Mead - an alcoholic beverage made by fermenting honey.
Methegline - a mead made w/ herbs and spices.
Melomel - a mead made w/ fruit.
Braggot - a mead made w/ grain (like beer).
Cyser - a mead made w/ apple cider.
Pyment - a mead made w/ grapes (like wine).
Must - yeast food, this is a sugary liquid destined to become wine.
Wort - yeast food again, this one has less sugar than a must and will become beer.
Adjunct - an ingredient in a wort or must which is added not to provide fermentable sugars but to add flavor or aroma.
Yeast - a microorganism in the fungus kingdom which converts sugar into alcohol, releasing carbon dioxide.
Slurry - the yeast-and-water sludge leftover after racking
Racking - carefully removing fermenting liquid from a fermentor leaving behind most of the dead yeast and other sediments.
Fermentor - a vessel used to contain fermenting liquid.
Pitching - adding yeast to a must or wort, which begins the fermentation process.
Erik, thanks so much for hosting this class!!! I've got most of my supplies gathered up and hope to start fermenting today or tomorrow :)
ReplyDeleteI'm going to try two batches - one cyser and one orange vanilla mead. I tried looking up recipes for the vanilla mead but it seems like quantities and time in fermentation vary A LOT! Currently I'm thinking something along the lines of using 2lbs of honey, 8oz or so of orange juice, 3 oranges, and putting in a whole vanilla bean after the first 2 weeks of fermenting. What do you think?
First of all, sorry it's taken me so long to respond, things have been a bit crazy lately. I'm thrilled to hear you're plunging right in. Both the meads you have proposed sound excellent to me, though in the spirit of full disclosure I must admit I don't much care for vanilla. How long are you thinking of leaving the vanilla bean in? I'm not very familiar with making vanilla infusions. I know a bit more about oranges. How do you plan to put them in? If you plan to use the peel as well, bear in mind that the white part of the orange will impart a bitterness if left to macerate. I don't mean to warn you off it, that effect can be quite lovely and my favorite recipe is the juniper business that we demonstrated Saturday, definitely a bitter character to it. But if you want to avoid the bitter, you can juice the oranges, then use a grater and put some orange zest into your must. What is your equipment set-up like?
ReplyDeleteha! I wish I would have seen this. I definitely think the orange peel I put in gave it a bitter taste. I thought I put in the peel sparingly put I didn't realize I should have just zested it! oh well. I added in the vanilla for just a short time and then some cinnamon at the end. The cinnamon really helped to mellow the flavor but it didn't have enough time to really steep...I think.
ReplyDelete