Wine and Mead Bottled

I have been busy over the last few days bottling and racking some of my home brew. The brews I have done in the last few days have been ones where I was unable to get a initial gravity reading so I won't know how strong they are but that's half the fun.

To start with I bottled my dandelion wine (original post can be found here) as this was a smaller batch and one of the older ones. I have had a sneaky taste of it and so far it tastes quite nice, actually a lot nicer than I was expecting although this could be the flavour of the red grape juice I used. Either way if the taste gets better from what it is at the moment then I'm on to a winner and will make a much larger batch next year. I got 3 full bottles and a part bottle, the part bottle is in the fridge ready to drink and the others I have stored in the loft to age; by ageing the wine I hope to further improve the flavour.

Dandelion wine in home made Demijohn, dilute pop bottle!

Bottles I've been collecting. Soaking to try to loosen the labels. The next step was to sterilize them.

The finished product bottled and now away in storage in my loft. 

The next thing I bottled was the remainder of the second batch of mead I made at the start of the year (again link for that post here). This was a really large batch and I already have 3 gallons of it stored in my earthenware demijohns (link to that post here; in that post it says I have 4 demijohns but actually I had 5) that my granddad gave me at the beginning of the year. That left me with 2 demijohns with the mead in; one of these I have left alone and the other I added more honey to a while ago although I can't find the post that says how much honey was added, oh well! I got 6 bottles from each demijohn and have stored them along with the dandelion wine. I had a small taste of the mead as it was being bottled and it has got some taste, more than it has in previous tests, it may turn out nice after all when it's aged a while.

Bottled up and ready for storage.

The sweetened mead ready for storage.

Once I'd bottled all the mead I had a few empty demijohns so while I had the equipment out I also racked one batch of raspberry wine. This batch has been going since July so is also nearly ready to bottle up but I now have a shortage of wine bottles so will be asking my dad to start saving them again for me. The raspberry wine had developed a thin layer of sediment on the bottom, which is to be expected as this was the second time I racked it, the first time it had a very thick layer of sediment. Next time there will, hopefully, be little to no sediment for when I bottle it.

And finally with the remaining demijohns I had I've made 2 further batches of J.A.O. mead as this is my favorite and easiest to do. I followed the method on this page but as with the last batch of this I made I have upped the amount of honey to 1.8kg so now have 3 demijohns full of this at various stages of development! I hope the extra honey doesn't spoil it but I doubt it will, they are all smelling rather nice and the oldest of the 3 is clearing nicely.

Solidified honey.

Not even 1kg yet. 

1.8kg dissolving in boiled water that has been left to cool for about 30 minutes

This much honey takes a long time to dissolve even with vigorous stirring

An Update on Homebrew

Over the weekend I decided it was time to bottle my second batch of mead, which was started all the way back in January. I didn't have a hydrometer when I first started so no gravity reading was taken, which means I won't know the alcohol level of this batch.

This batch was a really large one so I have four demijohns of it to process,three are unaltered and one has been sweetened with extra honey. The unaltered ones were all that I had time to do. I started by sterilizing the vessels that the mead would be going into, in this case I am using my earthenware demijohns for this; the two earthenware vessels hold the same as the three glass ones I'm transferring from. I also added a campden tablet to the mead before in the glass demijohns; this helps by killing off wild yeast and bad bacteria. When everything was sterile I started to transfer the mead into the stone vessels.

A campden tablet crushed ready to be added.

Once completed I put a rubber bung into the larger of the two and attempted to put a cork in the smaller one. I say attempted as the hole was slightly too large for the cork. I had picked up a tip from a friend to make corking easier, which was to soak the cork first to make it go in the hole easier. I thought that this could be why the cork was too small so I tried a dry cork and found this to be same. As I had no other corks at this stage I had to start getting inventive. I thought the most suitable thing to use would be beeswax. I quickly melted some wax and then poured it around the cork making it a complete seal. I'm not totally sure if it's worked so will check it again later and use more wax if needed.

The only thing to do now is wait. During the process I have tried to mead on several occasions and unfortunately it hasn't tasted too great, in fact it tasted pretty bland though ageing the mead is supposed to improve flavour. If after a year the taste is still poor then I will still drink it but use something to mix in it, possibly ginger ale. In the future when experimenting with recipes I will make smaller batches so not as much honey is used. I still have plenty of honey that my dad acquired for me so will keep using that rather than experimenting with my own honey!

Racking

Due to recent death of my mother this is my first post in a couple of weeks so my blog has fallen behind a little. She was an exceptional mother and grandmother who always encouraged me to do the things I'm passionate about so would have wanted me to carry on with my blog. I have several things I would like to post about and the first is the racking of my mead and wine.

I had several days at racking as I have a lot of mead on the go at the moment. The 30 litre batch that I started at the beginning of the year was split into 4 demijohns a few months ago so that took a couple of days to rack. This batch is just a straight mead with no other flavourings apart from 1 of the demijohns which I added extra honey to sweeten. Though I didn't have a hydrometer to begin with I have since roughly worked out the starting gravity or S.G. to be 1.060 and the current gravity is 0.97 which would give a ABV OF 12%. This batch is also clearing nicely and will be bottled next month and then set aside to age, hopefully this will make it taste nicer!

The dandelion wine, which is in a 3 litre pop bottle, was also racked and that has a nicer smell than it had before! The colour is still similar to red wine, due to the red grape juice added, but it appears a little clearer. No gravity readings have been taken at any point on this wine so will be a wild card when it is drunk.

The lemon and ginger mead I started in March was the next. This had a S.G. of 1.090 and is now about 15-16% ABV. I did mention in a earlier post that I would bottle this at 12% but as it's already gone over I will now leave for it to run it's course. I didn't taste this while racking so am unaware if it's got a nice taste yet but in time will find out.

Finally I bottled my second batch of JAO mead. This followed the same recipe as the first batch I did but am unsure what it tastes like yet as I haven't tried it yet. I didn't write a post about this when it was started and  haven't recorded the gravity at any point so again I am unable to tell how strong it is. Oh well, that just adds an extra layer of fun when drinking it!

The dandelion wine.

Racking from the earthenware "johns"

MEAD!!!!!!

Racking The Mead

I have decided it is time to rack my second batch of mead.  I'm doing this to separate the mead from the layer of sediment at the bottom; the sediment is known as the lees.

The first step was to make sure all my demijohns are sterile. I used a sterilising powder mixed with warm water then left for 10 minutes to do it's work. I have put some kitchen towel in the necks to stop dust getting in the demijohns.

I then brought my primary fermentation vessel into the kitchen and lifted it onto a chair. This was rather heavy as it contains 25-30 litres of mead!

Next was to put the siphoning tube into the large fermentation vessel and give the tube a good suck so that the mead was travelling down the tube. I managed to get a little in my mouth so I will count that as my tasting. If I'm honest it doesn't taste too nice at the moment but it definitely has a boozy edge to it.

This shows the airlock applied to the 2 gallon demijohn.

These pictures are the same again but for the smaller demijohn....

 ....and again for the glass demijohns. In the photo on the left I've had to raise the demijohn as my siphoning tube wasn't long enough to get to the bottom of the big fermentation vessel.

 This is the sediment or Lees that is left behind. It looked and smelled rather nasty so was disposed of rather quickly!

In the above photo from left to right; Ginger and Lemon Mead, JAO Mead and the last 4 are the Mead I just racked. The JAO Mead is really near to being ready to drink as it's nearly totally clear. These are all in my daughters room at the moment; she is still sleeping in my room as she is only 3 months old. This is due to her room being the warmest and darkest as she has very thick curtains.

Homebrewing Gifts from Grandad

I visited my Grandad the other day as he had told my Dad he had a demijohn or 2 that I could have. When I got there he started bringing all sorts of pieces of equipment out of a plastic bag plus had 4 Demijohns lined up behind his chair ready for me to take.

 In the image you can see a 2 gallon and 1 gallon earthenware Demijohn, these are really heavy but look excellent, they really don't make them like they used to! In front of them are 2 glass Demijohns that I believe used to be cider bottles, these are also 1 gallon. Between the 2 glass Demijohns there is a couple of lengths of tubing that are used to syphon mead/wine out of the Demijohn and in to bottles. To the front of the picture there is a variety of bits of equipment. There's a wooden corking machine, several bungs, a bag of labels, a bag of corks and 4 boxes of aluminum foil caps for adding a professional touch to the finished bottled product! If you look carefully on the red boxed equipment on some of them you can see they have a very old Boots logo on them and also on has a pre decimalisation price sticker on, though this isn't visible in picture. This shows how old some of this equipment is but all still perfectly usable if I sterilise it well. There was also a receipt in the bag that showed what I believe is last time my Grandad bought equipment and this is from 1990!


A couple of days later he brought me a bottle of his last wine he made that is from around this time, so over 20 years old, and in my opinion it was very tasty though my better half was a bit dubious. We think it is Sloe wine made from Sloe berries (obviously). He has told me he has a couple more Demijohns I can have but these still have wine in them from one of his relatives that was made before he was born, so the content of that will be at least 86 years old! I'm not sure how nice they'll be but I may have a small glass then leave it 24 hours to see if I get ill and if not then I'll drink it!



Update on current Meads

My first batch of Mead, the Jao, is very nearly ready. I find myself checking it every couple of days and each time the liquid looks slightly clearer, I reckon another week and it'll be ready to bottle. My second batch is still active but has really slowed down. Now I have all the extra demijohns I am in a good position to start racking it and then I'll get a better idea of how its going, as the container its in at the moment isn't see through.



Update on Beekeeping

Not much to say at the moment but I am now a member of BBKA and have received my welcome pack. This means I now have the liability cover needed to keep Bees in my Dad's allotment. I have also received details of the course I will be attending in May/June.



Update on Allotment

Again not much to say here. I have not heard anything back from a couple of members of my group to get my allotment so have requested these members be removed, which will put me back to needing 2 members. Finding another 1 member isn't going to be a problem but finding the second could be. I will have to put another appeal for members on Facebook. My Dad will let me use part of his allotment for growing but I would rather have my own within walking distance