Mead-making round 2 is going great. My first batch has been “racked” over to a new jar for further fermenting and I’ve assembled two more half-gallon ferments. This time, we’re making a second batch of blueberry mead, but with cranberries for tannin instead of lime pith, and a mint, cranberry, lime-infused mead that according to the internet, doesn’t need to age as long. The goal there is to possible enjoy some refreshing minty-mead by the end of the summer.
Concocting the mead went a lot smoother and cleaner the second time around. On my first try I didn’t know how long the process would take, how long the water takes to cool for adding yeast, or the best ways to pour water and honey from one container to another. After figuring those things out on the fly, I approached batch number 2 with more confidence, and made far less of a mess.
Within hours my yeast was very happy, feasting away and producing lots of foam and bubbles! I’ve found that if I stir the first ferment daily, I haven’t had any molding within the first 10 days, after which time I’ve racked. More excitingly, I was able to take the fermented blueberry chunks from my first ferment and boil them down into a jam, back-sweetened with more honey. It made an excellent breakfast topping that was sweet, blueberry-like, but had a fermented tang at the end. Best of all, no one got sick from it!
I am storing my mead in-progress inside a lower cabinet where it’s dark, along with my supply of honey from Clint’s Honey of Medford. So far I’d say the hardest part about making micro-batch mead is being patient. My first jar has at least another 6 weeks to go, but I want mead now.
