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Category 26 : Other Mead
Sponsored by : Celestial Meads 115 EntriesPlace | Cat. | Winner | Club |
1 | 26C | Steve Fletty of Falcon Heights, MN | Saint Paul Homebrewers Club |
2 | 26C | Patrick McNeely of Golden Valley, MN with Hank McNeely | The Brewing Network |
3 | 26C | Matthew Chrispen of Bastrop, TX | Austin Zealots |
Posted 34 days ago.
Thank you!
So cool too meet so many of y'all and share a beer or twelve! I know it's hard to plan for an NHC - so worth it. Met so many of my brewing heros - even got a hug from Ken Schramm.
And Dr. Springer's talk on Berliner was awesome!
Posted 34 days ago.
What mead recipe?
Posted 34 days ago.
It was a very dark and sweet bochet (4lb/gallon) that I cooked nearly black (the honey that is) and held at hard crack for about 5 minutes. Fermented with the staggered nutrient schedule and cleared. That was then blended about with about 65% standard semi-sweet mead (3lb/gallon), Northern Colorado Raw Wildflower, and a very small bit of cherry juice and cleared. Took some work to get the acid right, but it's a really interesting mead. Used Narbonne. Sadly I have just a tiny bit left - plan to drink it tonight in celebration.
The honey came from a cousin's apiary in Nebraska that serves N. Colo, Wyoming, West Nebraska and the Black Hills. The flower sources are heather, various wildflowers and some fruit orchards (apple, pear, etc.). Harvested end of the season.
The mead tastes like toasted marshmallows with hints of raisins, current, some dried fruit leather, but with a bright middle. There is a little smoke in the aroma with layers of mild caramel and chocolate. Steve Piatz asked me about it after the awards - such a nice guy. Apparently there was some oxidation that prevented it from placing higher... scored 40.5!
That reminds me - I need to work with Olan to get a Mead Recipe DB mod working.
Posted 34 days ago.
Congratulations, sir! That is fantastic!
Is it silly for me to feel ever so slightly proud, as you are "one of us"? So, you know, I can live vicariously through you just a little bit?
Posted 34 days ago.
Why the cherry juice? Were you using that for acid or you just tasted the blend and thought "you know what this needs? cherries"
How long was each of your clearing steps?
Any idea how it would have become oxidized?
What were the two meads in 1st and 2nd?
Posted 34 days ago.
Congrats!! Saw a few other "Austin Zealots" placed as well..
Posted 34 days ago.
@homebrewdad - of course! We should have T-Shirts to represent next time as well!
@blur_yo_face - Thanks! yeah Shoppe got 3 + the Ninkasi and Kerry Martin got a gold. I have no idea what for - I was pretty hammered by then. I feel lucky I didn't face plant on the way up.
@uberg33k - The cherry juice was to support some of the slight cherry/pit flavors. It wasn't a lot but did help balanced the acid and tannins and brought a little deep red color into the mix. I still had to use tartaric acid after it all cleared. Oh and I love cherries a lot, but it was very subtle in this... not enough to be mentioned in the entry.
For the most part, I am fermenting for about a week, racking to secondary for two or more weeks, crashing and fining with SuperKleer. Then if I do a big blend, those condition in a 'secondary fermenter' for several weeks and fined again if needed. I don't stabilize with sorbate/sulfite so any fruit/juice/concentrate kicks up a small fermentation and gets cloudy... I also 'lager' the finished mead for a few weeks in bulk under 29F which seems to adequately stun the yeast, and increase the effectiveness of SuperKleer. Schramm told me how he pasteurizes - so going to give that a go with my sous vide on this next batch. Essentially bring up water bath to 160F for 5 minutes in the packaged bottle. I plan to try lower temps for longer periods to evaluate flavor changes.
I suspect I flubbed up the final blending and packaging to create the oxidation. The last blend was just 1 gallon - and that is harder to package without my normal closed CO2 bottling. I purged the bottles, so I bet it got oxidized before hand. I finished the last couple ounces last night - the oxidation was not the usual paper/cardboard, but a very slightly musty aroma. I am doing bigger batches, so using kegs should reduce any air exposure.
As for the other 26C winners - I was concentrating on finding the stage. :)
Posted 34 days ago.
|It was a very dark and sweet bochet
Ooh, nice, frightening stuff, when making and drinking. Congrats!
Posted 34 days ago.
Thanks for sharing some of the process. Everyone says their bochet ends up tasting like toasted marshmellows, but I always get more the coffee, sherry, and other dark flavors. Not that that's bad, it's just not marshmellows.
Posted 34 days ago.
Uberg33, you may have a bigger heart than "everyone" and let it boil down further.
Posted 34 days ago.
I'm pretty sure my heart is more like this
Posted 34 days ago.
If it doesn't smoke, it's not bochet'd. I just did a batch in the pressure cooker for 90 minutes and it wasn't nearly dark enough. In fact, the mead barely looks like an amber, tastes like figs or date sugar to me. I don't get the marshmallow till it is really really dark - that aroma is crazy. Maybe it's a varietal thing? Maybe some of the carbonized bits hung in? I get some smoke in it - but no oak or anything toasted or burned.
I still go pretty slow - raising the temp by steps. When I get close to 280F, I start dotting white paper with the must. At 315-320F it goes black really fast as does the temp ramp. I have to switch the fire on and off to keep it in that range for a few minutes, then carefully cool it with boiling water, and stirring till it cools just enough to handle safely.
Going to put part of the next batch in a bourbon barrel for a few weeks.
Posted 34 days ago.
A pic of the last dregs... fare thee well...
Posted 34 days ago.
Weird. My bochet is even darker than that. I'm guessing it's a varietal thing then. That's good to know and something I'll have to try. I think I might have a line on some FL-Argintine wildflower blend that's going for less than $4/lb, so I might grab some of that and give it a go. I might also have to try SuperKleer. Never used it, but if you've won a national award with it, I'd say that makes it worth trying.
Posted 34 days ago.