I took a hydrometer reading today: 1.124, it was 1.130 when this batch started. It’s bubbling at about 1 bubble/37 seconds. This is a very slow ferment.
I’ve noticed it’s been a very slow ferment; there’s been steady but very slow bubbling right from the start. I was concerned it might even be stuck so during the first three days I shook it up a number of times. Reading various forums online since then suggests that might have been a mistake; the aromatics in the honey are very sensitive early on and shaking it may have compromised the taste. Mind you, the hydrometer reading hasn’t changed much so there’s hopefully still enough honey in there to recapture what scents/tastes I may have shaken off.
I topped up the jug with some spring water to reduce the amount of airspace in the jug. That’s pushed the raisins, which have bloated up like little grapes, to the top of the jug. Some of them, as you can see in the picture, are sitting on top of each other. If they don’t sink again after a bit I may just start removing them. (I hate the taste of raisins.)
A couple of hypotheses as to why this is such a slow ferment:
• I didn’t use any chemical nutrients; I used lemon juice, raisins, and jasmine tea instead.
• The high sugar content given the amount of honey I put into one gallon; yeast doesn’t like an overabundance of sugars as that inhibits their growth.
I’d be curious to hear anyone else guess as to why this is such a slow ferment.
Recipe
2 kg (4.4 lbs) of Honey
2.5 Litres of spring water
Juice of 1 lemon
A cup of very strong jasmine tea (take the tea leaves out, leave a few jasmine blossoms in)
1 package of Lalvin EC-1118 yeast
1 snack sized box of raisins (no additives)
So far the two meads I’ve made aren’t going to be very sweet. I was thinking I’d like to try my hand at a sweet one and I really wanted to try a mead made with Jasmine tea. I also wanted to try to make a mead using all natural ingredients.
The juice of the lemon is for the acid. The nutrients for the yeast come from the raisins. The tea is primarily for the tannins but I left some of the jasmine blossoms in the must for flavour.
I took a hydrometer reading: 1.130
The pictures show:
1 Jasmine tea with blossoms floating on top
2 Strong loose leaf jasmine tea, these leaves were discarded
3 The must: honey, water and lemon juice
4 Raisins; I only used one box
5 The must sealed with the airlock
6 Raisins sitting on the bottom of the jug
7 Foaming bubbles are the result of the pitched yeast and 6 minutes of shaking the jug
I racked the Earl Grey-Lemon Mead tonight. It was still bubbling, but slowly; 1 bubble every 35-40 seconds. I made another strong cup of Earl Grey tea and added the zest and juice from one lemon; just like I did when I first mixed it.
You can see what the lees looked like after syphoning. I racked it into a Canadian Gallon jug thinking it would be good to have more than less of this flavoured mead; melomel. The hydrometer read 1.004 after racking and topping up with the tea, lemon and about a litre of spring water. You can see all this in the pictures below.
I also had a little taste. It was truly awful! I’m hoping it ages well. There was no sweetness to it at all. I was tempted to add some more honey but decided to wait and see how it changes in another month when I’ll rack it again.
It’s been just over a month since I first made this, my first batch of mead. You can see in the pictures there was some accumulation of sediment and there was a little “white stuff” sitting on top of the mead in the Carboy.
After I moved the Carboy to a table top to get it ready for syphoning the white stuff cleared right up. It turned out to be just some incompletely popped carbon dioxide bubbles.
Since I only have one Carboy I racked it into my white brewing bucket then back again into the Carboy. I was concerned that I might get oxygen into my mead doing this. (I’ve read many warnings online to avoid oxygenating the mead when racking because it could ruin the taste.) I tried to minimize this by priming the racking tubing, as you can see in one of the pictures, by filling it up with spring water just before I started syphoning. This made it a virtually splash-free process and I didn’t have to start the syphoning by sucking on the tube which might introduce bacteria from my mouth into the mead. See the video below:
I topped it up with about 2L of spring water to minimize the surface area of the mead exposed to air in the Carboy. Also, since the fermenting has slowed down significantly, less carbon dioxide is needed to push out any air that got into the Carboy during racking. You can see the result in the last picture in the gallery above.
It’s still slightly carbonated. The taste is improving but it’s not there yet. There’s something of a bite to the finish that I think will clear up over the next few months. I’ll rack it again in about a month.
Also, I took a hydrometer reading: 1.040. After topping up with 2L of water the hydrometer read 1.036.
I bought a proper stopper and airlock, sanitized them, topped it up with a little bit of spring water and took a hydrometer reading: 1.030.
I’m going to leave it in the primary for at least another week. It’s still bubbling and churning. Getting about 1 bubble every 10 seconds now. I suspect the longer ferment time is due to:
– I used 1 package of yeast for 1 gallon, last batch had 2 packages for 5 gallons.
– The lemon juice, zest and tea have given the yeast more to chew on in a happier environment.
I’ll be putting a proper airlock and stopper on it tomorrow. Depending on the intensity of the bubbling I might also rack it into an Imperial Gallon jug.
We stumbled upon an old one gallon jug in the house so we decided to make Lemon-Earl Grey Tea Mead.
As I’ve learned and read more about making mead I’ve discovered that many people add some lemon juice and tea as a matter of course in every batch. Whatever kind of tea you like works; sometimes folks mix two different kinds of tea in one batch of mead.
The lemon juice adds acid which makes for a happier environment for the yeast. The tea adds tannins which act as nutrients for the mead. Also, the acid and tannins make for a more flavourful mead.
In this case I also wanted to capture the flavour of the tea and the lemons in the mead. I read a great many lemon mead recipes online. Some add as few as one lemon some as much as a couple of litres of lemon juice. Here’s the recipe I’ve decided to create.
1 1/3 kg (3 lbs) of honey (store bought this time)
zest from 1 lemon (repeat in the secondary)
juice from 1 lemon (discard the white pith; repeat in the secondary)
1 cup of very strong (2 tea bags) Earl Grey Tea (from Harrods in England, add hot water and let steep until lukewarm; add 2 more tea bags in the secondary)
1 teaspoon yeast nutrient (I may replace this with a handful of raisins in the next batch)
1 package of yeast (Lalvin EC-1118)
NB: Wash the whole lemon well. Sanitize it with the rest of your equipment. Rince well again in clean water.
There’s a trick to juicing a lemon. Cut it in half and use a teaspoon. Squeeze the lemon around the teaspoon as you saw it back and forth to get all the pulp and juice out of it.
Mixing it all together
First I boiled spring water in a clean kettle. I used that to make the strong Earl Grey tea.
I used some of the boiled water topped up with room temperature spring water to make some warm water. Then I prepared the yeast and yeast nutrient in two seperate glasses.
Take the remaining boiled water in a large pot. Add the honey. Mix well. Add the tea. Zest the lemon right into the pot then cut it in half and add all the juice. Pick out any pits you find in the must.
This is what the must looked like before I added the yeast:
Pour it all with a funnel, or syphon it over, into the gallon jug.
I took a hydrometer reading. SG: 1.120 or 1.140; ach, let’s call it 1.130; it was hard to read in the gallon jug.
Reading lots of online info about making mead paid off tonight big time. The stopper I bought for my airlock turned out to be too small for the gallon jug I’m using. I didn’t want to leave it open or cover it up because it could explode. So, having read the low-cost way other folks make airlocks, I used a balloon. I’ll get a proper stopper & airlock in a day or two; it’s a holiday weekend.
Here’s the result:
For The Flavour
In about a week I’ll rack this into another gallon jug. At that time I’ll also add the zest and juice of one lemon and throw in two Earl Grey Tea bags.
From what I’ve read I’ll probably always add the juice from one lemon and some tea to my future batches of mead. Since, in this case, I really want to capture the flavours of the tea and lemon I’m including the zest and more tea bags in the secondary as well.
The tea and lemon provide nutrients for the yeast. It turns out, so do raisins. As I make more mead I may wean myself off of the yeast nutrients and replace it with lemon juice, tea and raisins.
A Word About Sanitizing
I had to keep going back and sanitizing more equipment (spoon, glasses, knife, zester, etc.) because I forgot to include everything I’d need when I was sanitizing everything. Next time I’ll think it all through a little better and sanitize everything in one go.
A Word About Gallon Jugs
Unfortunately the gallon jug I’ve got is an American Gallon. Canadian Gallons are different.
1 US Gallon = 3.79 Litres
1 Imperial Gallon = 4.55 Litres
I’m disappointed that I’ve got a US gallon because the must smells and tastes awesome! I’ll likely only get 4 bottles out of it. An imperial gallon would have given me 5 or 6 bottles. 😥
September 30, 2012
dkuropatwa
DTK Mead 