Recipe 2: Sack Mead Liquor (cont. 3) - second separation

It bothered me that the temperature did not drop in the mead. By the time I went to bed the temperature was -6C. Then it dawned on me that the stirrer might actually heating up inside the freezer. On the AC/DC adapter it is stated that the output was 18,6 V and 1.1A i.e. 20.5W. That is probably enough to generate a noticeable amount of heat in a freezer. So before I went to sleep I turned the stirrer off.

Opening the freezer this morning the mead liquor looked rock solid, and I measured the temperature to -25C (the freezer was cooling all night). I took it out and stirred it with a spoon, and to my surprise the ice easily broke up and I could stir it into a slurry. This is probably an effect of the initially increased amount of alcohol.

Then I poured the frozen mead into a sieve and collected the liquid. This took a looooong time. I used the IR thermometer to check the temperature of the ice, as the mead liquor was dripping through the sieve. When I had collected about 450 ml the temperature of the ice was about -8C. I will use the temperature to get an idea of when to stop collecting.

The liquid was once again put in the freezer but this time I did not bother with the stirring, just an occasional shake. The initial 100 ml of mead liquor I made was mixed with the batch also, so that the total volume was about 550 ml.

After several hours the temperature mead liquor was -19C at which point I repeated the sieving process. It was now a very smooth slurry. About 50 ml poured straight through the sieve - guess this was quite heavy in ethanol. Then I just collected until I had about 450 ml. i.e. a little less than half the starting volume (200ml from the small scale plus the 800 ml of this upscaled trial). The temperature went from about -18C to -12C. The discarded ice was also collected in a second bottle.



So all in all a little less than half the volume was collected and Sack Mead Liquor. I will leave it for a while to see if get smoother as it ages because it is quite acidic. Also, as expected, the taste of honey has also become more pronounced.

The process of producing the liquor has been quite tedious I will try to get it done in a more simple manner. But for now here is just a picture "from start to end" to create a little atmosphere :o) ...... Cheers.....