Mead Recipies

[Alan]

I blended together some Snozzberry and Mead a few weeks ago, letting it sit and finish fermentation at the moment and will probably bottle in a week or so. The honey that Hayne was kind enough to send me has set in fermintation for a bit over two months with two rackings, if all works out as planned it should be a very sweet mead with an alcohol content of no more than 13%.

The first batch of mead has been split amongst family and friends for testing and aging. Early tasting of the mead has been positive, but the alcohol content may be a bit disagreable at nearly 18%, a mistake that I will not make in the future.

Five bottles are setting in storage now. One bottle for every harvest celebration for the next five years.

[mnjrutherford]

Snozzberry? Where did you locate that? Or is it a blend? Sounds like your bottling pretty fast. Ours was still bubbling after 6 months. We didn't bottle until about 18 months out. The blueberry we are processing at the moment has been going since last June.

[Alan]

Snozzberry is a mix of blueberry, blackberry, raspberry, and apple.

I've been using mostly fast acting yeast as an experiment. Two months of fermentation usually seems to do the trick.

I'll be playing with some different yeasts this summer and fall to compare.

[mnjrutherford]

OooO, that does sound interesting! Fast acting yeast? You mean as in the packets you get at the grocery store?

[Alan]

No, mostly Lavlin D-45 and the such, quick and steady fermentations. It does make things a little easier, but the alcohol content is quite high and I'd like to get it down a bit, I've got a nice stock of about 14 other types of yeast though to work with this summer so I can experiment with those and see what I enjoy the most.

[mnjrutherford]

Outstanding! You are way more into the details of the process than we are! I'm looking forward to hearing your results. =o)