More mead ...

Over the past couple of weeks, a steady stream of buckets containing a sticky mess of cappings and honey have been arriving here from FIL.  Now., I know I have subscribed to the view that you need to use the best honey to make the best mead,  but having strained off most of the honey it seemed worth a go with the washings from the sticky mass that remained.

I got two gallons of must.  Surprisingly different colour from honey from different parts of the hive.  The first, lighter, cleaner jar I set fermenting by pitching in a rehydtated sachet of sweet wine yeast I had to hand. The second jar was a bit murkier, but I had heated it to 75C, and added a Campden tablet so that it could wait until I could order more yeast.

Today, both batches are fermenting !  The seond batch, despite being doubly sterilised by heat and Campden tablet.  The equipment and demijon were  all all washed out with a sterilising solution made with Campden tablets too. I wonder how the yeast survived that, what yeast it is and where it came from.  I'll just have to hope it does a decent job, too late to go back now !

Yet another bucket of sticky slops arrived today ...

I racked off these two gallons of mead last night. The colour difference is still quite marked. Both have fermented fully, leaving quite a dry result. So, whatever yeast got into the second gallon must have been quite potent - I thought it might die before reaching wine levels of alcohol.

Tastes a bit rough ... still needs a goodly while to mature I think.

The world is sticky! The bucket sent to me by FIL had been left hanging around for a while by him, then by me. The honey crystallised into one mass with the remains of the cappings and who knows what. A jar of decent honey ran out after hanging it up in a straining bag in the warm kitchen whilst the Christmas cake baked. The rest I've dissolved out into a gallon of rather too sweet stickiness in a demijohn. Now I need to find a really strong yeast - according to the hydrometer, there's enough sugar to ferment out to 18%, which should hopefully mean I can get it to 15% with plenty of residual sweetness.

That rather sweet batch has stopped fermenting now; I racked it off at the weekend and it was still pretty sweet - I'll need to take the hydrometer to it to find out how much alcohol I have.

One of the earlier batches got sampled last month at the bodger's ball - with a few enthusiastic helpers it was gone in no time, and very tiddly we were for it

After being semi-forgotten in a demijohn for years, I bottled the sweet mead a couple of weekends ago. It is dangerously easy to drink and very alcoholic. I found myself wearing a silly grin after just one glass