another JAO-style Chevette Weirdomel?).

Chocolate JAO (add cocoa)

Chocolate in primary vs secondary

Chipotle pepper mead​

 

[Soyala_Amaya]

Mustard powder in something, maybe with marshmallows (maybe another JAO-style Chevette Weirdomel?)

Jasmine mead

Coffee mead

These are my votes! The JAO because I haven’t seen anything done with mustard before, and the marshmallows sound interesting too, the jasmine because it actually sounds nice and I might do a floral mead here soon and I love seeing other people do it first J, and the coffee because the one I did not too long ago screwed up so hard core I’m STILL messing with it and I know you continue your brew logs to the very end…so that one’s selfish, but I want to see someone else’s finished notes to see if it was just me or if coffee is really a funky ingredient!

Can’t wait to see what you decide! I love following your logs, you keep really good notes for my own To-Brew list.

 

[Chevette Girl]

I've always loved the taste and aroma of jasmine tea so it seemed logical to mix it with honey and let the yeast have a go... another friend of mine voted for that too, so that's two votes including Jasmine so far

I have parsnips in the freezer, originally on the wine list but I suppose those would make a nice mead too...

 

[Soyala_Amaya]

Jasmine would be a really light flavor though. I would think you'd have to do some in primary and pop some back into secondary too to keep it all from being blown off during fermentation. I use them in teas and I have to use a 2-1 ratio to taste the dried jasmine through the white tea base I use (1 oz tea leaves, 2 oz jasmine, + whatever I've used).

 

[Tokala]

I'd love to see the chocolate in primary vs secondary. I find the whole subject of when to add additional flavors very interesting, and I want to try chocolate in my next mead.

 

[Chevette Girl]

Jasmine would be a really light flavor though. I would think you'd have to do some in primary and pop some back into secondary too to keep it all from being blown off during fermentation. I use them in teas and I have to use a 2-1 ratio to taste the dried jasmine through the white tea base I use (1 oz tea leaves, 2 oz jasmine, + whatever I've used).

I found a brand of Jasmine tea (in bags) that doesn't get bitter, it's also quite inexpensive, so I grab some every time I'm in Chinatown... I don't know what kind of tea is in with the jasmine though, all I know is it's caffeinated enough that I have to be careful with it. My plan for that was to make a huge batch of tea (probably take two or three fills of my Brown Betty teapot) and use that as the water in the must, then when it comes time to backsweeten, make a very strong batch to mix with the honey I add...

I'd love to see the chocolate in primary vs secondary. I find the whole subject of when to add additional flavors very interesting, and I want to try chocolate in my next mead.

The one I didn't mention was nibs vs cocoa powder, I have a friend who's a chocolatier and can get me nibs, so my thought with that was to make four gallons of musts and add nibs to one in primary and another in secondary, cocoa to one in primary and the other in secondary...

 

[AToE]

The one I didn't mention was nibs vs cocoa powder, I have a friend who's a chocolatier and can get me nibs, so my thought with that was to make four gallons of musts and add nibs to one in primary and another in secondary, cocoa to one in primary and the other in secondary...

Do you have a plan for equalizing the contact time?

 

[Chevette Girl]

Do you have a plan for equalizing the contact time?

Hadn't considered that yet, thanks! I try not to dwell on all the details before I decide to do it... I suppose I'd leave it on the stuff in secondary for as long as primary lasted... but it might not work so well with cocoa powder.

 

[TheAlchemist]

Traditionals at 10% and 15%, clover and goldenrod side by side (should have goldenrod honey by mid-September)

Water test – city out of tap, city boiled or left sitting, britta or softened, distilled, hard well water, track pH, SG and rehydrate yeast in appropriate waters

Syllabub

JAO side by side with clover and goldenrod

Jasmine mead

Tannin experiment, tea vs grape tannin

Chocolate JAO (add cocoa)

Chocolate in primary vs secondary

Chipotle pepper mead​

Any of the above get my vote. Especially water test, chocolate test and Syllabub!

 

[Tokala]

The one I didn't mention was nibs vs cocoa powder, I have a friend who's a chocolatier and can get me nibs, so my thought with that was to make four gallons of musts and add nibs to one in primary and another in secondary, cocoa to one in primary and the other in secondary...

Yes please. I need a bigger carboy.

 

[schlapppy]

I'm excited to see that Backsweeten vs target SG is still on your list. I'm obviously bias, but would be happy to put a vote for this ;D


Next would probably be the Water Test

 

[wildoates]

I'm hoping to have another mead party in early November, and syllabub will definitely be on the menu--I just have to decide which of many recipes to try.

 

[Chevette Girl]

I'm hoping to have another mead party in early November, and syllabub will definitely be on the menu--I just have to decide which of many recipes to try.

Yeah, that'll be another thing to think about when I do get around to it... Maybe I'll do it for Xmas or something, I don't know if it'd be appreciated by my Thanksgiving crowd

 

[Chevette Girl]

So... I got my honey money and now have a bucket each of clover and goldenrod honey, I'll probably go back for another bucket of goldenrod before I run out of money

I then picked red currants and apples and wild grapes and have been getting all the harvests dealt with, those were all already on the unspoken to-do list... cyser batch one is now in secondary, cyser batch two has been started and I'll finish once I get the rest of the apples processed and pressed, the red currant's in secondary... along with a bunch of bottling and racking and other maintenance crap that needed doing before I could start anything new, and once I'm done with the apples I had to freeze when I injured my hand, the wild grape wine should be ready for secondary and I should be ready to bottle the crabapple cyser from last year and the pear-raisin wine from the year before as well as a few of the odd 1-gal batches still kicking around... I got the jalapeno wine, Chevette Weirdomel, multifruit second run, mulled second run crabapple cyser, cran-orange JAO and raspberry JAO bottled. I added fining agents to a few of the 1-gal batches I'm getting impatient with and bottled a couple others without bothering (mostly in flip-tops or screw tops so if I want to pour off clarifired wine later, I can, without worrying about having wasted corks).

I'm thinking 1-gal batches of coffee (with goldenrod) and jasmine (with clover), and then if I can find something I can bottle currently residing in my 3-gal carboys, side by side 3-gal batches of goldenrod and clover traditionals at 10%, and if I can clear out two more carboys, at 15% (maybe just 1-gal batches at higher ABV). If I ever get even MORE of my 1-gal batches cleared and bottled, I'll try either water test, chocolate test or target SG vs backsweetening...

...need to make another list of what's clear and ready for bottling, what needs fining or filtration, and I really need to take the time to taste before bottling and decide whether to backsweeten instead of bottling things dry!

 

[chiguire]

CG,

You are one of the most experimental, brave, and eccentric homebrewers I have ever been exposed to.

I want to pick your brain sometime, bounce some ideas your way and get some feedback.

Your creativity never ceases to amaze.

P.S. I have a soft spot for parsnips. I grew up growing them in the family garden, and as an adult, I can't help buying them when I see them in the supermarket. They are truly an unappreciated vegetable.

 

[AToE]

Crazy people are the ones that often stumble upon something amazing! You think Joe figured he'd be creating the most popular mead recipe in (probably) the world when he first came up with JAO?!

Seriously though, some of what you make is so far out of the box from what I do that we really do have to exchange some meads sometime. I think we can do it through Puro and have no problem with shipping since we don't have to go through customs.

 

[Chevette Girl]

;D The trick is, don't be afraid to try things. My hubby is big on the line, "What's the worst that could happen?" (I so married the right guy). Try something out there. Even if you fail, what did you lose? (probably the one positive thing I came out of school with was an acceptance of my own failures). So I made some wine that's kind of bleah. I'll leave it in the bottle for a year or three and if it's still not so great to drink, well, I will always have an endless supply of unique cooking wines. Yay for slow-cookers.

I'm also almost compulsive when it comes to tweaking things, I wanna know what happens if you do that just like last time, but change THIS one aspect... I also don't think I have a particularly discerning palate so sometimes I try to deconstruct things so I can pick out the differences for myself in the hopes that I'll be able to remember it later if I need to discern it under more complex conditions.

Some things I just have to prove to myself (science background and all), and some things I've read about and it piqued my interest. Others came out of the blue... the Jalapeno wine was because that was the only darned thing to come out of my garden that year and I wanted to make something special out of them... then I went and ignored the fact that it stuck at 1.060 for 4 years... benign benevolence?

I definitely want to try parsnip wine sometime, it's been on the list for years before I'd even written down the list... I love the flavour of them and my primary reference book (Joy of home winebrewing by Terry Garey) even has a recipe, even if all her recipes do acid up front even for a mead. I will definitely post a brewlog when I finally get to it.

Often it's what I've got access to. Red currant, pear, crabapple and wild grapes are free (although a little labour intensive), and all make great wine, so why wouldn't I want to do it whenever I can? The apples are a new idea, and I hate wasting things... and I'm really bad for trolling the supermarket discount bins for interesting things I can ferment.

The order in which things get done on the to-do list is a fine balance between dealing with the accumulation of things I've been collecting (ie, I need to make room in the freezer again), finding time to get finished stuff bottled, and getting the not quite finished stuff finished, and dealing with new stuff that pops up before I get to old stuff...

 

[Loadnabox]

... benign benevolence?

Think of it as practicing Medsen's art form

P.S.

I would avoid the marshmallow mead. My marshmallow fluff mead never retained the nice marshmallow flavor, and stalled out really early.

As I came to learn, marshmallows and marshmallow fluff have egg whites which cause stress to yeast and can stall fermentation. I found scientific articles saying such :/

My Mallow Out Mead is going to need YEARS to be drinkable at all, if ever.

 

[MattHollingsworth]

Like Schlappy, I'd be most curious about the water test and the backsweetening vs targeted SG tests.

 

[Chevette Girl]

I really want to do the yeast abuse test, but that could just be my sadistic streak. ;D I don't think I'll have carboys for that for a while but it could be an interesting thing to share around if I ever get my arse to MCI (I've got another friend trying to convince me to get a passport, it might even work one of these years).