2015 batch 1: Cyser - Brewing day

Monday the 12th of October 2015

Day of brewing

12.5 kg summer honey
25L of apple juice - about 22L from Ingrid Marie apples and 3 L from Pigion apples and a few "Ananas" apples.
2 tubes of Sweet Mead Wine Yeast from White Labs (WLP 720) liquid yeast.
Fermaid K
Pot Ash (Potassium Carbonate, K2CO3) - a baking ingredient
Salt of Hartshorn substitute (Ammonium Bicarbonate, NH4HCO3) - a baking ingredient

In the afternoon the liquid yeast was taken out of the refrigerator and left on the kitchen table to warm up to room temperature. This will "wake up" and prepare the yeast for the starter. According to White Labs the yeast should be ready in 3-6 hours.

In the evening it was time to prepare the must. Since I only have a 16L pot I had to split the apple juice in 3 portions. First 10L of apple juice was heated to 70C and was then taken off the heat. This should knock out microorganism growing in the apple juice. After about 10 min a bit more than half of the honey - approximately 7kg - was poured into the pot and stirred well to to dissolve the honey. The entire volume was then poured into the fermenter. I also checked the density of the apple juice before heating it up. It was about 48 Oechsle.

As the starter will be prepared from this first aliquot I need to do a few calculations. The final volume of the aliquot was about 10L+7kg / 1.4kg/L = 15L. So from the honey Oechsle equation I get an Oechsle value of  m/(3*V) = 7000g/(3*15) = 156 Oe due to the honey and from the apple juice I get 48 Oe * 10L / 15 L = 32 Oe so in total about 188 Oe.

For the starter 400 ml was poured into a 2000 ml Erlenmeyer flask and diluted to 1600 ml. Oe of the starter should then be about 188 Oe / 1600ml * 400ml = 47 or somewhere in the range 45-50 which is just perfect. Unfortunately I forgot to measure this but I trust the estimate :o) After the dilution the temperature was almost just right: 28C, so the starter was covered with a paper towel and set to cool a bit more.

A second aliquot of 10 L apple juice was then poured into the pot, heated to 70C and left for 10 min. The rest of the honey was poured into the pot and the must was stirred well before being added to the fermenter

The third and final aliquot of 5 L apple juice was poured into the pot and heated to 70C and left for 10 min. then the apple juice was used to rinse the honey container several times to ensure that all the honey had been dissolved. This was then also added to the fermenter.

Fresh water was then added to 45L. As 25L of apple juice had an Oechsle value of about 48 and diluted to 45L that would contribute to about 48Oe*25L/45L]=26.7 Oechsle.  From the honey-Oechsle equation the honey contributes with about Oe = m/(3*V) = 12500/(3*45) = 92,6 Oechsle. i.e. in total ~119 Oechsle. This will be checked when the must has cooled down.

About 6 hours after the yeast was removed from the refrigerator, it was time to add it to the starter. The temperature was 24C and both cylinders were added.

Now I will wait 2 days before the starter is added to the must and at this time the must should be at room temp.

2015 batch 1: Cyser - Juicing apples

This year i will again make a cyser. I will only make one batch of mead but this time I will scale up by a factor of about 2

As this has been a terrible year with really poor weather. I have only harvested 23 kg of honey from my one hive, which is about half of what I harvested last year. I had planned for at pure honey mead, but I also want some honey for my self and some to sell (this is what pays for the bees). So I have only been able to put about 15 kg aside - not enough for a 50 L batch

So cyser it is :o). Fortunately it has been a great apple year and my apple trees have been full. Especially my "Ingrid Marie" tree. So I figured I wanted to try to make and Ingrid Marie mead. The great thing about this apple is, that it is quite low on acid, so malolactic fermentation should not be necessary at all.

Last year I pressed the apple myself, but I found that a local apple plantation offered to press apples for free, so I figured I would wait for this even though it was in October which is a bit late for these apples. But again the poor weather was a great help, since the apples matured 2-3 week later than usual and most of the apples were just perfect when the day arrived.

Most of the apples are Ingrid Marie apples - only the third box from the top contains Pigeon apples and a bit of "Red Ananas" apples - (sounds silly if translated to English...and I do not know if the sort have a proper English name?)

The automated shredder and press are so much faster than when I did it manually - and the yield significantly higher. I ended up with a bit more than 25 L out of about 35-40 kg of apples. So far so good

Setting up the Chronical fermenter

First the fermenter had to be cleaned with a TSP solution. TSP is quite cheap, so I had no problem making a 10L solution in a mixing ratio according to the producer. All valves, seals and tri-clamps was dipped in the solution and scrubbed with a bottle brush. Then these were rinsed in water. The inside of the fermenter was scrubbed with the TSP solution using a soft sponge and rinsed with water.

A solution of StarSan was prepared by mixing 2 ml StarSan in 1L of demineralized water. This solution is used for passivation of the steel. The solution was added to a sprayer and sprayed onto all surfaces of the fermenter and valves. The StarSan makes a nice foam that covers the surfaces quite well. The surfaces was sprayed a couple of times over half an hour and the entire fermenter and valve was rinsed with water before being set aside for drying. 

The next day the fermenter was collected

Clean fermenter on leg extensions

Jacket to isolate the fermenter. I associate the smell of neoprene with great times as scuba diver, so I felt strange being so happy while dressing up a fermenter.

The fermenter was no ready for use, with thermometer in the center. It looks fantastic :o). The small cooler is for ice water to be used as cooling source - hope it is large enough. I also purchased a somewhat larger airlock due the larger volume and hence the increased amount of CO2 produced during the fermentation.

One thing though. The pump for FTSS temperature control is connected to the wall with a US plug. If you buy this fermenter get an adapter for European power outlets. 

Shopping for a conical fermenter

I have for a long time been looking at a conical fermentor as this would be an alternative to racking the mead again and again. I have been looking at several brands. Basically, I do not trust that the Chinese fermenters are food grade stainless steel, even though they are specified as such, so these was fairly fast out of the equation.

I was also looking at Blichmann's but these are really expensive. They might be great but right now I am not sure if this is the way to go for me.

Over the last year I fell head over heals for the fermentor from Ss Brewtech, but these were not sold outside the US.

As time went by I found that a new home brewing shop opened very close to were I live named Humlecentralen (HERE) - and what do you know - he sold equipment from Ss Brewtech. I was thrilled.

So now I have the Chronical half barrel fermentor equipped with FTSS temperature control - and it is just so sexy..... :). Even Alexander think it is a great toy

I also purchased the leg extensions which I can only highly recommend, because the bottom valve is really positioned low so unless you open directly to a drain you cannot get a tray underneath it unless the fermenter is lifted.

Now that a stainless steel fermenter has entered the scene I also got chemicals for cleaning (TSP) and passivation (StarSan), as recommended by Ss Brewtech.

TSP (tri-sodium-phosphate) is a relatively strong base that is used for cleaning the fermenter. This is done by scrubbing the surfaces with a soft sponge wetted in a TSP solution.

After the cleaning the fermenter is passivated with StarSan which is a solution of phosphoric acid (~50%) which passivates, dodecyl-benzene-sulphonic acid which is a foaming agent (5-15%) and some antibacterial component(s) which is hush hush (proprietary according to the MSDS)

This is the mild version of the passivation process I know from work which is sodium hydroxide wash followed by a nitric acid passivation bath..... Not really a process you want to fiddle with at home in your kitchen

Looking so much forward to try it out

Death in the family

It has been a while since my last post. My mother was very sick during the spring with pancreas cancer. It is a horrible type of cancer and there is almost nothing you can do to stop or slow it down, and she passed away this June.

With funeral, clearing and selling the house and ending all ongoing arrangements in her life and just dealing with the loss, I have not been doing much about brewing of mead, and of cause not posted anything on this blog.

Now that some time has passed, and most of all the things I had to deal with have been finalized, things are getting back to what can reasonably be called normal.

May she rest in peace!

Pic is from December 2014 when my mother and I when to a fish spa for some mother and son quality time. She died 6 month later

All I can say is that whenever you have an opportunity to give money for cancer research, do not hesitate to donate.

2014 batch 3: Bochet (9) - Bottling the Blackberry Bochet

So, when I cannot bottle my currant mead, I will just start bottle the Blackberry Bochet instead.

Same procedure. Washing bottles.

This "Double Blast" bottle cleaner is worth its weight in gold. Also the "Fast Rack" frame in the back fits perfectly for my choice of bottles. The bottles were also sprayed with Star San and then rinsed again.

Alle the gear was lined up

All clean and ready

The bottles were filled with my trusted siphon. Unfortunately I did not get a picture.

Placing the black heat shrink capsules on top of each 0.5L bottle. This is also a presentable way of hiding the silver colored screw cap :o)

Shrink the capsules in slow boiling water. A quick dip in the water is enough to get the tight seal. Just remember to use a glove to protect the hand, and a tool to hold the capsule in place. I am very fond of my bent knife - works very well.

The bottles were cleaned to get rid of spots and finger prints. Then the bottles were labeled. Using my primitive set-up to put the label in the same position, just adds a more appealing look to the bottle.

and voila!

2014 batch 2: Currant mead (14) - Still does not clear up

I was actually planning on bottling my currant mead but it does not clear up. So I started shopping for equipment to try filtering the mead

I will try to push the mead over the filter using vacuum on the collector side rather than pressurizing the mead. to push it through the filter. The idea is that it would be less risky to remove air/CO2 from the mead by vacuum rather than increasing the amount of air (+ air pollutants) by pressuring the mead

The inspiration I got from YouTube. Here is part 1:

And here is part 2:

I like the concept of filtrating the mead rather than using clearing agents. For removing particulate matter you can use 5µm or 3µm filter. Using 1 or 2 µm filters will remove yeast cells. Finaly, for sterilization you can use a 0.45 or 0.22µm filter will also remove bacteria cells too.

What you use will depend on what you wish to remove, and how much material you expect to remove, and how will you want to remove it. Smaller pore sizes will result in higher back pressure, and as the material is trapped in the filter the pressure/vaccum needed to move the mead through the filter must be increased.

I have no issues with un-wanted organism, so I will go for just removing particulate matter, and/or yeast cells - but it depends on which filters I can get my hands on. :o)

I have started shopping for the process. It is quite amazing what you can get on ebay and aliexpress from China for hardly any money when it comes to electronics and wires etc. :o)