Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Mint and jalapeño

After bottling the remaining two-and-a-half gallons of prickly pear mead last week, the only fermentables I have still unbottled are one gallon of mint mead and one gallon of jalapeño. The reason they're unbottled is that they have not sufficiently cleared, despite sitting undisturbed for several months. The mint wasn't extremely cloudy, to be sure, but the jalapeño was downright murky. So last night I broke out the packet of Sparkolloid and mixed up a couple of doses in boiling water, then added the cooling mixture to my mead. Hopefully the cloudiness will rapidly subside over the next few days as the suspended particles sink to the bottom of the glass carboys.

If all goes to plan, I'll be bottling these remaining flavors in a couple of weeks, and can then turn my attention to new experiments. There are quite a few passion fruit reaching maturity on my vines in the back yard, after all. I'm even eying a 42-bottle wine refrigerator for the garage that's almost affordable, since my raspberry mead from a couple of years back has developed an "off" taste, which I'm pretty sure comes from being aged in too-warm conditions. We'll see how all of these grand plans play themselves out...

Now Playing: Blue Öyster Cult Workshop of the Telescopes

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