Monday I lifted the fermenter up on the kitchen table and tilted it a bit. I added 5L of CO2 to ensure that the mead was saturated. Then I let it rest until the next day. Later Monday, I sterilized all the bottles I needed for the racking plus a bit extra just in case any of the bottles were damaged.

Today it was time. Gathering all needed equipment on the table and I was ready to go. The mead looks so tempting with a slightly dark yellow color. All bottles were filled next to my reference bottle containing exactly 500 g of water, i.e. 0.50L. You see it to the right in the picture.

Filling the bottles took some time but it is so rewarding to se the final product take shape. When the pleasant smell of apple hit the room I felt sure that this is going to be a great mead.

Then it was time to add the chilies. I have not been able to get my hand on more Birds Eye chili, but instead I found “Red chili” from the same region. According to the sales person they were a bit less strong but with more taste. My own tongue could not pick up the difference, so I added the same amount of chili as I would with the Birds Eye – ½ chili without seeds to 0.5L

Bad experiences has taught me to use plastic gloves when handling more than just one chili :o), but I could still feel the tingling of the chili in the nose. Finally ½ a chili was added and the screw cap tightened.

Now it was time to make the bottles look good. I bought black bottle crimp tops to “hide” the silver screw cap. I was very surprised to learn how easy they are to put on:

First you need a tool to hold the crimp top in place. No proper tools were available, so I bent a knife for the purpose (ssshhh don’t tell the wife…). Then a glove to protect the hand.

The process is quite easy. Just keep a pot of water boiling lightly. Hold the crimp top in place with the knife and just dip the top of the bottle shortly in the water (1 sec) – and voila – you are done.

Then the bottles were cleaned and finally the label was added. This is a home printed label but next year I will be ready with some more pro-looking labels. Never the less, I like the rough look to the bottle with the chili swimming around – it is very presentable.

Can’t wait till my next bottling :o)

As it turns out the chilies are known to be very pungent, which means that you can actually smell the fruit even though only a little has been added.

The chilies are quite strong. On the Scoville scale they are 100,000 to 225,000 which is in the bottom og the range of the strongest commercial chili – the habanero which has a Scoville strength up to 350,000.

And it still tastes great. I think it is going to be repeated next year :o)

The amount of chili needs some adjustments though. The chili taste was way to sharp, so it might be more adequate to add one chili to 1 L (10x dilution) AND removing the seed. The idea is to store the bottle with the chili inside, so it does not matter if the extraction time is longer.

I used a small chili which I cut open on 3 sides. I did not remove the seed.

It is the compound Capsaicin which gives the burning sensation and it is not particularly water soluble. This means I cannot add it to my fermenter which is of plastic since the capsaicin will adsorb quickly to the inner surface of the fermenter. If I will add chilies/chili extracts it will have to be in the glass flasks – but first I will have to see if the taste is worth aiming for.

The procedure is the same: 470 g of honey in a clean bowl. About 1.5 L of cyser, stir for quite a while (but not vigorously) to dissolve the honey and and pour the solution back into the fermenter. Rinse the bowl with another 1 L of cyser.  Then give the fermenter a quick stir and attach the lid and airlock

The next day I checked the mead after it had been settling:

Oe: 25
pH: 3.64 (a little low)

Almost Perfect :o)

Since it is not fermenting any more, I want to cover the mead with a layer of CO2 to avoid oxidation. For this I used my trusted CO2 generator. You can find directions for the generator in Knowledge Tools in top right corner of this blog.

So today I added the sodium metabisulfite/potassium sorbate today and gave the fermenter a good stir, but no splashing. Thank god I remembered

Just as last year it comes in a prepacked mix that should be adequate for 20 L batches. The total mass of content should be 7 g. So another thing on the to do list is to figure out how much of each component there are in a package.

SG: 1.016
pH: 3.68
Temp: 24.7 C

I took another sample for the TLC analysis that I have not yet had time to set up …. it will soon be on the top of the “to do list”

The transformation of the taste is quite significant. The stinging acidic taste of the malic acid is completely gone and the mead now has a slight yogurt like taste to it which will hopefully not become any more pronounced. It is quite pleasant to drink but I think back sweetening with honey to SG 1.020 – 1.025 will do wonders.

The taste of the mead is pleasant but it still has a sting to it from the malic acid. For that purpose I had purchased Malolactic bacteria from White Labs (WLP 675). It is a suspension that must be kept refrigerated until use. I found instructions (HERE) where it stated that there should be about 5 Brix of residual sugar which corresponds to a gravity of 1.020. Secondly the bacteria can be propagated in apple juice (or tomato juice). Finally the bacteria has high tolerance for low pH (pH 3.0) and an optimal performance at approximately pH 4.0. The tolerance to alcohol is up to 15%. Working temperature is 21-23oC

So the conditions in my Cyser are close to PERFECT :o)

I took out the vial from the fridge 4 hours before use, shaking it periodically and then added the entire vial to the fermenter. The following day I got a few bubbles from the airlock, so the bacteria is already hard at work.

The flask to the right contains a small sample of the mead so that I can do taste tests as the malolactic fermentation progresses. I will also try to set up a TLC measurement to get a semi quantitative measurement of the progress – more on that later…

I tried to make plot of the fermentation events. I assumed that the amount of CO2 produced is proportional to the conversion going on and also proportional to the rate of bubbles from the airlock. Short time intervals corresponds to fast fermentation, so in inverted the time between bubbles and put it in % of the fastest bubble rate. For gravity I expected a drop of 0.107, so I calculated the gravity drop in percent of the expected maximum loss in gravity.

Then the plot look like this:

Last year I learned from experience that fermenting to 14% ABV lowers the gravity by something pretty close to 0.100. The sweet mead yeast has a max ABV of 15% so under optimum fermentation conditions the gravity should drop about 0.107. In that case my FG should end up at about 1.009, which means that I am 0.035 from my target FG or that the fermentation has progressed 2/3 in just one week :o)

I noticed that the time between bubbles in the airlock initially was about 2 sec. Now this time has increased to about 5 sec, so the the fermentation appears to be slowing down a little.

I am hoping that the fermentation will stop abruptly during just one day. That will be indicative of good fermentation conditions until the ABV ceiling is reached. Then we will see how close my estimates will be to the actual values……..