#no.070723

I started the batch last July. I can't remember when I put the spices in but it was well after it cleared. It's been aging for 6.5 months at room temperature (which speeds up the aging process a bit).

It tastes lovely. The cumin is very present in the smell. The cardamom and coriander come forward more in the flavor. Subtly sweet, like a Chardonnay, but with a much smoother mouthfeel. Deceptively smooth. No alcohol bite at all. Goes down like water but it's at least 15% alcohol.

It's been fermenting 8 days so far.

My unflavored Yosemite wildflower honey mead is finally starting to clear up. it took WAY longer to clear than the tea mead I made using the same honey. According to r/mead, tea meads are known to clear faster than plain meads, though I don't know if it's something about the tea plant specifically, or if meads made with herbal "teas" also clear faster than plain meads. Perhaps it's something to do with the added acidity?

The avocado honey mead tastes very good mixed the maple wine. Really smoothes it out. Since the maple has a woody taste, it's almost like mixing it with the maple wine makes the avocado taste more "oaked."

The maple wine also tastes good with that Yosemite wildflower honey I flavored with ayurvedic spices (I just realized I've been misspelling ayurvedic as aryuvedic this whole time). It's not quite a smooth as the avocado honey mead. I mean, it tastes very smooth on it's own, but the maple wine is too astringent to drink and the Yosemite mead doesn't soften it as effectively as the avocado does.

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I think I'm going to try oaking the lapsang souchong infused mead.

to more easily transfer samples of my brews into the beaker I use for hydrometer readings

to siphon liquid from bottles that are too full to fit my auto-siphon into without spilling

Months ago I tried ordering a glass turkey baster for these same purposes and immediately broke it. Lesson learned.

Today I'm adding my last packet of Super-Kleer to uh... a bunch of things. Yosemite Wildflower Honey Mead No.070723 Sage Blossom Honey Mead No.090123 Cactus Blossom Honey Mead No.092423. Those were all gallon batches but only one of them is still in a gallon bottle, so measuring out the correct amounts of the fining agent is a bit of a pain.

I'm using Lanvin D47 yeast for my two new batch, which can ferment up to 15% alcohol.

My Yosemite honey mead got a Brix reading of between 25 to 25.5. If the yeast hadn't already started fermenting would mean there was enough honey for the batch to reach 14%. Since it's already been actively fermenting for a 2 days, that means there was probably enough honey in there initially for the batch to go all the way to 15%, provided the batch doesn't stall out.

My Hojicha tea mead got a Brix reading of 27. Again, if I'd taken the reading when I was supposed to that number would mean there was enough honey for the batch to reach 15%. It's been really active the last couple days, so there was already some alcohol in there when I took this reading, meaning I put slightly more honey in there than the yeast can handle (though you never know with yeast).

My honey arrived yesterday! It was very, very thoroughly packaged. Each individual 16oz jar was wrapped in a 24" × 60" (60cm × 152cm) piece of construction paper before going into the bed of biodegradable packing peanuts.

Rice wine on the left, Yosemite wildflower honey in the middle, Sierra Foothills wildflower honey with Hojicha tea (Japanese roasted green tea -> my favorite) on the right. Bought D47 yeast, which is supposed to preserve the natural honey flavors a little better than the EC-1118 I've been using.

Got a roll of cute little labels, so I could put info like gravity readings on the batches, so I can properly calculate my final alcohol percentage, except then I broke my hydrometer.