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Recipe & Process
Recipe & Process
Primary
Primary
1 mason jar of home-canned cinnamon pears from a friend
Lees from the Vanilla Chai batch
2 lbs very heavily caramelized honey
Sugar until OG
10 bags of chai tea
Half packet Lalvin 71B yeast (~2.5g)
Gravity & ABV
Gravity & ABV
OG 1.093
FG: 1.021
ABV: 9.45%
Nutrients
Nutrients
1 tsp boiled yeast slurry at pitch
0.75 tsp boiled yeast slurry a day later
Wasn't planning to add a bunch of other nutrients here due to the lees having dead yeast in it as well
Offgas the mead before adding nutrients
Timeline - Pitch to Bottle
Timeline - Pitch to Bottle
Pitched on 06/14/2020
Tried to extract pear debris on 06/19/2020; it was pulp
06/27/2020 more debris removal and fed 0.25 tsp boiled yeast
Racked to secondary circa 07/20/2020
Apparently I forgot to write down the racking date - so I'm estimating based on the last gravity reading being 07/18/2020
Bottled 10/30/2020!
What is this monstrosity?
What is this monstrosity?
Well basically, I wanted to put a brew into the bucket we made vanilla chai in immediately - but forgot I had planned to do that until we had already racked the chai brew, resulting in an unplanned brew day.
So this became a kitchen sink mead, where I frantically tried to find anything we had in the house that might make a decent mead, then threw it in the bucket.
That's what went into this brew.
Retrospective
Retrospective
Process Improvement
Process Improvement
I'm not really sure why this stalled out around 9.45% - nutrients, perhaps? Or maybe something in the canned pears wasn't very yeast-friendly? It's hard to say for sure, and there's a lot that could potentially have gone wrong with the haphazard way this recipe was thrown together.
Recipe Improvements
Recipe Improvements
The honey was practically burned, which left ashen and astringent flavors that likely need to age out.
That said, I'm told pear tends to fade as a flavor - it'll be interesting to see if there is any pear left by the time the bochet side has matured to a more drinkable state.
Even if the pear fades out in time, I'm projecting this becomes a decent mead in time. I have, at time of bottling, started to mess with finishing meads more via acid/tannin/sugar balancing. When the time came that I needed to free up a gallon carboy for another mead I am going to rack soon, this mead felt like it was in the best spot to bottle, of all the meads that were aging. That's quite an accomplishment in its own right, considering how I made this one.
Tastings
Tastings
06/28/2022
06/28/2022
This mead is over 2 years old now! With a fair bit of age under its belt, let's see how it's doing:
Surprisingly pleasant nose, pear-forward in spite of my fears pear would fade.
Initial taste is also pear-forward, again surprisingly
Middle of taste is almost entirely empty, like water
Swallow and retronasal are awful
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