2013 Sack Mead – MellaNova

Recipe 2: Sack Mead Liquor (cont. 3) – second separation

Mellanova — Fri, 18 Apr 2014 20:52:00 +0000

It bothered me that the temperature did not drop in the mead. By the time I went to bed the temperature was -6C. Then it dawned on me that the stirrer might actually heating up inside the freezer. On the AC/DC adapter it is stated that the output was 18,6 V and 1.1A i.e. 20.5W. That is probably enough to generate a noticeable amount of heat in a freezer. So before I went to sleep I turned the stirrer off.

Opening the freezer this morning the mead liquor looked rock solid, and I measured the temperature to -25C (the freezer was cooling all night). I took it out and stirred it with a spoon, and to my surprise the ice easily broke up and I could stir it into a slurry. This is probably an effect of the initially increased amount of alcohol.

Then I poured the frozen mead into a sieve and collected the liquid. This took a looooong time. I used the IR thermometer to check the temperature of the ice, as the mead liquor was dripping through the sieve. When I had collected about 450 ml the temperature of the ice was about -8C. I will use the temperature to get an idea of when to stop collecting.

The liquid was once again put in the freezer but this time I did not bother with the stirring, just an occasional shake. The initial 100 ml of mead liquor I made was mixed with the batch also, so that the total volume was about 550 ml.

After several hours the temperature mead liquor was -19C at which point I repeated the sieving process. It was now a very smooth slurry. About 50 ml poured straight through the sieve – guess this was quite heavy in ethanol. Then I just collected until I had about 450 ml. i.e. a little less than half the starting volume (200ml from the small scale plus the 800 ml of this upscaled trial). The temperature went from about -18C to -12C. The discarded ice was also collected in a second bottle.

So all in all a little less than half the volume was collected and Sack Mead Liquor. I will leave it for a while to see if get smoother as it ages because it is quite acidic. Also, as expected, the taste of honey has also become more pronounced.

The process of producing the liquor has been quite tedious I will try to get it done in a more simple manner. But for now here is just a picture “from start to end” to create a little atmosphere :o) …… Cheers…..

Recipe 2: Sack Mead Liquor (cont. 2) – Upscaling

Mellanova — Thu, 17 Apr 2014 19:44:00 +0000

So time to upscale my earlier attempt to make mead liquor by fractional freezing. This time I used just under 800 ml of my Sack Mead so I should end up with about 350 ml give and take, if I can repeat the yield.

I could use a bigger stirring magnet but I just used the small one I have and turned up the rotation to full. I started the stirrer at noon, and at 19 pm about 1/3 of the beaker was full of ice. I took it out of the freezer and stirred it a bit – only nice small crystals. Super!

I put my sieve in the freezer too to keep it as cold as possible. I was a little surprised when I measured the temperature of the beaker: -10C (with an IR temp device). Measuring the inside surface of the freezer it was -22C, so the liquid was still much warmer than the freezer after 6 hours?

I decided to take off the ice anyway, so that I was rid of some of the water, so I poured the entire beaker through the sieve and collected the liquid in a bowl. Shaking the sieve and letting some of the water melt and drip into the bowl, I guess I could not do much more to minimize the loss of ethanol. Then I poured the content of the bowl into the beaker again, and put it back into the freezer still stirring. I also left the sieve in the freezer to keep the ice from melting when I pour the content of the beaker through the sieve next time. After an hour I did a temperature check: -11.4C. I guess I will have to wait until tomorrow to do the second separation.

I collected the ice in a second bowl, let it melt and collected it in a 0.5 L clean plastic bottle. Just want to see how much ethanol I loose during this process.

Recipe 2: Sack Mead Liquor

Mellanova — Mon, 31 Mar 2014 20:58:00 +0000

Ok, I will continue the blog here using the correct blog name. Silly, how could I have missed the extra l for such a long time ?????. Both blogs are called Mead of Life and eventually both should should appear when searching in google.

Anyway, now it is time for a little experiment – making mead liquor. From Wikipedia I found a graph under ethanol relating alcohol percentage vs temperature. Notice that the Ethanol content is in % by mass.

Converting is easy: 15.0% by volume in 1 L is 150ml Ethanol/1000ml total volume. 150ml of ethanol weighs 150ml x 0.789g/ml = 118.35g. The 1000ml-150ml = 850ml of water weighs 850ml x 0,998207g/ml (at 20C) = 848.48g. Total mass is 118,35g + 848,48g = 966,83g, so ethanol % (m/m) or wt% is 118,35g/966,83g = 12.24% ~ 12.2%

Now, your common household freezer should cool to about -20C. During the freezing only (mainly) water crystals are formed, so basically the the remaining liquid should not freeze when the alcohol percentage reaches 30% (m/m). This means that if my mead is 15% by volume which corresponds to 12.2% by mass, I should be able to reduce the water ideally by a factor of 2.46, i.e. reduce 1000 ml to 407 ml which is 35.2% by volume or 30% by mass as indicated by the graph.

Realistically I will be happy reducing the volume to about half. Starting with 15% by volume and loosing a bit to the frozen water phase I guess I would likely end up with 25%-28% by volume or 20.9%-23.5% by mass.

So now for the experiment: I have gotten my hand on an old beat up magnetic stirrer which only works at a very little speed range. Never the less the speed was adequate for the experiment. I placed the stirrer in my freezer with the wire hanging out hoping not to stretch the insulation in the door. A beaker with 200 ml and a magnet was placed on top of the stirrer together with a glass bowl of the beaker should break. The beaker was covered with plastic foil as lid. When the magnet was stirring the mead adequately, it was time to wait.

After about 6 hours (probably ready earlier but that was when I got home), the mead had turned into a thick slurry but the magnet was still moving. The ice consisted of quite small crystals which was great since the smaller the crystals, the smaller the change of trapping the ethanol within the ice.

To remove the ice I simple poured the entire content of the beaker into a kitchen sieve, held over a bowl. Shaking the sieve and letting it drip for a short while would melt some of the ice but also remove most of the ethanol. The ice layer was then removed and the liquid collected in the bowl was poured back into the beaker with the magnet and placed in the freezer once again. The volume had been reduced to less than 150 ml

4 hours later the process was repeated. The volume of ice was now significantly reduce, and was removed in the same manner. The volume was now about 100ml.

I had reached my target but I got a bit greedy and figured I would go for the 3 freezing cycle. But after about 3 hours only a little ice was circulating in the beaker, and pouring it into the sieve, the ice melted too quickly to be collected. (I should perhaps have cooled the sieve in the freezer too). I decided to stop here and collect my mead liquor and the removed water. Liquor to the left, residual water to the right :o)

I feel comfortable that it is time to scale up the procedure to a 1 L of mead with the target of collecting 0.5L of mead liquor :o)

Recipe 1,2 and 3: Time for bottling :o)

Mellanova — Tue, 25 Mar 2014 21:47:00 +0000

Sunday, it was time to bottle the meads. I had purchased 1L flasks and stoppers in Ikea since this was the cheapest I could find. The volume is somewhat large, but it keeps the number of bottles to a minimum.

All bottles was rinsed in hot water before use. Notice the bottle in front. You can see the mark from the sticker Ikea uses. The glue does not come off easily. I usually manage by soaking the glue in dish-washing soap and then I can easily wash off the glue. But for some reason I had to rub with frying oil to get the glue off and then wash the oil off with soap.

I put the mead on the table to keep them elevated for the filling of bottles. Recipe 1-3 is seen from right to left.

Recipe 1, the cyser, has a beautifully red color and considering the trouble I had clearing it, it is now crystal clear.

Artistically clear :o). Notice the reflection of the table in the surface of the mead.

I filled one bottle with 1 kg of water as a 1L mark and then I was ready to start filling bottles with just a simple siphon. But a little bit of precipitate was found on the bottom, and I was very careful not to disturb this layer.

When getting close to bottom of the carboy I need a bit of help with the bottle filling, which my wife did with utmost scrutiny and care

The final result: 40 bottles of 3 different meads

It is going to be a great summer

Recipe 1: The cyser (apple mead): Beautiful rosé/brownish color.

Recipe 2: The sack mead (just honey): Clear yellow color

Recipe 3: The melomel of elderberries: Deep red color – almost not allowing light to pass

Recipe 1,2 and 3: Meads take up CO2

Mellanova — Sun, 23 Feb 2014 21:32:00 +0000

An interesting little observation.

After adding CO2 to the meads yesterday, the airlock was filled with fresh water and attached to the carboys. The water levels in the two chambers were equal.

Within a short time the meads began to generate a small vacuum shifting the levels of the airlock. This must be an uptake of CO2 in the meads. I thought the meads would be saturated by CO2, but apparently not. This will also push pH down a bit.

Recipe 1,2 and 3: Final tasting

Mellanova — Sun, 23 Feb 2014 21:02:00 +0000

This weekend I decided to do the final adjustments to my meads.

Recipe 1: Cyser
This mead has been covered in dark plastic for quite a while now. When I removed the plastic I was surprised to see that it had almost turned black (?) – Not sure that was a good sign. Opening the 20 L volumetric flask, I was a little hesitant to smell it. But to my surprise it just fantastic :o). I took a sample and found that when the light paths was reduced, the mead had a very pleasing dark golden color. A thin layer of precipitate was found on the bottom so now it is even more clear. pH was measured with strips to about 4. So looks good. The taste was the best surprise. The stinging acidic taste was almost gone, and the sweetness of the honey is not overpowering the the acidity. All in all, I have much more hope for this mead now. Since this mead did not ferment to very low sugar and has killed any attempt to be re-started, I am not worried that it will start up again later. Bisulfite/sorbate was therefore NOT added – hope I will not be proven wrong (again) on this.

Recipe 2: Sack mead
The mead is very clear and with only a week yellow color. pH was measured to just above 4, again with strips. It does not have much initial taste but still an acidic aftertaste. Not as pleasant as my cyser but then again I should probably not have tasted this mead after the cyser.

Recipe 3: Elderberry Melomel
This is my experimental mead. It is very strong tasting and has clear red color, which is less intense than for example a red wine. It is quite acidic tasting but pH is up between 4 and 5. I think the alcohol is quite high so it should be well protected against microbial growth despite the high pH. The taste of anise that I added several times was gone – again. Perhaps the anethole (which is responsible for the fragrance of star anise) is not stable in the acidic alcoholic solution? Not sure of the degradation pathway though.

Finally I covered all 3 meads with 5 L CO2 each from the reaction sodium bicarbonate/citric acid as described earlier.

…. and then it was time to clean up….. In the near future I think I will by myself a pH meter ………

Recipe 2: Sack mead (continued 5) – adjusting pH

Mellanova — Sat, 01 Feb 2014 21:48:00 +0000

Long time since since I did anything to my meads, but last weekend it was time to try to adjusting the taste by acid addition.

Opening the fermenter with sack mead I am still surprised about how pleasant the smell is. The last yeast has precipitated on the bottom and it is now totally clear.

The basic measurements:

pH: about 3.5

density: 1.015

I was hoping that the pH had raised a bit due to degassing of CO2 but I cannot see any difference from my last measurements. The density is still 1.015, so there is absolutely no indications of even slow fermentation – great :o)

The mead was then racked to it final “resting place”, a plastic carboy for maturing, and to get rid of the last precitipate. And then it was time for tasting, but………..

Tasting the mead was not so pleasant. The acid taste is very stringent and overwhelming for my taste. My initial idea was to adjust acids by adding citric acid, malic acid, or tartaric acid (or a blend of these), but I skipped the plan and decided to add base instead to raise pH.

For this purpose I used K2CO3. The carbonate is already an intricate part of the mead and potassium is without taste and has no limits in terms of food safety.

Only question was how much acid to add. To be a little systematic I prepared a stock solution of K2CO3 (0.30g of K2CO3 to 4 ml of water using a 10 ml disposable syringe)

Then I just took a few samples of mead (10 ml again with a 10 ml disposable syringe) repeated added 0,10 ml of stock solution (using a 2 ml disposable syringe) until the taste was just right. To make sure that I did not suddenly get a taste of something very basic I measured the adjusted mead with pH strips before tasting.

After adding 0.1 ml the acid taste was reduced significantly but still there, and the mead had a very different and much more appealing mouth feel, so I did not feel that I had to add any more. pH was now about 4.5 measured with strips.

Since my batch is now reduced to about 17 L this means that I would have to add 170 ml to get the same effect. With a concentration of 0.3/0,004=75g/l that corresponds to adding 12.75g of K2CO3. To be a bit on the “safe side” I decided to add 10g dissolved in 100 ml of water. Capping the carboy and giving it a good shake followed by about 30 min rest. A final check of pH was about 4.5 – as expected :o)

Finally, the airlock was attached and the carboy put aside. I did not add CO2 since a lot of CO2 was released when the carboy was shaken. I guess that this would be enough to cover the surface.

Next step is bottling so now I will have to see where I can get some adequate bottles for this.

Recipe 2: Sack mead (continued 4) – Still bubbling…

Mellanova — Wed, 01 Jan 2014 17:15:00 +0000

The day after I did the stabilization and added metabisulfite and sorbate the mead is still fermenting. The extra honey was just too delicious for the yeast cells :o)

So fortunately we have a quite mild winter so far, so I put the fermenter outside on the balcony. Cooling the fermenter to below 5C should do the trick I guessed.

The thermometer says about 3C when measuring the the temperature of the wall

Today the mead has been outside for 2 days AND IT IS STILL BUBBLING. How is that possible???????

Recipe 2: Sack mead (continued 3) – Stabilization

Mellanova — Wed, 01 Jan 2014 16:58:00 +0000

So it was time to do something with my Sack mead. It has just been taking care of itself for the past month doing a little bubbling during the day but nothing much. My other meads have stopped entirely any fermenting activity, so I will try to stop this one too.

When I opened the fermenter the smell is very pleasant. The taste is still quite acidic and it was still possible to taste some sweetness.

The density was measured to 1.010 which was great – right on the initial target. But as put in an earlier post, I should probably go for a bit heavier mead, i.e. a target of 1.015 instead.

Then I measured pH to somewhere between 3 and 4 with pH strips, so lets just say 3.5.

There was plenty of yeast at the bottom of the fermenter, but the fermetation is going on so slowly that it had already started to clear. I tried the best I could to transfer the mead to a new fermenter without disturbing the yeast layer. Of cause the siphon slips so I had to stop a bit earlier than I wanted since the goal is get rid of old yeast. So now there was only a bit more than 18 L left of the batch

So now that the target had been passed I tried to back sweeten the mead to 1.015. Since I initially used 7200g honey and got a density of 1.120 this means than 100 g should increase the density by 0.0017. So adding 300 g should raise the density by 0.005 in a 20 L batch. So for an ~18,5 L batch (after honey addition) the increase in density should be about 0.0054.

I weighed out about 300 g of honey and mixed it with 0.5 L of the must and started stirring. Now, dissolving honey in hot water is no problem but in an almost finished mead at room temperature it takes much much longer, but with a bit of patience and a lot of stirring it finally dissolved. The solution was then added to the fermenter and the content was stirred well before measuring the denstity again: 1.015 – spot on.

I had purchased a yeast stop pre-mixed package, which I added to the mead. When it comes to stopping a fermentation two ingredients are used.

1) metabisulfite
2) sorbate

The package I used contained the food additives E223 which is sodium metabisulfite. This also exist as a potassium salt which would be the more ideal additive so that you don’t have to add sodium. Metabisulfite is the yeast killer. For 100 ppm about 2 g of K-Meta should be added. When the same amount of Na-Meta is added, then 17% more Meta is actually added due to the difference in molecular weight

Some yeast cells will survive the use of metabisulfite at the relatively low levels added (max 300 ppm) to avoid the distinct taste of sulphur, so sorbate is added to prevent the cells from budding. In this manner no new yeast cells can be generated. This is the stabilization part. The package I used contained potassium sorbate which would be the ideal salt. I can only find a recommended volume/gallon to be added: ½TSP per gallon so 2.5 TSP for 19 L but without a clue to the density of the powder it does not say much.

Now why the hell does the package not state what the mixing ratio of the two components is? I called the shop where I bought the package and they would forward my request when the factory when it opened the 6th of January. The total content of the package is 7 g so my best guess is that I added 2 g of Na-Meta and 5 g of K-Sorbate

Recipe 2: Sack mead (continued 2) – Racking

Mellanova — Sun, 24 Nov 2013 12:35:00 +0000

My sack mead was up for racking today. It has been bubbling nicely for almost a month now and I was curious to see how far it had come. I did set my hopes to high based on my experience with recipe 1.

Anyway pH was measured to somewhere between 3 and 4 with pH strips, so that was spot on

I measured the density to 1.012 which was great. This seems to end up with complete fermentation (target 1.010).

Going back to a previous entry the ethanol content can be estimated by:
Low estimate: ABV: (1.120-1.012) / 0.0075 = 14.4%
High estimate: ABV: (1.120-1.012) / 0.0065 = 16.6%

Now the high estimate seems to be just rubbish since the yeast should have a maximum of 16% which must be under the best conditions – and not initial try of an amateur :o)

Since the low estimate is for low ABV beverages (beer etc) and that the conversion should go up due prolonged fermetation phase (no sugar “wasted on” the lag phase and aerobic phase), I guess the ABV is about 15%.

I also read that fermentation can becomes inconsistent due to the lack of potassium. Since pH was a bit low (remember that I added a bit too much citric acid initially I figured that i would try to add a bit of “pot ash” as it is called in Denmark, or Potassium Carbonate (K2CO3)

I added 3 grams or 21mmol (= 42mmol (1,6g) of potassium in 19.5L = 84ppm K+) and checked pH again. I started fizzing heavily for a while due to relase of CO2. With strips there was no visual difference so the must is buffered. I think I should stop fiddling with it so I put the lid back on and attached a clean airlock. I did not bother with generating CO2 since the release from the must due to the carbonate addition should be adequate.