Yesterday, I bottled up the raspberry mead or melomel which brings this 3.5 month long brew log to a close. After following directions to keep the primary fermentation humming along and racking 3 or 4 times to gain clarity and add flavor, I finally got around to bottling this sucker for submission into competitions and aging.
We sampled this mead on New Year’s Eve where the resident honey expert gave it good marks. For a first try, it was pretty good. I don’t know how it matches up to good mead so that’s where the competition submissions will come in handy.
One point to note, I did not add any priming sugar to the mead. I planned for it to be a still mead.
I am pretty happy that this brew log is over for now. Now, I can focus my time back on beer and getting the lager project started up.
Some other posts about the mead making…
chris
Where abouts were your fusel / antiseptic levels? Still present but fading or pretty much gone? At 4 months I still have a fusel hit but it is hugely diminished. Six months and its drinkable. One year and it is a different drink.
John
I had a small tasting on NYE and I would say they are pretty much gone. There is some alcohol warmth you get in the aftertaste. I don’t know if that will mellow out.
chris
Wow, that will be fantastic in a few months then.