Racked my first batches of mead late last night. Sack sweet, cinnamon nutmeg and vanilla bean. Got my fist taste of each. The cinnamon one seemed a bit watery, sack sweet was sweet (at least it didnt taste like sack) and the vanilla was so great I almost fell out of my chair. Oh, vanilla. I know I can never go wrong with you. Anyone who drinks this will probably have to be poured into the car and dumped on their porch. I took 3 whole vanilla beans from health food store and sliced them down the pod, pulled all the seed guts out and then cut the outer part into one inch or less chunks. I crammed all this into a shot glass and covered with vodka. Covered the glass with another glass for 2 days, then added everything to a one gallon jug of mead. One neat side effect of the vanilla parts is that they acted as a fining agent. Within a day and a half, the jug of vanilla was the clearest of the bunch and still is. Original mead was a 3 gallon batch of sack sweet that got SNA and stirred every couple days for a month. Now one month in 3 separate gallon jugs with flavor additions. I will give them all another month now that they are off the lees, then bottle the vanilla and cinnamon. Probably another couple months bulk age for sack sweet. I also siphoned a first attempt at a Welchs grape juice wine off and it was OK. Different group for that though. I have a 5 gallon mead from another recipe to move and a 5 gallon braggot. Hope those are good too. The braggot smelled wonderfull when I first threw it together. Munich malt is the bomb.
Posted on: Sun, 18 Jan 2015 20:02:36 +0000