daemionfox 🦊So a few weeks back @tabbiewolf and @SpotWeld Brought me up 60 lbs or so of honey from Michigan.
After which, I got myself some pretty new barrels from a cooperage in Arkansas that makes stuff specifically for aging liquor.
So TODAY I... Well, going to start the first batch of mead I've done in 4 years.
So first, this is a cinnamon mead, which is pretty tasty. So First thing I needed to do (after pulling out all the equipment and spending 2 hours sanitizing everything) is brew the "tea"
This involves throwing an entire canister of cinnamon sticks into a mesh bag and putting it into a gallon of water on low heat. That'll sit like that for an hour or so.
Second, I need to get the honey ready. Since this honey has a high wax content we need to heat the honey up so we can pour it. So that goes into a water bath on top of a silicon pad to keep the jar off direct heat.
Honey poured like water, that worked really well. Now we simmer and scrape off the scum for an hour or so...
Cooling it down before the next step. Current temp is about 208 F / 99 C, gotta bring it down to 75F / 24 C before moving it to the fermenter and pitching the yeast
10 minutes later, temp is around 92 F / 33 C, so gonna keep cooling it for a bit longer.
Nice thing about this, is that there was very little skim on this batch. Usually with the commercial honeys I typically buy, there's a lot of scum that I skim off during the boil. Call it a cup or two of foam.
This time, even with all the wax, there was less than a half a cup of foam skimmed off.
Excellent.
Okay, so, brew is super concentrated, so I need to top it up with more water to hit that 3.25-3.5 ish gallon mark. Then yeast is pitched and I've thrown in the new Tilt Hydrometer.
And, so you ask, why did I put the fermenter in a shiny shiny Faraday cage?
Welcome to the Cave. I found a grow tent that fits a small shelving unit that'll basically house a year's worth of mead at a time. I've dropped a TiltPi server into the walls and a UV-C air purifier inside to combat any mold. It's a mini clean room.
And I'm basically done except for some small things. First is that as I kind of expected, the TiltPi doesn't have enough juice to get WIFI through the grow tent. The good news, is that my Fiber connection is about 10 feet away from the Cave.
So I need to pick up a small switch and a few meters of CAT6 cable.
It's been 2 months. Time for #meadWatch!
So here's a quick snapshot of the digital hydrometer's readings. The current SG is .997, which brings the ABV up to 9.32, which isn't the most potent mead I've done, but honestly, the goal isn't potency, it's drinkability.
Since this SG has been stable for 7 days now, I've started prepping the cask...
Cask prep basically just involves putting the dry cask in the sink, and filling it with hot water. Every couple of hours I need to top up the water. Why? Well, since the cask has been sitting dry, the wood has shrunk a little and this will make it swell up again and become water tight. If I just poured the mead into it, I'd lose half of it. It'll take a couple of days to seal.
Once the water level stops dropping, I'll empty it out, fill and empty it a few times (new cask, lots of sawdust and burnt bits inside), then I'll take it down and empty the mead into the cask and drive in the bung. Then we just gotta wait. For a cask this size, we're looking at a 6 month aging time.