Whoops, looks like I’ve been forgetting to blog here for quite some time! (I haven’t mentioned the very popular spiced cyser, another batch of Lehua trad, the tangerine honey, cranberries, and OJ concentrate batch that I dubbed Tan-Cran-Ora but a friend suggest Orancrantan, nor a few other not-terribly-unusual batches.) But that’s actually relevant to a mead-making “milestone” I’ve “achieved”.
In early November, I started a batch of mead. (One five-pound jug of wildflower honey from Wegman’s, a gallon and a quart of water, and 71B yeast. The intent was to let it ferment dry, and backsweeten with some of the meadowfoam honey my wife bought me.)Â
Then I went on a few trips, and then came the holidays. A few days into January, I decided to try making cold-brew coffee. So I dug out the little bags. I had originally bought them to hold spices for metheglyn, so they were in one of my boxes of mead supplies, next to where I stash my two three-gallon Fermonsters.
“Wait, that’s odd, I could swear I have two, why is there only one there?!”
Yup, I had achieved the milestone of completely forgetting about a batch I had started! Even sillier, I had been doing things with another batch I had continued in the meantime! At least it was only about two months, not years, like many cases I’ve heard of. It was in a cabinet under a kitchen counter, where I almost never go unless I’m dealing with a batch of mead. (The other batch was elsewhere.)
The airlock had indeed run dry, but it smelled normal. There were some suspicious-looking dark particles in the lees, but I think that was just settled-out Bentonite, since for primary I don’t generally make a slurry but dump it right in. It’s now cold-crashing in the two-gallon bucket that I should have used in the first place, at SG 0.996 according to the Tilt.