The Midnight Cherry Mead

Hello all! It's been a while since I have posted anything. Thankfully The Wife was holding it down. Any who it has been waaay too long since I have posted up a mead. A lot of my past meads were already in secondary or already bottled by the time I posted here. This one, however, will be posted up in real time. As of the date of this posting, this mead has been in primary for about 24 hours.

This post will also presume you are not completely new to brewing. So I will skip certain obvious steps, like sanitizing.

 To start I got my biggeset stainless steel pot and put the temp on low. To it I add 32 oz black currant juice and 32oz cherry juice.

 This stuff was tart, but dang good flavor.

 Same for the cherry, tart but good flavor.

 Next I heated up the honey in the bottle so it is easier to pour. Some people hate the idea of heating up honey, but I am fine with it as long as it is not boiling.

After you mix in the honey and get it all dissolved (*FOR THE LOVE OF EVERYTHING MAKE SURE IT DOES NOT BOIL) go ahead and dump your mixture into the bucket or carboy of your choice. I chose a bucket because it is my only piece of brewing equipment that is 2 gallons.

 A few photos of me taking a gravity reading. It is hard to read, but the gravity came to 1.060.

 These are the nutrients I use on my mead. Pectic enzyme to help break down the pectin so it is less cloudy. The other two are to feed the yeast.

 Next is time to aerate the mixture. I like to use my stick blender.

 .......So this isn't working.......

 Oh yea, crap, wrong stick. Got the one without holes on the top.

 YEEEAAAAA WHIP IT UP!!!

 Now that is more like it. Foamy, means bubbles and oxygen which is good for yeast. Also note how how that temp is. 

You cannot, I repeat CANNOT pitch  yeast at that temp. All you will do is kill them. 

So stick your brewing container into a clean sink full of water and ice and wait till it cools down. 

Much better! I like to pitch between 75-79 degrees. There are lots of docs on pitching temps. Do whatever works for you. 

I got my yeast slurry dumped in. After a lag phase of about 6-8 hours. She started to burp for me. Right now the container is in the closet burping along. I plan to aerate it daily to get some oxygen in there to help the yeasties. 

The second part will be up in two weeks when primary is over and we move to secondary. See ya in two weeks.  when the gravity drops. 

Edit: Part 2 is up. 

My Coca Cherry Mead.

I love cherries. They are in my top 5 fruits. A mead had to happen.

Primary

2 weeks in the bucket 48 oz Tart Cherry Juice for lots of cherry flavor 5lbs of clover honey 36 oz of black cherries frozen Lavlin 71b-1112 re-hydrated with yeast energizer pectic enzyme, yeast nutrient Water to a gallon

I heated up the juice water and honey into a pot, brought to a simmer right below a boil and added in the honey bit by bit. While it was heating up I poured the cherries into my bag (seriously bag + bucket = so much win) the crushed then up with my hand. I poured the liquid on top. Added in the pectic enzyme, nutrient, energizer. Then whipped it up with my hand blender with whisk attachment. SG was between 1.27-1.32 the foam obscured it a bit.

With the yeast I rehydrated it with a bit of yeast engergizer. Didn't put the nutrient in as it has DAP in it. After it sat for a bit, I added a bit of must to it. Let it sit for 17 mins, it got a nice foam on top of it, so I added more must then let that sit for 20 mins. After the 20 min mark I dumped it into the bucket, stirred her up then sat the lid on top.

During the first three days I don't seal the bucket since I aerate three times a day. After the first three I sealed her up and let her blurp for two weeks.

Here is a photo of it in the bucket

Secondary 

2 weeks then racked onto 12 oz of black cherries 

After the two weeks was up I racked it off the fruit and onto more cherries and some coca nibs. The gravity was 1.001. At this gravity it was dry as a bone but it was wonderful! The taste of the cherries was thick without being cough syrup like. I let The Wife try some and even though she does not like dry wines she liked this one.

Tertiary

2-3 oz of cocoa nibs 

After sitting for another 2 weeks on the extra cherries I racked this off onto 2-3oz's of cocoa nibs just to give it a bit of extra flavor. I sample it again but did not take a gravity reading. The flavor had gotten even better. The cherry flavor was a bit more pronounced and it smelled wonderful.

Quaternary

(admit it, you just learned a new word)

I let it sit on the nibs for quite some time. I don't really remember how long. I think maybe a month or longer. The nibs did not impart as much flavor as I had hoped. Though it did add a bit of complexity to the mead. It was around this time I broke my hydrometer in the making of a future post (see what I did there?) so I could not take a gravity reading. After giving very small samples out to everyone we all agreed it needs to be backsweetened just a hair. If the gravity is still 1.001 then I would take it maybe to 1.010.

Personally I think the color on this is FANTASTIC. As of today's date it is still in the carboy bulk aging. It was sorbated and sulfited a week ago. I will backsweeten it this weekend when I trek up to the brew store to buy yet another hydrometer. I plan to let this one sit for a while before I open it up. Tell me what you think of the color. Any suggestions on additions? I will most definitely be making this one again.