Meads, Pools, and Sorrow

I’m writing this on Tuesday to be published on Wednesday because there is a S00p3r S33kr3t thing happening which I could probably talk about, but just in case The Mrs happens to glance at my computer, I’ll hold off talking about it until next week.

Let’s just say that I’ll be getting super duper husband points tomorrow and leave it at that.

It’s been fairly quiet this week, with the exception of today. It started out pretty good, other than having to wake up from a really stupid and annoying dream. Because of said dream I was up earlier than usual. After running some errands, it was mead time.

More on that below.

Listening To: I finished This Wretched Valley by Megan Tusing. It’s an interesting tale of a group of people who get trapped in the woods.

Currently Reading: Edits and submissions.

Current Obsession: I think that you will find the answer to that question in this week’s Rambling.

Seventy-five percent of the backers of the Nightmerica Kickstarter have filled out their surveys. We are hard at work getting the rewards ready.

Work continues on our other projects, with occasional time off to read the submissions for this year’s Erie Tales for the Great Lakes Association of Horror Writers.

There were a number of items on the to do list. The first was to bottle the first mead, Jörmungandr, that I started months ago. I racked it into a big pitcher so I could see how much I had and poured myself a taste. For a while I had been worried that the excess headspace in the secondary vessel might have lead to off flavors. Unfortunately, I was right. I added some honey, a little at a time, trying some each time, until I got back to a taste I liked.

It was at this point that I realized that I had forgotten to eat lunch and those little sips were adding up. Oops.

I’m almost positive that all of the yeast fermented out, but just to be on the safe side, I decided to pasteurize the bottles after I filled them.

I’m not going to lie, using the bottling wand is pretty damn cool. I ended up with four full bottles (750ml) and a little extra (which we had with dinner).

While the bottles were boiling away, I was cleaning out one of the five gallon carboys that I inherited when me moved into The New House™. That’s was a real pain in the butt. Those things are huge and heavy when they are empty, even more so when filled with soapy water.

While that dried I started another batch, this time with three pounds of various cherries. My plan is to add chocolate to it in secondary. I used one of the big mouth fermenters which holds 1.4 gallons. I find that those are perfect for the meads with the fruit.

When that one was done, I moved on to the next thing on my list — another new batch (yeah, I know). I wanted to try another simple mead, just honey and water, but this time with orange blossom honey. I put the three pound jar of honey in the hot water I used to ferment the first batch. That made it nice and easy to pour into the fermenter (a one gallon this time — the one the first batch had been in). I filled it about halfway and started stirring…

…and then the bottom of the fermenter cracked, a piece popped out, and there was a mess everywhere. Fermenter died, honey wasted, and my mood dropped significantly.

I bleached the crap out of the floor and cabinets. The last thing I want is to leave some honey water behind to attract ants and other bugs.

My next, and now final task on the mead making schedule was to rack the big batch of Jörmungandr that has been settling in the big six gallon fermenter. As a reminder, this was the one that erupted all over and lead to my first experience with creating a blow off tube. The good news was that the mead tasted exactly as I wanted. I racked it off, a siphoning process which took quite a while. I had figured that starting out with six gallons in fermentation would lead to at least five gallons for secondary after some loss for the lees. Sadly, the loss from the earlier eruption meant that I ended up short of the five I was hoping for.

I added some glass marbles that I have for just this type of problem, but even with that addition, there was still a lot of room at the top. I really don’t want to have the same problem with the big batch that I had with the last one, so I add some water. Now the batch will be a little diluted and probably taste different.

Grrr.

After that I called it a day on the mead stuff for a while, cleaned up, and went to take a dip in the pool…

…which was filled with water as green as Kermit the Frog’s dick.

Sigh.

The day did end on a positive note. When The Mrs got home we got to play with the floor corker. We have four nice bottles waiting to be opened later.