Leftovers Blend

Recipe

• 32 oz of the Vanilla Chai

• 16 oz of the Chai

• 10 oz of the Oaked Bourbon Bochet (before secondary additions)

• 1 tsp oaked bourbon tincture

• A few drops of vanilla extract

Gravity & ABV

• Estimated OG is 1.007

• Estimated ABV is 15.24%

OG/ABV values are calculated based on Gotmead's blending calculator.

Timeline - Pitch to Bottle

• Blended on 07/02/2020

• This got blended into the Chai Metheglins when I mixed those together, since it was about 67% those brews in the first place

• This is a great use case for these little leftovers batches! For all the testing I had done on the chai brews, headspace got to be a bit too much, and having something leftover that was primarily those same brews to fill it with was really helpful

Process

I had some excess of a couple meads, and also poured off the Oaked Bourbon Bochet lees into a mason jar. After it resettled, I racked off another ~10 oz of mead I could use for this "batch".

This method of extracting more product from the lees probably shouldn't be used for your main batch body, because the pouring could introduce oxygen. You risk oxidizing your mead if you add product collected from the lees this way.

However - in this case, I've created a whole new batch out of just leftovers that would otherwise have been tossed out. Even if this oxidizes badly, it's no real loss. If it happens to work out, then I've got another 1.75L of mead!

This aged much better than the chai brews by themselves, in my opinion, but it was still pretty harsh. Not all that old, not very high in gravity, and high on ABV.

It would have been nice to let it age longer, but since it was just a liquor handle's worth, it made more sense to use it to save the headspace on the full gallon chai batches. Hopefully those age well!