Showing You Guys What Exactly Goes On In a Bottling Day

Greetings all! I am back with another bottling day post. This time it is my Cocoa Cherry Mead. I had a bit too much headspace in the carboy and I was worried about oxidation as I was looking some color, so I decided to go ahead and bottle it and let if bottle age. Now instead of the obligatory bottle porn I normally post I decided to let you guys see what goes into bottling meads.

 Here you see my Blackberry[no post on this, too simple and not blog worthy] and Cocoa Cherry meads. The thing inside of the jug in the carboy is a racking cane. You pump it and it creates a vacuum that sucks the fluid down into the tube into a bottle.

 As you see here, the fluid flows into the bottle. The white clamp on the hose is what you press to stop the flow of liquid so you don't spill your precious wine all over the floor. 

And here is the bottle porn. I love the color on these. The left is Blackberry and the right is Cocoa Cherry. Despite the darkness of it, the last two on the left are blackberry too. 

Laters, next post I will show you how I made chicken for thanksgiving. If you have any questions/complaints/suggestions feel free to comment and let me know. 

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.