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.

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.

Opening the fermenter the smell is very nice but also acidic. Basic measurements:
pH around 4
denstiy 1.008

The taste was very acidic with a harsh aftertaste. I know the fresh elderberry juice has a very similar taste which is very well complemented by the sweetness of honey. Ergo, I would have to add quite a bit of honey to this mead to get it to taste like I planned for.

Also I figured I could remove some of the acidity by adding K2CO3 like I did previously

The taste of the star anise was gone – so a lesson for the future is not to add taste components until AFTER the fermentation. So I would have to redo this.

When adding honey I did not want the fermentation to start up again, so bisulphite/sorbate also had to be done

So first step was to move the mead to my 10L plastic carboy. Even though it is pitch black when looking into the fermeter, the sample for density has a nice light red appearance. The mead is also crystal clear. When the fermeter was emptied the yeast in the bottom was like a thin pitch black layer – wondering if the yeast take up the color components during the fermentation?

Then it was time to add the honey. From my sack mead I knew that I would get a density of 1.120 from adding 7.2kg of honey in 20L, so to raise the density from 1.008 to 1.025  in 8 L I would need about 400 g of honey. I had a half full glass with 270 g of honey so I figured I would start with this. 200 ml of water was boiled with 0.5g of star whole star anise and poured onto the honey to dissolve this. when dissolved, the solution was added to the carboy.

Shake and wait a few time and the density was now 0.016. The taste was still very acidic and the honey could hardly be tasted. and neither could the star anise.

To knock out the yeast I wanted to add a premixed bag of Bisulfite/Sorbate, but the packages is for a 20 L batch. When the bag is opened it is clear that there are two different types of particles in there. Since the content was so inhomogeneous I decided to make a slurry in 100 ml and then add about 40 ml to the batch.

So far so good and time was up for the day but during the following week I had time to finish up.

Again I decided to add base rather than any acid adjustments. I did the same tasting setup as I did for the sack mead. To 10 ml of mead a stock solution of K2CO3 (0.3g in 4 ml) in steps of 0.1 ml. I ended up adding 0.2 ml for the most pleasant taste but even 0.3 was quite OK. Considering that 0.2 ml corresponds to adding 12 g of K2CO3 to my 8 L batch there must be loads of acids in there. All in all I decided to add 10 g

To get some taste of star anise I crushed 0.80 g (0.1g/L) and boiled it in 50 ml of water for 10 min under lid. I put the crushed star anise in a long tea bag which was lowered into a 50 ml in a metal measuring cup (100 ml) which again was put in a pot with water. Little tedious, but it worked nicely. I did not get a picture of it boiling but here is one of the general set-up.

The 50 ml was then used to dissolve another 140 g  (410 g in total) of honey and, wow, did that smell and taste good :o). Finally I added the 10 g of K2CO3 to get it dissolved and add the entire solution to the carboy……

DUMB ASS IDEA

Since CO3(2-) is very basic the pH star anise/honey solution probably rose to beyond 10. A nasty smell of ammonia suddenly filled my nose and even though the carbonate was not fully dissolved I just added the entire slurry to the carboy to get pH down as fast as possible, closed the carboy and shook it well over and over for about 30 min, remembering to degas the carboy after each shake.

Fortunately no harm seemed to have been done.
pH about 4.5 (must be very buffered to take that much CO3(2-))
density 1.025 (spot on)
Taste – wow, so nice and with just a hint of anise in the aftertaste together with a little bite of the acid.

Since the solution was so strongly colored, reading pH was not so easy – perhaps pH was closer to 4? 

Considering that this was just a test for fun I think this is going to be my best mead so far, but lets see what maturing does for the taste

Next step is bottling in a few months from now.

The fermentation started to slow down in the beginning of the first week, and I think that if I had added some more MAP/MAC it would have continued fermenting at a higher rate and then stopped more abruptly. Next time :o)

Opening the fermenter the surface was now almost clear – no foam at all left. Though much was still sticking to the sides. I could not smell the star anise to any significant extent anymore, so I tried to taste. It was dry, alcoholic and without much taste at all (?) besides the taste of yeast. I will look forward to taste it again when the yeast has settled.

It was now much easier to test the pH with the stips so I assume that the color had lost some of the intensity. pH was now about 4.

Then I measured the density, and to my surprise it went straight to the bottom of the fermenter – it is only a 10 L. So I had to improvise a measuring cylinder…… as illustrated by the picture below

The density was now 1.008 which is much lower than I expected. Now, if the density started at 1.130 to 1.135, this means that the it had dropped by 0.122 to 0.127 units

Using the standard formula (OG-FG)/0.0075 you get an ABV of about 16.5%. Using the high gravity determination you get up to 19% which is a joke. I have to check this by an alternative method.

Anyway the FG is so low that it is too dry for my taste. I will add some honey to it to get some sweetness and honey flavor back. Next time I will either use a different yeast, with lower alcohol tolerance, or use more honey. My target FG should be a bit higher than I initially set out for, so 1.015 to 1.020 from now on :o).

Day two and now must is happily bubbling. But as I removed the bag covering it fermenter to protect it from light I found that the airlock was flooded. This is one of these things I could probably have predicted…. The surface of the must is about 4 cm from the lid but the rubber plug that is used for the airlock sticks about 2.5 cm into the fermeneter and this is apparently too close to the surface.

Well off with the lid and another 3.0 g of Fermaid K was added – that is now 5.0 g in total. I stirred the must and hoped that I could stir plenty of air into it. But it started foaming so much that I was afraid the it would overflow the fermenter. Instead of stirrring, I left it and let the foam level drop before I re-attached the lid and airlock.

It did not take more than a few hours before the lid was covered with foam that had moved up and out of the airlock. Cleaned it again and attached the airlock. 10 min later the airlock was full of foam again.

I spend most of the afternoon cleaning the lid and flushing the airlock untill I go so tired of it, that I had to re-think the set-up. And with a “pretty please with sugar on top”, I borrowed my sons slush ice bottle :o). Now at least I can wait some hours before cleaning.

Few minutes later …… hmm

I will try the two concepts that I recently read about on the Beer and Wine Journal (www.beerandwinejournal.com and search “mead”). These were staggered nutrition addition and potassium addition. The article is written by Chris Colby with input from Ken Schramm so it should definitely be worth a try. So here we go……..

Ingredients

2.2 L of home made elderberry juice
1.7 g of star anise
Water to 8.5 L
7.0 g of Fermaid K yeast nutrition
(2.5 g of DAP or di-ammoniumphosphate [(NH3)2PO4] ) If I can buy this !!
4.25 g of pot-ash or potassium carbonate [K2CO3]
7g Vinoferm, Bioferm Killer yeast

The elderberry juice was prepared this summer when the berries of my tree were ripe and black. The berries were picked so that no leaves or twigs were present. Then the berries were extracted on a fruit boiler where the berries are actually steamed. It takes about 1.4 kg of berries to make 1L of elderberry juice, So the juice that I am using comes from about 3 kg of berries.

When I had just made the juice I tried to make a tea of diluted juice and honey. Just small cups to adjust the taste. I came up with a 1:3 dilution and with a good bit of honey.

But there is a catch. Elderberries contains cyanogenic glycosides which releases prussic acid (HCN). The prussic acid can be removed by boiling for an extended time. Now I did not know this, so after my dilution tasting, I got really sick even though the berries had been steamed. I tried again, this time boiling the tea for 15 min and I was OK. Felt a bit like a guinea pig in my own food lab :o)

Secondly, I had rinsed the flasks for the juice with Atamon which is a solution of sodium benzoate. As stated on the bottle, Atamon looses it “power” when boiled (?). Benzoic acid is quite stable but perhaps it is removed by being dissolved in droplets of the water vapor.

So when preparing the mead I wanted to make absolutely sure that HCN and Atamon was boiled off. The 2.2 L of Elderberry juice was mixed with 2.5 L of water and boiled for 45min.

I was aiming at 1.7 g of star anise and I was just lucky to find one with that mass :o).The star anise was crushed to to increase the surface area and added during the last 15 min of the boiling. I added what corresponds to 0.2 g/L as I know it is a quite powerful taste. (1.7g / 8.5 L = 0.20 g/L)

Then the honey was added. Since it was quite solid (not stirred enough) I tried to heat the container in the kitchen sink but it was only enough to liquefy the surface of the honey but enough for the lump of honey to drop into the pot. The container was rinsed with the warm juice and then the pot was stirred till the honey was dissolved. I re-heated the pot to 72C removed the heat and left it for 10 min .

Then the must was poured into a 10 L fermenter and filled it up to 8.5L with cold tap water. Made my own markings just to make it easy for myself. Then I added the Potassium Carbonate and there was no foaming or bubbles which I expected since the must should be acidic enough turn the carbonate to CO2. The fermenter was left to cool on the balcony throughout the evening but I took it inside later so that the temperature would not drop below 20C.

What a great tool this IR thermometer with laser aim. The actual measurement has to be taken a bit closer to the fermenter.

Next morning the temperature was 23C, so just perfect. I prepared a yeast starter by just adding the yeast to 50 ml of tap water heated to 26C. When the yeast was hydrating the temperature was increasing which could be felt on the glass I used. The yeast was left like this for 12min

While the yeast was hydrating I added the first portion of Ferment K -> 2.0 g corresponding to 31 ppm YAN in the must. Addition is a bit lower than I wanted but I was simply not able to buy DAP (?!?#¤) in either of the two brew stores that I frequently visit.

The density was significantly above 1.120 (the max of my hydrometer) but I estimate it to be about 1.135.

pH was measured with strips but since the the must is quite colored it is really difficult to read the strip :o). Best guess is about 4-5.

Again it is now just time to wait for the bubbling…..