Reel Melomel
02/08/1999 22:17:39 Reel Melomel
Category : Mead
Recipe Makes : 1.0 gallons
Color (srm) : 3.3
Efficiency : 75%
Hop IBUs : 0
Ingredients
Malts/Sugars:
3.25 lb. Honey (3 lbs. clover honey and 4 ozs. wild flower honey)
Hops: None
Other:
2 cups apple cider
1/2 tsp. Burton water salt
1/2 tsp. acid blend
1 tsp. yeast nutrient
about 1/8 tsp. Irish Moss
1 Granny Smith apple
1 nectarine
Yeast:
One 7g packet "Special Dried Yeast" ale yeast
from a previous canned stout kit.
Procedure
Sanitized equipment in bleach solution.
Skinned and cut up the apple and nectarine into little pieces and
steeped in 2 cups apple juice for 25 minutes at around 160 degrees
F. Heated the 3 pound jug of honey in a water bath.
Added the honey, Irish Moss, Burton salt, yeast nutrient, acid
blend to 2 quarts water and brought to a boil for 15 minutes.
Skimmed protein off surface of wort.
Timed it all so the fruit and honey wort were done at the same
time.
Added the cider/fruit mix to the sanitized and rinsed fermenter.
Strained the honey wort into the fermenter. Added cold water to
fill the fermenter. Put the lid on the fermenter and put in the
refrigerator to cool off. After an hour it was still hot, so
moved to freezer. Room temperature in about an hour.
Put the packet of yeast in some warm tap water for about 5
minutes. Took a hydrometer reading in the fermenter with a
sanitized hydrometer. Reading for Original Gravity may be off,
since there was fruit floating on the top where I was trying to
read. Shook the fermenter well, pitched yeast, shook a bit more,
attached stopper with a foot and a half of blow-off hose.
After 1 week, racked melomel from the floating fruit and the yeast
sediment.
Log Entries
Date Started : 03/13/1995
Date Bottled : 04/30/1995
Starting Gravity : 1.124
Ending Gravity : 1.021
Alcohol content : 13.3%
3/13/95 Made the mead and put in the fermenter. Started at around
4:00pm. Pitched yeast at 7:20pm. By 11:30pm, bubbles and foam and
tiny bits of fruit were coming out of the blow-off hose.
3/15/95 It's been bubbling quite a bit for the last day and a half.
Looks fizzy in the fermenter. About 4 ounces of "kreusen" has blown
off, and just a little bit is still coming out of the hose.
3/16/95 Kreusen is falling. Replaced hose with a fermentation lock.
Still lots of fizzing, fruit is floating.
3/20/95 Racked at 1:10am, fruit went down the garbage disposal. Was
bubbling about once every 2 seconds before racking, with quite a bit
of fizzing. I could hear the fizzing when I removed the stopper. After
racking, started bubbling about twice every minute. By 4:30am, was
back up to one bubble every 3 seconds. Added 1/2 cup water after
racking to bring volume back up. I'll take that into consideration
when I measure the final specific gravity:
Actual F.G. = 1 + ((Measured F.G.-1) x (Final Vol/Initial Vol))
Actual F.G. = 1 + ((Measured F.G.-1) x (16 cups/15.5 cups))
Actual F.G. = 1 + ((Measured F.G.-1) x 1.032)
3/21/95 Still bubbling at about once every 3 seconds.
3/25/95 Bubbling at about once every 5 or 6 seconds.
4/4/95 Now bubbling maybe once every 5 or 10 minutes.
4/6/95 Racked... very rarely bubbling.
4/22/95 Seems to be clearing very nicely.
4/30/95 Bottled. Final S.G. was measured at 1.020. Formula above
gives a value of 1.021. Added some of the hydrometer sample to fill
the tenth bottle and primed with about one T of honey
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