Busy Weekend

New Year's Eve was a big brewday for all of us here at St. Crispin's. First, after about 15 days with the cherries, I racked the cherry melomel to tertiary. This was a tough decision, brought on by a lack of 6 gallon fermentors. However, I don't think it was a mistake in that I tasted the "spent" cherries and they were fairly bland, indicating that they had imparted the acidity and flavour to the mead already. I ran into considerable frustration racking it (cherries have a tendency to clog your racking cane) which may have resulted in some potential oxidation, but we'll have to just wait and see on that one...I topped the fermentor off with pure cherry juice (about a quart). The gravity is still high, in the mid 30s, but I'm expecting it to drop. It doesn't have to drop all that much because a cherry mead ought to be somewhat sweet.

With the 6 gallon fermentor now empty and clean (quite a task...you try getting 9 lbs of soggy cherries out of a glass carboy!), I moved on to the brewing task of the evening, a braggot in the style of Imperial Stout. I used a variety of strongly flavoured British malts, including extra dark crystal, chocolate, and black patent. I only steeped the black patent malt for a few minutes, in order to extract the colour but not the harsh flavours. The "base beer" was a mid-strength stout of approximately 1.048 OG. I hopped it decently with British hops, Target and East Kent Goldings. Then after the boil ended, I added 9.5 lbs of raw clover honey. It is fermenting with Lalvin D47 yeast, with an original gravity of 1.114. I'm expecting a final ABV of somewhere around 12 percent, and this will be laid down for perhaps a year, depending on its progress aging in the bottle.

Next up...no brewing projects persay, but bottling, racking, and general maintenance. The blackcurrant mead is next up for bottling!