Thread: Homemade Country Wine Production

Originally Posted by Slab

Ahh, deal, which caps you like? I know a guy...

I'm ordering more in the AM, drinking too much wine to trust my fingers to order a few tonight, they will order a few hundred I like them so much!

Well we received the 5 Beer & Wine natural flavorings today. Lemon, Tangerine, Ginger, Raspberry, & Blackberry. I have already back sweetened the Mead once, today I pulled off a quart and placed in the refrigerator to chill. Recently I learned you back sweeten your wines at the temperature you plan on consuming them. I'm looking for a chilled adult beverage in this Mead so allowing the Mead to chill all day needed to be the first step.



Now to explain the torturous part. As I put a sample in the wine glass and add a little flavoring at a time then taste my palate will loose the ability to pick up subtle changes in the product due to the alcohol content. I have to sample, experiment, then stop between each flavoring effort so I can fully taste the next mixture. It's going to be a long night...............

Have fun

I have pulled out several tricks to turn the Lemon Mead into something that will be pleasant not even enjoyable to drink from a wine glass. I now understand why Mead makers bottle their product in beer bottles. It has a skunky smell, something that may mellow with age but I'm not the guy for that. I hit my wines out of the Park and this 6 gallon batch is not going to be the exception so I made a very hard Right Turn.



Meet my favorite Raspberry product. Pure pureed fully ripe Raspberries, concentrated a bit. Awesome product and essential to making my Raz-A-Rita wine.

I decided to turn this Mead into a Melomel, particularly a Raspberry Melomel. I back sweetened the Mead with 2 quarts of Bon Temp's Honey then added the Raspberry Puree & 1/2 the bottle of all natural Raspberry flavoring. After that I back sweetened some more but this time using wine conditioner.



The gallon of Wine Conditioner is about gone, I have a backup so no worries. Now where we are is I'm allowing the alcohol to draw out the flavor from the Raspberry Puree. Now when you put the Melomel in a wine glass and take a sniff, the nose hit, it smells wonderful.



I thought I would add this picture to show the very tiny bits of bee's wax floating on top. This has about 7.5 quarts of honey in it so perspective on how much wax is still in honey, it's very low amount. Still when fermenting anything you must keep a sharp eye on the progress, I scratched my head at first to what it was.

A true Artisan

Originally Posted by DockShootinJack

A true Artisan

I was working on this post and my wife said a termite landed on her lamp. I cut it short so I could see what was going on. It's finished now. The termites are swarming here quite a bit this time, more than in the past. Swarming outside, but drawn to the log house. We had a few come in thru cracks in the wood so I'm watchful of them till this season is over. Log homes take a bit of extra upkeep.

Yeah we have them swarm in our woods yearly. When we first moved into our house we had them and had to call Terminix. I would imagine termites are a log house nightmare.

Isn't that mead gonna ferment more cause of all the added sugar? Or does that conditioner kill the yeastesess thingies.