Maiden's Mead - Derica's Contribution to the Triple Goddess Collaboration!

means me my contribution to the triple goddess Mead collaboration now this collaboration is the brainchild of Faye woodmead and she thought it would be a great idea to get together with other female Brewers and do needs based on the triple goddess aspects so I received the maiden aspect of the goddess and that's what I used as my inspiration for this recipe when I think of the maiden I think of Springtime and then immediately I'm transferred to my garden and I think what is going on out there during spring and that's flowers so I knew I wanted this to be a floral Mead two of my favorite flowers that are occurring in springtime in our garden is hibiscus and elderflower so I knew I wanted those flavors in my need and I'm going to use those as a tea so that way I can get all the tannins and all the different nutrients that are in those Botanicals along with the floral Aromas which is really what I'm going for in my tea so I have half a cup of hibiscus I really love hibiscus because not only does it give those floral notes but it gives a beautiful citrus note and I'm going to put this in a pitcher that as you can see I have lined with a bag this is a fine mesh bag so that once my tea is done steeping I can pull out all those solids and won't have to have them in my fermenter now elderflower it just seemed like a no-brainer that I really wanted to add an elder element to this Brew being that we're using the goddess as our inspiration for our recipe but elderflower can be a little potent so I'm only doing a third of a cup of the elderflower so I have some water on the kettle and once that gets hot I'm going to put that into my concoction here and I'm going to let that steep for roughly somewhere between 10 to 15 minutes while that's steeping I'm going to get on to work for my next ingredient and that is our Barbados cherries now I've been harvesting these for a couple of years now and I've been super excited wanting to use them in some sort of fermentation so their blooms come out in Spring make me super happy I mean who doesn't love Cherry blooms right so this seemed like a perfect opportunity for me to use these in a meat these have been frozen they do have pits so I'll be spending the next I don't know how long pitting these this is 2.75 pounds or a thousand nine hundred and seventy grams worth of cherries okay so guess what these cherries are slightly different in anatomy than a traditional cherry and that's because they have three separate seeds in there so I was trying to manhandle them and remove the seeds from the cherry and I was ending up with more of the pulp being stuck to the seed and being discarded than left for me to firm it so change of plans what I'm going to do is I am currently removing the stems so you know just pull the stem out and I'm placing those unstemmed cherries in a separate bowl and then I'm going to cook them with just enough water to cover my cherries and I'm going to smash them with a spoon and I'm going to show you that process now okay as you can see I just have enough water in here to cover my cherries I have the burner on high and I'm waiting for this to come to a boil so I started smashing them against the side with the spoon and then Brian said hey we got a potato masher and that seemed like a really good idea so now I'm just Hulk smashing the cherries okay so my cherries are cooked and smashed but I still have all that gunk in here I have the seeds I have everything so what I'm going to do is I'm going to take this metal strainer and I'm going to continue to just smash my cherries into the pitcher with my already steeped tea I'm probably going to do this in small batches at a time because I feel like this is going to be really messy and now I'm just smooshing with my spoon against the edge of the strainer there so that way I'm forcing all the juice all the pulp against the mesh hopefully restraining the seeds Okay so that was a bit of a process but hey one of the things that I've learned as becoming a home Brewer is to not only be patient but be flexible you may have a plan you may have a route in mind but the Brewer the Brewing that you're doing may take you a different path and as long as you're flexible enough to change with the needs of your particular ingredients then you'll do this just fine so at this point now that I have all of my main ingredients except for my honey all together I thought it would be a good idea to take a gravity reading because I have no idea how much sugar is in those cherries so this is a great opportunity for me also because I've added everything into my pitcher with my Nifty Neato pouring spout I can just very careful carefully hahaha pour it into my graduated cylinder the reason why I'm laughing and smirking is I'm a bit of a spasmo so this may go horribly wrong okay I don't normally do the gravity readings Brian does as you've probably noticed from our videos so I have to make sure I'm on the right gauge looks like oh come on now I see why brain always cusses at these things one points ah one point you know what I'm gonna call in the big guns oh Brian big guns I don't think so you're hiding behind the picture don't hide but I'm not supposed to be in this video that's okay you you will be eventually it's really hard to see yeah it's like 1.006 okay now that's because you diluted it through all the liquids right yeah you're fine 1.006 okay you heard that from the big gun himself 1.006 so what does that mean what's a good question that means we need to do math and Erica hates math so initially I was going to add 1.5 pounds of honey to my Brew with this gravity reading I would need to change that to 1.5 pounds so I'm good to go as I was initially with my initial recipe so I have hot tea and a hot cooked cherry juice in a pitcher which is going to really help me mix my honey so my next step I think is going to be to measure out my honey so if you watched our other videos where Brian and I are working together I normally at this point stand up so I can keep an eye on what's going up there as he's taken an eye of seeing what weight we're at so that way we don't overflow so again hilarity May ensue I'm tearing out my scale with the fermenter and the funnel on there so that way their weights don't affect the weight of my honey today I'll be using Orange Blossom honey because even though we aren't beekeepers ourselves we do have a friend who lives close by who does keep bees and she keeps bees in the best way possible and that is Benny's bees so we're using Debbie's bees Orange Blossom honey I'm just gonna stand up I I don't trust myself that's really good honey all right so I now have to wait for all the honey to trickle down the funnel but I did manage to get 1.502 so for my first attempt at going solo and pouring honey I'm pretty pleased with that number okay so normally because we have all this hot water this would be the time that we'd go ahead and pour that into our funnel because that's going to help clear out any residual honey but in this particular instance I want to make sure I get as much of that honey to pour through on its own before I start doing that because I'm going to do an added step in the process of mushing all that pulp through the strainer I did get some chunks in here and I think a few of the tea particles got out too initially my plan was to have all the solids in there so I could distract as much as possible but since plans got changed I thought hey let's use the big brain and strain as many of the particles first so that way when it comes time to racking it won't be quite as a mess so how am I going to do that I am going to put a bag in my funnel so that when I pour the liquid through my funnel the bag will contain all those solids and I will have a more clear beverage to start off with my bag and all of my equipment has been sanitized in the red bucket of sanitization in Star sand which is our sanitizer of choice of course it's not a hundred percent star sand because that would be crazy you want to make sure that whatever sanitizer you use you follow the instructions and dilute it appropriately all right so I got my bag kind of wrapped up by funnel I just I keep getting visions of a horrible mess being made in the process here but so far so good so let's continue shall we and remember this is still hot which is good at this point so that way we can make sure when we mix this all up that we get all of our sugars from our honey throughout the consistency of the beverage um but it's also bad when it comes time to pitching our yeast I'll get to that in a second because I wanted this strain a little bit because I got a quite a bit of goop in there I want to give you a little tip and as you notice I have my funnel tilted to the side if I just let it sit flat it creates like a little barrier in the lip and it'll kind of create a suction issue so when you're trying to pour things in it'll it'll bubble and split all over the place so if you tilt it to the side it breaks that barrier and it makes it easier to pour liquid I have a lot of goop in here so I have sanitized this spoon and I'm using that to try to maneuver it so I can get the juice to come out easier okay so here's my bag okay so here's my bag of whole be messiness I I'm going to twist the bag to try to get as much juice out of this as possible all right cherry juice in now as you can see we are nearly to the one gallon Mark already so that's pretty impressive however my plans of cooling this by adding cool water well they're limited now you may have noticed this little can sitting over on the side there well this is another ingredient from my garden and I couldn't not put this in there just for the humor of it all but I think it'll really go well particularly with the Hibiscus flavor and that is our ring per lime zest now we're not putting the leaves in here but the zest is actually a really wonderful addition to many of our Brews how much am I going to put in there that much it's like a a good pinch worth now you're probably thinking there why did you put that in a funnel well because I'm gonna be pouring more liquid in there and if I waited to the very end it was probably going to stick in the mouth of my narrow mouth one gallon fermenter so now I got some already in there but the rest of my stuff can flush it down into my Brew the next thing I'm going to add is two grams of fermaid O that I'm whisking into some water I always get in the water because if we just add it dry it tends to Clump up and I we just feel like if we whisk it in water then it'll disperse more readily through the liquid and be able to do its job and that's to feed the yeast all right and that's going to go in my funnel all right at this point I have all my ingredients in there except for the yeast so I'm going to go ahead and top this off with water and mix it thoroughly so that way I can take my original gravity reading I've decided that's how greedy I want to be all right so I got a solid bun to put as a stopper so I can shake this oh boy I I've never shaped a brew before because it's hard work and normally Brian does this and again I I'm just not trusting myself and I'm imagining Brew going everywhere because I don't hold the stopper right or something but here goes wish me luck all right this isn't working out as well as I went to Brian showed me his technique but he's got these big monstrous manly hands and I have these currently Cherry stained fingers that aren't helping me at all he does this finger thumb thing and I just it's not working I got it kind of mixed but I can still see a pretty significant layer of Honey on the bottom and rather than waste a bunch of footage of me suffering through this I'm gonna cheat and just ask Brian to help me out I'm not really here thank you Brian all right so now we have it mixed and what we are looking for is the bottom side and all the edges we want to make sure that we don't have any layer of Honey which is easy to see in most beverages it's slightly more difficult in this beverage because look at that color oh it's so pretty already now of course we got foam for shaking but that's a good thing because that means our Brew is oxygenated oxygen is really critical at the beginning of fermentation because the yeast require oxygen to reproduce and we need them to reproduce that way they build a really nice big and healthy Colony so they can get to work creating alcohol for us all right so now they're all mixed up I'm done with this solid bung and I'm ready to take my original gravity reading and it's that reading that really made it important for us to mix all the honey into our beverage because if we didn't mix it thoroughly enough our reading wasn't going to be accurate because not all the sugars were going to be available once we take our sample so I did pretty good and got limited foam in my graduated cylinder and that is really problematic when you're trying to take a reading if there's a foam layer because you can't read through phone so we're at one point I think it's 1.070 let's ask a second opinion 1.070 cool look at me taking readings all right so I'm going to add that to my notes I mean kind of everything has been sanitized and this is all clean I'm going to go ahead and add my sample back to my Brew so the only thing left for me to do is to add my yeast my use of choice is safe out so4 why did I choose this well because I'm making a Hydra Mill and so I knew I wanted to keep my ABV low and this is a really great ale yeast but we've also found that it's really great for ciders so I thought that flavor profile and a Hydra Mill particularly a fruity Hydra Mill such as this would be appropriate I am only using half a packet because these packets are pretty hefty and a full packet should ferment five gallons of Brew this is only one gallon so I'm doing half a packet back your bucket this is the reason why we do this is just because uh these full packets they have a lot of static clinging and those little tiny yeasts just like to clean there and we paid for those yeasts by golly so we want them in our Brews so they can do their job now we need a bung in an airlock and now that I got my airlock in there I'm going to give it a little swirl to try to get the the yeast they've just created this little pile on the foam I want to get them down into the Brew all right so I I'm just about ready to swirl this in here and I'm feeling how warm this was and then I thought uh oh did I make a boo-boo well I sort of did but I sort of didn't because we took the temperature and it is within the range that yeast can ferment without killing them off if the Brew was too hot I would have just killed all my yeast and that wouldn't make a very good Brew would it all right so you can see these have now gone down into the the fermentation they they're clumping they do that it's okay I just wanted them not to be sitting on top of the phone so I am satisfied with that everything is set this has been a really interesting process for me I hope Faye would need and making poor decisions or having as much fun with their brew as I am with mine I'm really excited to see what they will come up with so this is going to sit in our fermentation station and when it's ready I'll be right back to show you what's happened next okay so it's been two weeks and here is where we are at she has been a very messy girl she was very active in fermentation I switched to blow off tube I had to clean out the blow-off tube multiple times I thought she'd calm down I put the airlock back on I had to clean the air lock out a few more times because she wasn't done she finally calmed enough that I could put an airlock on and put her in our fermentation station to let her do her thing she is still bubbling but as we know bubbling just means that off-gassing is occurring so that means fermentation did occur or at least the production of gas did occur that doesn't mean it's still producing gas but if I look farther down first of all look at this mess she doesn't create a poison line she created a poisoned toe practically so all those particles are just the proteins that when it was filming and going crazy stuck to the glass so it's not something that I'm really concerned about I'm just going to be careful when I do rack this that I don't dislodge those stuck particles because I really don't want them in my Brew but it's not something that I really need to be concerned about but if I look below that I do see a small layer of bubbles those bubbles normally indicate that fermentation is continuing because they tend to release the yeasts release their little gases and then it creates this little tiny foam layer so that plus the bubbling in my airlock makes me think that it's still fermenting but I want to go ahead and take my first gravity reading actually this is my second gravity reading because I already took the original gravity reading just as a baseline to see where we're at so far so everything has been sanitized and our diluted good star sand solution and I'm going to remove the air lock and carefully insert my tube because I don't want to get that Gunk on there and I want to make sure that my hydrometer is floating because if it's not floating then I'm actually not going to get an actual reading because it's just going to be sitting on the bottom and it'll just show where the level of water or the level of Brew is so please make sure that it's floating all right it looks like we're at 1.008 so I'm going to go ahead and take a note on that and because everything's been sanitized I'm going to go ahead and carefully pour this back in I'm going to assess my air lot just to make sure there's no bugs that have been trapped in that I don't like to put a buggy airlock back on but nobody has been trapped so it is good to go back on there and it's just going to sit all right it's been seven days so it's time to check our reading again on the maidens Mead this is our new beaster if you didn't see our who is the master of baster's video make sure to go check that out this was the winner and let's see how it does today now I want to be really careful in inserting this because I don't want to get any of that Gunk the only downside to this baster is it is a smaller baster so I have to go in there a couple of times all right we're floating which is really important when taking reading because it was not floating you're not going to get an actual reading okay so it looks like we are at 1.000 does that mean it's completely done probably but because there is alcohol in this now it actually can go below the 1.00 mark in fermentation 1.000 is the gravity reading of water but alcohol is less dense than water so therefore it can be a lower reading all right so I am going to take the hydrometer out first because I had to really fill that up to the brim and now I'm going to very carefully pour this back in because as always everything has been sanitized so what am I going to do now well last time it was 1.008 and now it's 1.000 I think even though I'm fairly spent more time just to be extra sure that it's completely done for me so that way I can go on to the next step so I'll see you in a week all right it's been a week so let's check and see what the gravity reading tells us now so we're at 1.000 so I think it is done which means it is time to Rack particularly because we want none of this stuff to be in the next vessel so let's get to that so I sanitized a new one gallon and my auto siphon but you know what they say about curiosity in kittens I just can't help myself I really want to try some of the sample just as a sneak peek to see how we're coming along now let's see if I can pour it without making a mess oh it smells really interesting I'm really getting the ring per lime kind of forward and I'm wondering if that is accentuated with the Hibiscus that we added to it without giving you any spoilers I'm gonna say so far so good so I'm gonna go ahead and put the rest of my sample into my destination vessel so that way I'm not going to disturb any of the least that's already settled out in our primary so my destination is going to be placed on this stool down here below camera level because I want my destination to be lower than my source vessel because that's going to help with the auto siphoning process I'm leaving the protective cap on because normally if you have it off it's going to suck straight from the bottom but if you put the cap on then it raises the level of where it's drawing in the liquid up this far so that way this bottom portion of the cap could actually be in the lease allowing you to get more liquid without getting the lease and that is our goal putting it in halfway I'm going to go ahead and start the pump until I see that my tube is fully flowing then I'm going to carefully lower it I don't want to just drop it because I may agitate the lace that I'm trying not to suck up okay so I know I mentioned that she was a dirty girl during fermentation and made a big giant mess but you can see the residue on this bottle this is really interesting to me because normally we have just a line at the top that is a croissant line she has like a full-on creusen plateau going on up here plus you can see she did get some of her particles stuck to the side and then there's a significant amount of lease on the bottom none of this is anything I'm worried about because it is common to see all these things in fermentation just normally not to this extent so if you brew this at your house and you find you have similar situation don't freak out it's okay so at this point I'm going to go ahead and make sure I have a clean air lock to put on my new fermentation vessel and I'm going to let her sit what I'm looking for it to do is to clear clear out even further even though she's actually not that bad looking as it is I also want to make sure that she has time to naturally Degas I don't want to shake her up or do any of the mechanical ways of degassing simply because that's my preference if it's your preference and you have the ability to do that then you can speed up the degassing process by doing that for you so I'm just going to let her sit I took my notes put my label back on there and she's going into the fermentation station and I'll see you when we're ready for the next step okay it's been nearly three weeks and I'm pretty happy with the clarity I do have a little bit of floaties going on in here but with the chaos that was those cherries I'm not surprised by that at all so I'm going to go ahead and wrap this to a pitcher so that way I can take a sample of this and see where it's at if I want to back sweeten it if I want to enhance it with any flavors where I want to go next I have removed the cap from the end of my audriciphon because I can see there's a little bit of lease in here but it's not very thick so I want to make sure that I am able to get as much of the product as possible so I'm just going to be careful when I rack rather than rely on that cap I did leave this much liquid in here that's because because of all those floaties and wispies that I got going on in there I really didn't want that in my final bottles and I'm pretty much nearing time for bottling so I wanted to keep that in mind so I went ahead and aired on the side of caution here is my Brew because I racked this to my picture I can go ahead and pour me a glass and see what we got so first off other than the floaty that's in there I am really happy with the clarity on this and the color it's this really pretty peachy reddish brownish combo which reminds me of cherries so I'm happy with that since Barbados cherries was our primary ingredient for this the aroma is surprisingly complex I'm really happy with that as well because what do we use we use the Hibiscus the elderflower the lime the orange blossom honey and the Barbados cherries and I think they're all playing a good role in the aroma itself I am getting those Citrus notes that I expect from the lime and the Hibiscus and I'm getting the fruity notes from the cherry and then that bit of earthiness that I tend to attribute to the elderflower so I'm really happy with that now let's give it a taste that is actually really nice just the way it is I'm I'm really happy with this I my preliminary tastes while it was still going I was a little bit disappointed and I'll be honest with you now on that point but I also knew it was way too young for me to be critical on it and think where it was going to go because I had no idea this is the first time I'd been working with many of these ingredients particularly the first time that I've used them in this combination the first thought that pops into my head is a tea like a really nice herbal tea particularly one that would include hibiscus and I drink a lot of hibiscus tea so I am I think those flavors immediately pop into my head tea because I drink so much hibiscus tea so some things that I wanted to do initially with this that I still want to do is I wanted it to be a carbonated beverage and I think that carbonation sensation and the slight uh almost tart pop that you get from carbonated beverages really is going to work well with the flavors that are in here but because of the tea like almost tarte Sensation that I'm getting from it as is with the addition of the carbonation I think it's going to need some sweetening I want to do it a little bit differently because I don't want to have to pasteurize this I know that our final reading was 1.000 which means that it is done fermenting so if I added fermentable sugars to here then more than likely fermentation to restart so rather than adding more fermentable sugars I'm going to add some non-fermentable sugars and what I've chosen to add is allulose now because I'm not overly familiar with alios we've used it before as a sweetener but we don't use it very often what I'm actually going to do is just put a little bit in my taster glass here and see if that's going in the right sweetness direction that I'm looking forward in this beverage and I'm doing this very scientifically as you can tell what I'm putting probably way too much in this this class I just want to see what what this brings to the party and because I know glencairns are very delicate I'm not going to use one of our spoons to start with I'm gonna go grab a chopstick so you may be wondering what am I doing and what information this is going to give me and I'm not really focusing on the amounts of allulose that I want to add to this I'm really focusing on what kind of sweetness is going to add to this this Brew is it going to just add sweetness like a white sugar would or is it going to give it a bit of a flavor changing aspect uh I'm hoping it's just going to add sweetness because that's what I'm looking for I don't want uh I don't want a flavor changing like I don't want to add honey I don't want to add brown sugar I just want a little pop of sweetness to help balance out the tartness that's already inherent in the brew and the additional mental tartness that carbonation tends to bring as well now if you wanted to enhance the honey flavor that's already in here then you could certainly do this with honey but honey is a fermentable sugar so you will have to pasteurize all right that it did exactly what I wanted it to do it just enhanced the sweetness so what I'm going to do is I think I'm going to weigh out increments of allulose and add that to this and just keep taking samples oh no until it gets to where I want it to be sweetness wise but in order to take those samples I have to finish this first so how much sweetness should I add well only I can answer that question for me I can't answer that question for you and that's why I strongly suggest that you do the incremental editions of sweetness and take tasting so that way you know when it's going to be the sweetness level that you're going to appreciate I think going to do a quarter pound or four ounces increments of allulose additions so being the chaos person that I am that was actually 4.1 ounces so I don't know if you saw that but the allus acts a lot like sugar and that it reacts rather quickly to humidity we're in Florida it's super humid here so it's kind of clunky and chunky it's some source of the moisture and solidified in places so I was trying to chop it up with my spoon to make it easier to pour and that aided to me going slightly beyond the four ounce mark so now I'm going to take a sanitized spoon and make sure I mix this thoroughly because I want to incorporate that alloyles all through my beverage so that way I have even distribution of sweetness sanitized bone now we stir and just like sugar you can see the white residue on the bottom so that's what I'm focusing on trying to get any clumps that may still be in there or broken up and have it dissolve thoroughly in my liquid so I want to focus my movement of my Brew at the base rather than the top I want to limit breaking the surface tension so that way I can limit oxygenation of my Brew that's one of the things you want to keep in mind at this stage of the Brewing process you have alcohol in your Brew so if you agitate it and oxygenate the Brew too much you could activate acetobacters which could turn your Brew to vinegar and so that's why we're trying to be careful also I haven't degassed this yet other than it's sitting which will naturally Aid in the gassing there are a little bit of foam coming up showing me that there probably still is some gas left in suspension that is going to help push the CO2 out thus limiting more of the oxygen coming in so that's going to be in my benefit here okay so I'm going to pick it up take a peek I don't see any sugar looking things at the bottom so I'm going to go ahead and take another sample and I'm going to do a small sample this time because I just I just need to focus on the sweetness level let's see where we're at okay for me I think that's good I think I don't think I need to add more so I'm done with the allulose so I'm done with the back sweetening portion I'm happy with the overall flavor profile it has a lovely complexity with the ingredients I used initially so I don't feel like I need to add any more flavor enhancers so the next step is I want to measure out the right amount of fermentable sugar in this case I'm going to be using white sugar for carbonation okay because I'm using my pitcher with the measurements on the side I know exactly what my volume is of my beverage so far and right now we are at 104 fluid ounces so in order to add sugar to this to carbonate in our appropriate ratio I'm going to be adding 23 grams of sugar so let me go ahead and weigh that out and just with the allulose I want to make sure that I mix this in Thoroughly now if I was mindful when thinking ahead I would have measured out the sugar separately and then made a simple syrup with that by adding a little bit of my Brew into that so that way I could evenly dissolve the sugar in that small amount and then add it to my full amount and it would just distribute quite nicely however I have a bit of a spasmo and so I didn't do that I just added it directly to this so I want to be extra diligent in making sure that it is well mixed and thoroughly Incorporated the reason why it's super critical to do that is because this sugar is fermentable and it is what's going to create the carbonation so if I don't have it thoroughly distributed throughout my Brew when I bottle it I may have some bottles that have not enough of the fermentable sugar and other bottles that have way too much of the fermentable sugar okay so I've had these bottles sitting in the San Antonio advisor solution while I was prepping my Brew so they're sanitized and good to go I also have my under siphon and I'm going to attach the bottling wands to the end of the tubing to Aid me in bottling and I'm going to go ahead and bottle now if you're not familiar with a bottling process I'm going to put a link in the description below to our bottling video and I'll see you when I'm done alright so I got six bottles and that much what does it mean by that much well that's as far as this one got filled so because it has all of that space for headspace I really don't trust this one so I'm not going to allow this one to carbonate I'm actually just going to drink this one right now well not right now when I'm done with this the rest however are going to sit in our bomb shelter which is just a big thick plastic tub that we put all of our carbonating beverages in just in case case something goes wrong luckily that hasn't happened yet I hope it doesn't happen now uh but they're going to stand there for a week to 10 days in that range so that way they can carbonate and I will see you there it is the moment of truth and because it is that time I've called in the big guns my partner in crime Brian yeah yay I'm gonna shrink that way I'm not the big gun so here she is she's been sitting for 15 days and hopefully she's carbonated so let's find out you're gonna do what do you want me to do it go for it I was gonna say it's yours why do we get it cold we get it cold because if you don't chill a carbonated beverage sometimes bad things happen like volcano Style bad things so as you can see she is lovely carbonated and also I don't know about you but if I'm gonna enjoy a carbonated beverage I'm going to be chilled that's just that's just how I drink them so there you go what if it's winter time it was winter time and I'm drinking a carbonated beverage I still want it chilled I don't care all right to start off with I know that the cloudiness of my glasses actually from the temperature difference it is really clear it is beautifully clear and I noticed that when I removed it from the bomb shelter and put it into our mini fridge it was beautifully clear and I was really happy about that it is this really pretty reddish orangish it kind of looks like my hair now so it actually looks like beer that was kind of a interesting thing it's like a darker shade of my my hair color darker shade of durica a darker shade of Turkey so yay that makes me happy as well now let's check the aroma it smells like a hydrogen it smells like a Hydra Mill it has a nice fruity I'm getting the Hibiscus notes I think and I think I'm getting the Cherry now this is the first time we fermented our Barbados cherries but I'll try to use those in this I did yes so this it's Cherry adjacent on the aroma that's got a nice balance of flavors there lots of flavors going on it tastes kind of like um spring and and that is that is wonderful I am so happy now that Brian said that and he didn't really know what I was doing so yeah she really didn't fill me in it was more like a hey I need some technical assistance with this thing I'm doing numbers give me numbers that's all I really wanted it does taste like I used you for numbers I hope you're okay with that it's all right it's been used for Worse it does though it tastes very fresh um it's young still but I think this is meant to be drink young it's a Hydra mode yeah it's a Hydra Mill and being that it's a mainspeed I envisioned it representing spring so when Brian said it tastes like spraying I'm like hey I mean it's not really my kind of flavors and I think you knew that before I even said I did know that and when I took my initial taste I was getting a little bit of that dreaded grapefruit flavor I don't really get that though it made me think oh Brian's like I like this at all but at this point I'm not really getting the grapefruit flavor I am getting a bit of the tartness but it's coming off more of a tart cherry and the tartness from the Hibiscus yeah there's a tartness and I got this the smell I don't want to say anything but the smell really wasn't wasn't appealing to me I was getting more grapefruit on the smell more youngness on the smell but this there's something in here I think it's the Barbados cherry that's really adding a nice depth to it it's bringing a lot of things together I think there's an earthiness on the aroma and in the flavor that you're having problems placing and I believe that's the elderflower Ah that's what it is yeah yeah yeah sometimes I love elderflower sometimes I really don't when it's paired with other fruity things I tend to like it and I think the Barbados cherry and the elderflower are playing nicely and that's what I'm saying like there's disparate ingredients that I got on the smell that are playing well together and I think that Barbados cherries really bringing those two things together thank you that it without the Barbados here I think you'd have more issues well I'd have more issues with this this is this has got Derek original Lord though I mean this is totally your wheelhouse so Fade with Mead came up with these Concepts and me and making poor decisions just went through it we we had our little collaborative chat about what we were thinking we were going and so I ended up with the maiden and we were trying to keep it with our Seasonal Concepts of what our different aspects of the Goddess were so immediately I went to Spring I went to my garden and what we grow so I just happened to catch the side of the bottle this is 9.5 ABV for hydro mall it's a little high but not like out of the range but I think the carbonation and the depth of flavors in this really makes it work it's got a lot more flavor than I ever would have thought it would have yeah it's a lot more flavor forward it doesn't have any of the waterness sweateriness and lack of flavor punch it has certainly a flavor punch on it which is very exciting and very pleasing to me it's even got a really nice mouth feel um a lot of time when you're below that 10 range they can get kind of watery I'm not detecting that here there's a good mouthfeel overall and uh there's some things in here that aren't necessarily my favorite I'm trying to be very impartial and and all that I would say this is a huge success um there's nothing in here that that is wrong in any way um even as something this young I mean this is only uh from July 19th to to today so it's like it's July August it's like two months old okay at this point two months old this tastes really really good the Barbados cherry adds this unique flavor and I think that ties the Elderberry and our elder flower and hibiscus together I might leave the elderflower out it's just not my favorite thing um I don't hate it but if I was to do this if I was to do this it would be very different there'd be cinnamon in there and all spices I know um but I might leave the elderflower out if you were to do this one more time and instead substitute that for like a citrus of some kind well I thought it was necessary to have an elder element and it be flour or Berry and I went with flour because I'm going through the spring Motif because this is a an aspect of the Goddess all right if you're going with the theme then that makes sense yeah yeah so that's our view when you have a theme that's why I really felt strongly about having mother what about wearing their blossoms orange blossoms would be fine see at this point we've we make so many needs and so many Brews that I forget honestly even with the short truncated time frame what honey I used in this I think I used Wildflower but it's possible I used orange blossom I'm thinking orange blossom I'm getting a hint of citrus go backwards but the Citrus may have been from the Hibiscus and I want to think Orange Blossom honey to pair with the Hibiscus because that would have made more sense to me so but overall I think you did a great job thank you I think this is wonderful I'm really pleased with how it came out I I had my hesitations and my doubts when I took my initial sample because I'm like oh I'm getting that grapefruit note and Brian's not gonna like that but at this point I'm not really getting grapefruit I'm getting Citrus but more the Hibiscus style of citrus and the orange Citrus I think the flavor is good the tart cherry is really working with that the Barbados cherries are very tart they're not sweet all I was a little surprised because I popped one in my mouth one day like my whole mouth went you know it just like sucked in I was like whoa yeah these are not a sweet cherry but I agree that I think if I were to recreate this without a theme attached to it that I would probably leave the Elder out um it's just a little too earthy for the other light fruity flavors yeah it's almost like they're all up here nice and light and then the Elder kind of drags it down I don't think it's bad and because there's a theme I think it fits the theme and it works well but outside of that grounding element that actually rounds it out and I was thinking about that uh dividing the flavor profiles into the base the tannins and the acids and I think it actually is well it is very well balanced I would have to I have to say that and it's also a little bit of bias here elderflower is not my favorite thing it is what it is there's certain floral things just don't don't sit well with me and I also think it's in the Elder family together both the flower range and the berry range there tends to be a slight licorice note in there that neither Brian and I are typically that's the tiny bit of harsh note that I'm getting it's not even it's not very strong there's definitely a note in there a note among the chords that uh just sticks out a little bit much I mean if you think I'm being hypercritical I am because you know what that's how you learn and that's how you figure out what flavors you like and you don't like and what to do better next time and I'm not picking on her because honestly I had nothing to do with this I did not help her with anything but math she would say what's this what does that mean what is that that was it um I think I helped her with a hydrometer reading or two and that was about the most that was my numbers guy other than that I'm like nope I set up the camera and I helped and I I edited the final product but other than that I did not make this recipe I had no input on this recipe I don't even think you asked me about this recipe I think you just went with it nope I'm doing this and that was like that was intentional because you know hey spread your wings do your thing I think she did great and based on this was a completely conceptual recipe I had no reference of brewing with the Barbados cherry this is the first time we've brewed anything with the Barbados cherry and then the combination of the Hibiscus and or the pizza I believe I pitted them I don't recall 100 I was just curious because the pits sometimes add a little bit of a sour a bitterness yeah yeah I think I think I did manually wow depit them I I remember you have more patience than I have a vague recollection of a really annoying process I could not sit through pitting that means we have a lot of those trees we do we do but I am really happy with how this turned out based on my lack of experience with these particular ingredients and particularly in this combination and how I had an idea a vision given to me by our collaboration with they would need and making poor decisions on what I wanted conceptually for this to be and for it to be an actual beverage now sitting in front of me that I'm enjoying and being that I finished pretty much on par with what my vision was I'm really happy I think the carbonation I added tremendously yes this definitely widens this to be a Car Coverage it lightened it it made it very easy to drink it comes across like a light beer or a cider kind of thing yeah but it's more than those because this is as flavorful as some stronger beers and it would have to be a pretty strongly flavored cider to keep up yeah it's it's pretty powerful stuff there's a lot of flavor in there a lot more flavor than you would think for a 9.5 beverage I'm impressed I really am good job babe so if you're looking for something light and refreshing but still give you a flavor punch and remind you of spring then try the mains mean as always guys thank you so much for watching have a great day bye

Channel: City Steading Brews

Views: 20,537

Keywords: making mead, home mead, honey wine, making mead with fruit, making mead start to finish, homemade mead, homemade mead recipes, maidens mead, triple goddess mead, honey wine recipe

Id: rd-hb9nPYCs

Length: 50min 23sec (3023 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 08 2023