Bottling mead

Last night I finally bottled the mint and jalapeño meads that I've had taking up space in my office for far too long. A couple of weeks ago I added Sparkolloid to clear up the cloudiness in them, and it worked like a charm. After making a quick run to San Antonio Homebrew Supply to pick up some much-needed corks (as well as some beer fixin's--but that's another story) I set to work on bottling the beverages.

When all was said and done, I had four bottles of jalapeño mead (technically a metheglin, since jalapeño would qualify more as a spice than anything else, right?) and five bottles of mint metheglin (again, mint being a spice, right?). The mint, as it has trended the whole time, was much clearer and had solid, compact lees in the bottom. It bottled up easily. The little bit I tasted during the siphoning struck me as surprisingly mellow. I'm not a huge mint fan--the flavor is at Lisa's request--but the chocolate mint and spearmint I used (gathered from the back flowerbeds) have blended into a nice, smooth flavor. This may very well combine well with Sprite or 7-Up for a tasty, light cooler-type drink. The jalapeño, on the other hand, remained stubborn. The first three bottles filled easily and cleanly, but the lees began to stir toward the end of the fourth bottle--they weren't solidly packed at all. I'd hoped to bottle a fifth (these were one-gallon glass carboys the mead was aging in, remember) but I only got about half a bottle filled before the liquid became too murky to continue. The sediments were an ugly, gray-brown muddy color, and my efforts to filter some of it by running it through a coffee filter resulted in murky, stopped-up coffee filters. The jalapeño definitely had an impact on the yeast and lees, far more than I'd have expected. As for the flavor... well, this one's going to age for a while before I give a verdict. The rough mead edge had mellowed a good bit, but there wasn't much blending going on yet between the jalapeño and honey flavors. It undeniably tastes of jalapeño, though, with a pleasant mouthburn following shortly after swallowing. This one probably could've used a little more in the way of tannins, but it's not a flavor that's going to win over many people in the long run.

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