Growing grapes and making wine in Bellevue
Posted in mead on Mar 10th, 2008
Vote For Washington Winemaker! Grapeseek is a directory of grape and wine related links, and they are having a vote for their top ten. I would love it if you voted for Washington Winemaker. Click here to cast your vote. As I wrote earlier, the USDA’s 2007 honey report had some encouraging news about Colony [...]
Posted in mead, measurement & testing on Feb 29th, 2008
I checked the titratable acidity (TA) of my cherry mead the other day, and something didn’t add up. Over six months, three measurements, and two acid additions (totaling 2.6 g/L) the TA fell from 6 to 5.5 g/L. The most obvious explanation is that I goofed up the titrations. As I added more acid, the [...]
Posted in apple wine, mead, measurement & testing, tomato wine on Feb 28th, 2008
Cherry Mead: The case of the disappearing acid Suppose you measure 6 g/L titratable acidity (TA), then add about 1.3 g/L of tartaric acid. After you let it sit for a while you’d expect a TA over 7, right? Me too. You certainly wouldn’t expect just a little over 5 (call it 5.2), would you? [...]
Posted in ingredients, mead on Feb 14th, 2008
Acidity is as important to mead as it is to wine, but much more difficult to measure. Here’s how acid and lactone interact in honey, how that can fool conventional titration, and what you can do about it.
Posted in enology, mead, measurement & testing, winemaking on Feb 8th, 2008
I talked about five of my meads yesterday, and how I might decide if they were ready to bottle. I looked at clarity and specific gravity (SG) because I didn’t want the mead throwing off sediment or fermenting in the bottle. I tasted, probably the most important test of any wine or mead, and I [...]
Posted in enology, mead, measurement & testing, storage and aging, tasting, winemaking on Feb 7th, 2008
I looked in on five meads yesterday to see if they were ready to bottle. I was looking for clarity, I tasted them to see if they were pleasant to drink, and I measured the specific gravity (SG), pH, and titratable acidity (TA). Name SG pH TA (g/L) 2004 Plain Mead 1.001 3.05 5 2005 [...]
Posted in enology, mead, winemaking on Dec 3rd, 2007
Making mead from cherries I’ve often thought about making “second wine” using honey instead of sugar. Also called “false wine,” it’s made from the pomace of newly fermented wine by adding water, sugar and acid. I like honey, water, and acid (mead) all by itself, so using honey instead of sugar should be an improvement. [...]
Posted in cherry wine, enology, mead, winemaking on Nov 30th, 2007
Making red wine from cherries I made cherry wine, in June 2006 and 2007, like a red wine from grapes. I crushed the fruit, adjusted the sugar and acid, and pitched the yeast. The sugar and acid profile of cherries is very different from that of grapes, so “adjusting the sugar and acid” is a [...]
How much acid? I looked in on my mead the other day. It was clearing and had thrown some sediment. It was dry, with a specific gravity of 0.996. The pH, at 3.39, was low enough to protect the mead, but the titratable acidity was only 3.5 g/L. Titration will overstate the amount of acid [...]
Posted in colony collapse disorder, mead on Sep 13th, 2007
I last wrote about Colony Collapse Disorder back in May. That’s when I made the case that CCD would not squeeze honey supplies too much and cause a large price run up. With honey prices up about 10% since then, I think my analysis was about right. I’m still anxious to learn about the impact [...]