Meadery update...

...because the world is clamoring for one.  It's a season for fruit production and I've started to experiment with them again in a range of new melomel flavors.  The picture below (ignore the background graffiti from the era when the basement was a teenage den of normal antisocial behavior) shows what I have in production presently.

The large batch on the left is watermelon that borders semi-sweet and dry.  I was aiming for semi-sweet but over-shot because I didn't take enough care to halt the fermentation on time.  I think it'll still be OK, though.  I intend to split this large (6 gallon) batch into a series of smaller batches to experiment with secondary fermentation additions of volatiles like elderflower, lavender, rosemary, etc.  I'm trying to enhance the nose without detracting from the flavor.  This is my first attempt with watermelon and with those secondary additions so we'll see how everything works out. 

Second from the left is a batch of blackcurrant from last year that I tried to leave semi-sweet again but really over-shot to the point of astringency.  I've been back-sweetening with a sweet regular mead (second from the right).  The sweetness cuts out the astringency but is still balanced well by the acidity.  I think I have it about right but need to do one last test with my in-house taster.

The left-most white bucket contains a primary fermentation composed of a mixture of raspberry and strawberry juices plus honey.  This is going to be either a semi-sweet high alcohol (15%) or a sweet regular alcohol (12%) mead.  I tend to go for lower alcohol levels but I'm going to see how the flavor and acidity work with before I decide what to do.

The right-most white bucket contains a grapefruit primary fermentation.  This should come in as semi-sweet low alcohol.

The second from the right is a finished sweet mead that I'm using to sweeten the very dry blackcurrant as described above.

The far-right is a ginger-orange metheglin that is finally clearing.  It is technically dry in character but it's on the high end of residual sugar.  This is my first metheglin and the ginger is a little strong for my taste.  I'll try another with half the ginger addition and see what happens with that.

The theme with all of these is higher residual sugar in the final product than I've traditionally aimed for.  This is directly related to the fact that I'm at home in the evenings now and able to more closely monitor the residual sugar levels more closely and stop the fermentation when I want to.  Previously I was out-of-State fro four days each week.  Consequently mead production consisted of weekend start-up, single nutrient additions, no daily aeration and at best a specific gravity reading after four days of fermentation.  Not even close to optimal on many fronts.