trbig
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Feb 11, 2013
- Messages
- 337
- Reaction score
- 96
@ John... Anyone who can brew/ferment anything and not taste it at all for a whole year.. is a sign of a seriously sick mind!
I'm going to start up a batch of this tonight. Sams had 5lb bags of mandarin oranges for sale. I poured a glass of regular mead I've got aging and squeezed some juice from one of the mandarins into it. I ended up with almost all the juice from the fruit into the glass (Remember, they're pretty small) before I could have a nice "orangey" aftertaste to it. These mandarins have a nice thin skin and nearly zero white pith between the rind and fruit. I'll probably just slice up all 5 pounds and throw in the carboy to make 4 gallons mead. Also.. I detest anything with cloves, so those won't be added and cinnamon sticks go a long way, so I'll just add two and leave in the carboy.
I've had meads that used the D-47 in them and I could taste the yeast as much as I could taste the honey. Bleh!. I've had really really good luck with the 71B yeast with my wines and it seems to leave no taste of it being there, besides actually accentuating fruity flavors. (To my taste buds anyway) Plus, it's very low foam. I have never had it puke out the airlock yet.
My first basic mead used 3lbs of honey per gallon and I used a Red Star champaign yeast (Equivilent to the EC-1118 yeast) which came out a very dry .990 at just over 15% alc. It's been 6 months with that batch and it's just now getting to the tolerable drinking age to where I can taste something besides jet fuel. So.. This batch, I'll bump up Malkore's honey ratio of 2.5 lbs per gallon to 3 lbs like I used before. 71B yeast is supposed to crap out at the 14% level, just a little short of what I had with the champaign yeast and hopefully leave some sweet, but not sickeningly sweet. I'm not against back-sweetening with some K-meta and sorbate if it turns out too dry. I'll add some energizer and nutrient at the beginning and look at racking to a secondary off the fruit/cinnamon after a month or so if it's stabilized. I'll post back later with the results and probably post a pic of the must this evening if I get it made up.
Thanks for the recipe, Malkore.
I'm going to start up a batch of this tonight. Sams had 5lb bags of mandarin oranges for sale. I poured a glass of regular mead I've got aging and squeezed some juice from one of the mandarins into it. I ended up with almost all the juice from the fruit into the glass (Remember, they're pretty small) before I could have a nice "orangey" aftertaste to it. These mandarins have a nice thin skin and nearly zero white pith between the rind and fruit. I'll probably just slice up all 5 pounds and throw in the carboy to make 4 gallons mead. Also.. I detest anything with cloves, so those won't be added and cinnamon sticks go a long way, so I'll just add two and leave in the carboy.
I've had meads that used the D-47 in them and I could taste the yeast as much as I could taste the honey. Bleh!. I've had really really good luck with the 71B yeast with my wines and it seems to leave no taste of it being there, besides actually accentuating fruity flavors. (To my taste buds anyway) Plus, it's very low foam. I have never had it puke out the airlock yet.
My first basic mead used 3lbs of honey per gallon and I used a Red Star champaign yeast (Equivilent to the EC-1118 yeast) which came out a very dry .990 at just over 15% alc. It's been 6 months with that batch and it's just now getting to the tolerable drinking age to where I can taste something besides jet fuel. So.. This batch, I'll bump up Malkore's honey ratio of 2.5 lbs per gallon to 3 lbs like I used before. 71B yeast is supposed to crap out at the 14% level, just a little short of what I had with the champaign yeast and hopefully leave some sweet, but not sickeningly sweet. I'm not against back-sweetening with some K-meta and sorbate if it turns out too dry. I'll add some energizer and nutrient at the beginning and look at racking to a secondary off the fruit/cinnamon after a month or so if it's stabilized. I'll post back later with the results and probably post a pic of the must this evening if I get it made up.
Thanks for the recipe, Malkore.