Me and my sister made two new meads today: a Chocolate Mead, using 500 g of cocoa powder, and a ginger metheglyn, using about 50 g of freshly grated ginger. After the primary ferment, we’ll put in some nectarines from Emilly’s tree into the ginger metheglyn to make what I’m calling a nectarine–ginger methomel. We tried to use Ken Schramm’s no heat method, which involves no heat at all, but our honey was crystalised (we bought 30 kg of clover honey from a place in Mooroduc called Pure Peninsula Honey ), so w
We also bought an extra demijohn, a 25 L one, so we can start two 20 L batches at once, and move the 34 L one into the 25 L demijohn and the 25 L batch into a 20 L one. We have the chocolate mead in the 25 L demij. , and the ginger meth in the 34 L demij. (You want to start with extra headspace so that what head that forms has a place to exist rather than trying to bubble out the top, but in the secondary, you want to minimise the headspace—and definitely minimise the surface area—so you use one that just f
Chocolate meads typically take a full year before they’re drinkable, so we aren’t expecting much from it till then, but apparently once they’re done they’re damn good. Ours has a density of 12.1° Baumé (°Bé), which means we can expect around 12 per cent alcohol by volume.