Tongue Splitter

So I opened a bottle of the Tongue Splitter last night, which has spent about 2 1/2 weeks in the bottle. Surprisingly the carbonation was excellent, and the head was as frothy and long-lasting as any homebrew I've yet completed. Wow, what an aroma. Fellow hopheads and lupomaniacs, this brew's for you. Five glorious ounces of American hops...citrusy, grapefruity, extraordinarily fresh. This is one brew that will be much better fresh and young, so I'm not planning on aging it much. It is ready for consumption!

The base cyser for the zingimel is nearing the end of its fermentation cycle, I think. Perhaps this weekend I can rack it onto the ginger. Not only that, but I now have the requisite ingredients (cider, honey, nutrients, yeast) to get started on the next mead, a cherry melomel. No cherries added until secondary, though, I'm afraid. I plan to use high quality fresh-frozen tart cherries, in quantity of, I don't know, 6-9 pounds. I want this one bursting with cherry flavour, not in a fruit candy kind of way, but in a rich, winey, complex and deeply flavourful way. I will probably oak this one as well. I'm much more inclined to oak the dark melomels than the lighter meads like the spiced cyser and zingimel. Speaking of, I shall be cracking the first bottle of the aforementioned spiced cyser at Thanksgiving. Far too early, I admit, in that it will only have 4-5 months of age, but it should give me an idea how it is progressing, and a point of reference for future samplings.