| Date |
Comments |
| 7/14/2004 |
I pitted the peaches and pureed them in the blender.
Using a plastic primary bucket, I added the peach puree, water, pectic enzyme,
and yeast nutruent. I slowly added the honey while stiring vigorously.
According to the PA scale on the hydrometer, I had enough sugar for 10%
alcohol, which is a little light. I'll add more honey before I rack to a
carboy. I mixed everything about 9pm, and the yeast was happily eating away by
noon the next day. |
| 7/18/2004 |
I've been stirring the must every day, just to make
sure as much flavor from the peach pulp gets extracted as possible. I checked
the SG, and it's down to about 1.040 (5% PA), so about half of the sugar has
been consumed by the yeast. It's still bubbling away at a LOT of bubbles every
second or so. I'm going to try to have this batch finish at about 1.020, so
when it gets down to 1.020, I'll add an additional 8 oz of honey. I'll keep
doing this until the fermentation starts to slow down. |
| 7/22/2004 |
I noticed this morning that the fermentation is
starting to slow. When I get home this evening, I'll check the SG and see if
it's time to add some more honey. I imagine it is... I'm debating if I should
strain out the pulp and move to a glass carboy. I have an airlock on the
bucket, so I'm not real concerned, but I'll have to do it sooner or later. It
does appear that the longer I wait, the more the pulp is breaking up, so
waiting awhile longer might not be a bad thing.
The volume right now is
at about 4 1/2 gallon, and all I have are 3 gallon carboys, and a single 1
gallon (glass) jug. I imagine the volume will drop to about 4 gallon when I
remove the pulp. I'm considering keeping 3 gallons as the straight peach, and
possible adding some Blackberries to the one gallon jug. I just haven't quite
decided what Blackberry / Peach will taste like... Definitely have to think
about this some more!
Checked the SG, and it was down to .995 which
suprised me. If it was that low, I would have expected the fermentation to
stop, but it ws still going strong. I added about 4 lbs of honey and brought
the SG up to about 1.02. |
| 7/26/2004 |
I again checked the SG and it was again below 1.000
so I added more honey. I finished off the gallon jug (about 4 lbs) and brought
the gravity back to 1.02 again. That makes a total of approximately 16 lbs of
honey in this 4 1/2 gallon batch. I'm going to give it about 2 days then I'm
going to rack into a carboy and strain out all of the peach pulp. |
| 7/28/2004 |
This evening, I racked the mead from the primary to
glass carboys, straining out the larger pieces of the pulp. I ended up filling
a 3 gallon carboy and putting the remainder in a one gallon jug with 2 lbs of
blackberries. So, from here down, I'll split this into 2 sections. |
| |
|
Peach Melomel
| 7/29/2004 |
Everything is going strong this morning.
The SG as about 1.01 at the racking, and it's still bubbling away. There is
already about an inch of sediment (the fine peach pulp) on the bottom of the
carboy. I'm going to leave it as is till it finishes fermenting. |
| 8/24/2004 |
Finally racked this batch. There was
about 2" of peach pulp sediment in the bottom of the carboy and that created a
problem getting a full carboy. First, the SG was at 1.01, which is drier than I
want, so I added about 2 1/2 lbs of Burleson's generic clover honey. I didn't
re-check the SG, so I'm not sure what this brought it up to. I still had a lot
of free space, so I added a bunch of glass marbles which got the head space
closer (but not all the way) to where it needed to be. I didn't want to add
water and didn't have any thing else handy, so I finished the top up with some
apple juice (about 2 cups).
Overall, the SG sample tastes harsh! Big
alcohol bite, and the peach flavor is not very remarkable. I decided to add a
pinch of mint to the mixture. My guess is that I will need to add some acid to
this before it's done and possible some tannin. I'm going to let it set for
another month to see what the mint does to the flavor and at that point I'll
decide if I want to add lemon juice for acid and some tea for tannin. This
batch will probably need a LOT of aging before I think it's ready to bottle
(sure am glad I have a lot of space!). |
| 9/26/2004 |
Frementation is completely over, and has
been for awhile, do this batch doesn't seem to be clearing very well. So, I
racked to a clean carboy, added some sulfite and sorbate, and added a cup of
strong tea.
The SG was at 1.040 (right where I want it) and the overall
taste has improved a lot in the last month. It's by no means ready to drink,
but it shows a lot of improvement. The alcohol bite has mellowed a lot. I'm not
sure how to describe the taste, but it doesn't really taste like peach. It will
be interesting to see what this tastes like in a couple more months. |
| 1/9/2005 |
Bottled it!
I love time! It
still doesn't taste like peach, but the taste is mellowing nicely. I don't
generally like mead or wine when it's hot, but this is actually drinkable at
room temp. It's still has a slight harsh aftertaste, but given how this has
already mellowed, give it a year and it will be excellent. |
|
Blackberry
Peach Melomel
| 7/29/2004 |
Well, the new
concoction blew the stopper out of the bottle at about 10:30 last night.
Luckily, I heard it pop so I was able to clean up the mess and get it back
under an airlock. When I added the blackberries, I just put 2 lbs of
Blackberries in the blender, ground them up, and poured that into the 1 gallon
jug. After seeing how it's behaving, I should have used some cheese cloth and
squeezed out the pulp. Oh well, live and learn! |
| 8/8/2004 |
Fermentation has
slowed to a crawl and I decided it was time to rack off all the blackberry
slush. I used a metal strainer to capture all of the big matter. I pulled out a
good 2 cups of slush. I tested the SG and it was at the bottom of the scale,
which I think was 0.99. Definitely too dry for my taste, so I added some more
honey. I added about 2 lbs of Burleson's Clover honey. That brought it up to
about 1.03. |
| 12/19/2004 |
Well, I
finally decided it was time to get this stuff in the bottle. Let's see, what
can I say about it... how about...
Oh My
God!
This stuff is wonderful! It's like eating a liquid
piece of hard candy. I'm putting this stuff up for very special occasions! |
|
|