Month: december 2014

Gravity after back sweetening with late summer honey: Oe: 24-25 degrees :o) just perfect The only issues was that I changed between and old and a new fermenter of different brands. I think the volume scales on the side are a bit different because I get bigger fluctuations from the calculated values when changing between fermenters of different brand than when I am changing between 2 of the same brand. Still +-1 degree Oechsle is within acceptable uncertainties.

Now that the black berries had been removed I racked the bochet mead today. I started with 21 L and had to stop racking with 2 L left because of lots of yeast and residual mushy berries. The volume is now reduced to 19 L but hopefully it will only be 0.5 L losses per racking from now on. As mentioned in my last post about my bochet I measured Oe to 16 degrees. I would like to back sweeten it to 25 degrees, and using my Honey-Oechsle equations for addition of honey I can calculate that I need to add 542 g of honey. (see HERE). Using 550 g […]

Today (monday the 15th of december) I removed the berries from the mead again. They have now been extracted for a good week. The small chucks of berries now look pale and mushy, so I do not think I will get much more fruit taste extracted into the mead. The taste is quite interesting. You can taste the berries but not so much the burned honey, except in the aftertaste. It does have some acidity due to the berries but it is not bad – just not really smooth. But this one thing long term storage will do for you :o) The fermentation appeared to have completely stopped, and the […]

This Sunday (7/12) I measured the Oe of my Bochet to 18 degrees. The bubbling had slowed significantly, so I figured than now was the time to add the blackberries. I have saved 2 kg (2 bags of 1 kg) very ripe blackberries in our garden and store them in our freezer. Basically I just put the frozen berries into a clean fermenter, added about 3 L of the bochet must and left it for a while to thaw while occasionally stirring and hacking with a spatula :o) Once the berries were reasonably thawed I mashed them like you would with mash potato to increase the surface area a bit […]