Greetings from Denver! I have been a homebrewer for a few years, more recently combining my hobby with business in the form of developing business plans for two brewpubs and investing in a third (Renegade here in Denver). A Mead & Food Paring class at the annual homebrewing convention in Seattle earlier this year had me stung with the Mead bug. My first one, pictured here a month ago, is a big one, with 14 lbs of honey and 10 pounds of peaches. It came out really nice, and though I bottled it a bit premature, it is clarifying nicely in the bottles (any suggestions on what to do with the sediment at the bottom would be helpful). It is huge - 19% ABV - but the intense peach flavor fools the tongue into thinking "sweet." My OG was 1.128, crazy big... fermentation stuck at 1.086, so I then pitched two packets of Red Star Pasteur and did a daily shaking. I know this is kind of brute force fermenting, and I certainly will learn more finesse in the future. I ended up at 0.980 and is most delicious. I cannot imagine how wonderfully it will age in the coming months and years if I can keep my hands off of it.
I also have a Bochet (1 gal) that has been in primary for three months, a very interesting experience of boiling honey down to hard crack stage in my kitchen and having swarms of bees and wasps around my windows and vents.
Anyway, did not mean to turn this into a dissertation of my first attempts, only to say "hello" and I hope to learn from and contribute to this forum and its members.
Cheers!
I also have a Bochet (1 gal) that has been in primary for three months, a very interesting experience of boiling honey down to hard crack stage in my kitchen and having swarms of bees and wasps around my windows and vents.
Anyway, did not mean to turn this into a dissertation of my first attempts, only to say "hello" and I hope to learn from and contribute to this forum and its members.
Cheers!
