Floral Hydromel

Pitched on 07/26/2020
Added ginger 07/30/2020
Stabilized on 08/01/2020
Back sweetened to 1.022 and added more pea blossoms as the brew had no blue or purple hues on 08/02/2020
Noticed fermentation had restarted on 08/05/2020... oops!
Mead still in progress!

Process

Bring water to rolling boil, then turn heat to low. Add butterfly pea blossoms and steep until temperature gets to about 160F. Add hibiscus, cover, and steep for 1 hour. Turn heat off after 30 minutes. Strain or run through a loose filter when done to remove flowers.

Add some tea (½ gal or so) to the bucket, then add the honey and mix. Continue adding tea and mixing until the must level reaches the 1.25 gallon mark.

07-26-2020 Floral Hydromel

Retrospective

Process Improvement

My initial attempt to stabilize this mead failed and fermentation restarted. Most likely, this means I tried to stabilize before fermentation actually stopped. To fix this, I need to wait until I have the same gravity reading 3+ days apart. I'm aware of this method for most brews, but mistakenly believed it wasn't necessary for a brew that went dry at 1.000. Apparently, that's not always the case!
Overshot intended OG by a bit. Not sure why, but oh well, still a hydromel and the exact GO doesn’t matter too much in this hydromel since it mostly just determines ABV. We’ll be 6% and change instead of 5% and change, which is probably not noticeable.

Recipe Improvements

Hibiscus tastes very vegetal to me, like celery. I definitely feel like the ginger improves the flavor here.
If I want this to come out more like a rosé, the way the nano version of this batch did, I need to try reducing the amount of hibiscus I use.
I'm letting this age in secondary a bit before I review it further. It wasn't doing very well last time I taste-tested.

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