Bottling jalapeño braggot

Back in July I started several batches of brew. Of those, the plum wine oxidized and had to be dumped, the plum melomel turned out moderately well and the planned jalapeño braggot has continued aging in its 1.5 gallon fermenter. I finally bottled that braggot tonight.

Way back when, I started with a pound of crushed, smoked malt, sparged as if I were making a beer, and added the wort to a like amount of honey must. That was back in September. At the beginning of November, I placed a pan-seared jalapeño in the braggot, sliced lengthwise with the seeds removed. After a week, I racked the braggot and removed the jalapeño. Then I added potassium sorbate and campden tablets to kill off any remaining yeast, then back-sweetened with approximately a quarter pound of dissolved honey. At the time I didn't hold out much hope for it--the flavor was muddled and harsh, and the liquid was still quite hazy. What a difference a few weeks makes. After the last racking, the haze settled out and the braggot is much clearer. I ended up filling six bottles (again, it was a small experimental batch of only 1.5 gallons) and a sample taste revealed the jalapeño flavor wasn't nearly as harsh as I'd feared. In fact, I was surprised at how much it had mellowed. The smoked malt was lost in the mix of flavors, but it may come back out with a little aging. I'll put these aside for a year or so and see if time can work a little magic.

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About that mead

A little belated in my updates, but then I'm a busy guy. When last we spoke, I'd split my 3-gallons of show mead in twain, with 2+ gallons going in with four pounds of plums to ferment out, and the remainder in a 1.5 gallon fermenter along with smoked malt. The latter one came to only 1 gallon, so I needed to top it off. Saturday I heated one quart of water and dissolved 1.5 pounds of honey into it, plus I added a quarter teaspoon each of yeast nutrient, yeast energizer and tannins. Once this mix cooled, I added it to the smoked-malt-mead, topped it off with about half a cup of water, and let it do its thing.

Several days later now and it's happily fermenting at a moderate pace. Very little foam. Quite well-behaved, actually. Because of the close confines, I was somewhat afraid I'd have a blowout, but I suppose racking it away from the bulk of the yeast lees protected me against that scenario.

I'd originally intended to add a jalapeño, but The Wife surprised me by coming home from H-E-B with some Hatch chili peppers, so I'm now tempted to sear one a bit and add it to the mead instead of the jalapeño. I'll probably decide in the next week or so. Either way, it'll be an interesting braggot-style mead.

The plum melomel continues to ferment as well, albeit at a much slower pace. And the five gallons of plum wine that has been bulk aging is probably ready for another racking or bottling, depending on how it's clarifying.

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Experimenting with mead

Astute readers will remember that I started a three-gallon batch of mead fermenting (that's nine pounds of honey) back in July. After letting it sit far too long, I finally got off my lazy duff and racked it. Not being particularly enamoured of show meads, I had experimental designs on this batch. So I experimented.

Firstly, I racked a portion of the fermented mead into a 2.5 gallon fermentation vessel I have. Into this vessel I had placed approximately 4 pounds of Santa Rosa plums, picked fresh from my backyard tree, sliced and frozen, then thawed and crushed. Santa Rosas have a tartness to them that my jucier, sweeter Methleys don't, so I'm hoping the combination works with the mead to create a strongly-flavored melomel. Into the vessel I added a teaspoon of pectic enzyme, a quarter teaspoon of acid blend and a quarter teaspoon of tannin. The plums may have contributed enough acid and tannin on their own, but I've made too many meads with a flat flavor profile to take any chances. It's got a slow, gentle fermentation going right now, so we'll see how things shake out in the next month or so.

For the remaining mead, which amounted to a little over half a gallon, I racked into a 1.5 gallon fermentation vessel. And here's where I get a little daring. I bought a pound of crushed, smoked malt from Home Brew Party a couple months ago for this very purpose. I'm an extract kit kind of homebrewer, you see. I've done the "boil the mash" thing, and while that approach gives the brewer lots of control over the final product, it was too labor intensive for my enjoyment. But since nobody really sells smoked malt extract, I had to do it myself. I cooked the malt at 150 degrees, more or less, for an hour (there was a protein rest there at the beginning) then drained off the liquid malt and sparged once. The resulting sweet liquid (the smoky scent was strong when I started the starch conversion, but tapered off the longer it was heated) I let cool then added to the racked mead, giving me right at 1 gallon. Then I added slightly less than a teaspoon of acid blend and a like amount of tannin to the mix. It's fermenting slowly now. I have 1.5 pounds of honey I'm going to add to bring the total volume up to 1.5 gallons, at which point I will add one jalapeño pepper to make this a smoked jalapeño metheglin (as opposed to a chipotle metheglin). My previous attempt at a concoction of this nature resulted in Liquid Heat which was very strong on the fresh, raw pepper flavor and full of heat. I want to rein that in a bit to make this more palatable for those who aren't thrill seekers, so I'm going to cut the pepper and remove the seeds first. Heresy, I know. I may even grill the pepper a bit first, to blunt some of that rawness and make the flavor blend more with the smoked malt. In any event, this will be an unusual braggot-style mead once I'm finished. I'll keep you posted on my progress.

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