I’ve just bottled up exactly and precisely 50 standard 12-oz brown glass beer-bottles of what I can only hope is mead.
I’ve never made mead before, and I’ve only had it once, but on the strength of what I remember my old boss Jeanne’s mead having tasted like I decided to make some of my own. As I recall, it was basically a sparkling dry white wine with a slight honey flavor.
As I was bottling, I certainly got a serious whiff of white wine scent. Enough so that it was kind of off-putting. I’m not the biggest of wine fans; in fact it can truly be said that I find most wine, and especially dry reds to be akin to something you’d inflict upon someone in a batsu game
For clarification, there had been a quiz show going on and every girl who answered a question right added an unpleasant food to a blender and the girls who got all the answers wrong had to drink a horrible smoothie made out of the mishmash of weird foods.
Anyway, being as I’m definitely not a big wine fan, I’m currently a little bit apprehensive about the fact that I have 50 beer bottles of the stuff aging in the basement. According to my recipe book, it won’t be fit to drink until around New Year’s anyway, so there’s no real way to tell right now, plus also I might not be the best person to judge on it.
I sipped on the wee bit of the leftover mead that didn’t make it into the bottles (about four tablespoons worth) and I think it is going to be okay. There are no foul flavors that would indicate contamination, and it’s not noxiously sweet nor gaggingly sour, nor does it have that horrible sticky texture that puts me off reds so. I understand that is tannin and is supposedly a good thing, but I will have to take others’ words for it. I’m also informed that tea has tannin in it, and I honestly have no problem whatsoever with tea (in fact I really like it) so I’m not so sure I buy that story.
Anyway, I’ve made a crap-ton of mead, and I hope it doesn’t suck.
The end.
How long was it fermenting before you bottled it?
Well, it was in active fermentation for about two weeks, then in the secondary fermenter for clarifying for three. And it was clear as a bell, I might add.
I will be interested in hearing how it turns out. I know one of the ppl around here that made mead had it sitting in secondary for months at a time for some reason. I don’t know if he kept adding sugar to it so the fermentation would take off again or what.