Brewing and Fermentation

[Montegriffo]

I'm not a whisky drinker but I have toured the port caves in Oporto (Portugal) a couple of times and I wouldn't rule out doing it again.
The smell, as you walk through cellars full of port aging in oak barrels, is awesome.

The smell of the barrel warehouses was amazing! I wouldn't be surprised if that port was in bourbon barrels. One of the oddities of US booze law is they require bourbon to be made in virgin oak barrels, so they get used once and sold off to other markets. I think some wineries scrape and re-char them, others consider the taste added value. I know Dalwhinnie used port barrels for some of their whiskey.

The best vintage port is only ever made in new barrels, they are only used once.
Most vintages are made in giant stainless vats and all vintages are bottled after a year and they age in the bottle.
Unlike malt whisky, which relies on flavour imparted from the barrel, port is all about the grape.
You don't want any other flavours in the port so they only use a barrel once then sell them to whisky makers who love the depth of taste they get from them.

[brewster]

Most vintages are made in giant stainless vats and all vintages are bottled after a year and they age in the bottle.
Unlike malt whisky, which relies on flavour imparted from the barrel, port is all about the grape.
You don't want any other flavours in the port so they only use a barrel once then sell them to whisky makers who love the depth of taste they get from them.

The bourbon tours made clear that all the coloring & much of the flavor came from the charred barrels. Why barrel it at all for only a year? Just dump some oak chips in the vat like the cheaper Chardonnay makers do.

[Speaker to Animals]

They very well could use oak chips in their first fermentation. The barrel you use has a huge impact on how you age any kind of alcohol. It all depends on what you are trying to accomplish.

One of the the things that goes on in mead fermentation is that people ferment the honey with bark and various herbs. They might age it in specific kinds of barrels, depending upon what effects they want to add to the final product.

[Montegriffo]

Most vintages are made in giant stainless vats and all vintages are bottled after a year and they age in the bottle.
Unlike malt whisky, which relies on flavour imparted from the barrel, port is all about the grape.
You don't want any other flavours in the port so they only use a barrel once then sell them to whisky makers who love the depth of taste they get from them.

The bourbon tours made clear that all the coloring & much of the flavor came from the charred barrels. Why barrel it at all for only a year? Just dump some oak chips in the vat like the cheaper Chardonnay makers do.

Why barrel the port for just a year?
The method for making port or any other fortified wine is to add distilled wine (brandy) to it.
Port is made by blending wine which is from the previous season with a spirit distilled from the same wine. The brandy is added at 76% when the wine is still fermenting the sugars contained in the grapes.
This boosts the wine to 20% which kills the yeast and stops the fermentation. The unfermented sugars are what gives port its sweetness.
The reason you have to store it for a year in vats or barrels is to allow the sediment (mostly dead yeast) to settle and give it time to clear.
Vintage port is then bottled and stored for about 20 years to mature. The best vintages will peak at around 30-35 years with exceptional years staying good for 50 years.
During this time the port will lose a lot of its deep red colour and become much paler.
The bottles contain sediment and have to be stood upright for several days and then carefully opened and decanted leaving the sediment in the bottle.

Tawny port is different from vintage because it is matured in oak and the resultant oxidation and evaporation turn it golden brown and give it a nutty flavour. It is then blended and the result is a paler and less sweet port.

Late bottled vintage is stored in large neutral vats (stainless or plastic) for longer than vintage. usually 7 years in the vat. This means that the port is ready to drink as soon as it is bottled but unlike vintage it won't improve in the bottle.
LBV is the cheaper alternative and it has the advantage of not needing to be decanted. It still has to be declared a vintage year that the grapes were grown but the different technique results in an inferior port.

I bet you wish you'd never asked now.
I can bore people for hours on the subject of port.

I love the Britishness (despite being made in Portugal 70% of all port is consumed in Britain and all but one of the major port houses is British owned, Sandeman being the exception) and ritual of it all. Plus the fact it is delicious.

[Speaker to Animals]

About 20 hours since first fermentation started.

There were some bubbles on the surface a few hours ago before I gave it this morning's stirring.

If all goes to plan, I should be ready in another 28 hours or so to siphon it all into the carboy to start the second fermentation. Second fermentation is closed and this one is open; i.e. the carboy is plugged with a water valve that only lets gas escape but no air to get in, whereas the bucket is open to the air. However, I decided to loosely place the bucket's lid on the top of the bucket last night because I was worried about ants, as well as not really wanting dust or anything like that to get into the mead. I am not sure if I sabotaged the fermentation by doing that, however.

I plan to add the rest of the grapefruit in at the 24 hour mark.

[Speaker to Animals]

The end of the first fermentation is supposed to look something like this:



Second fermentation will look like this:



Final product should look something like this:

[clubgop]

As far as equipment, you can get a fermentation kit for about $50. Just get one for making wine, since mead is essentially a "honey wine".

Equipment can start building up from there. You probably will eventually want larger carboys to move to 5 gallon batches. For aging, you might want to get oak barrels.

Are you using a wine or a beer yeast?
What % alcohol are you aiming for?
My brewing experience is mostly in beer but my dad was a prolific hedgerow wine maker.
It has been a while but from memory 4.4lbs of sugar made 40 pints of ale at around 6 or 7%.
Honey may make stronger ale per lb though.
If you want anything stronger than that you need a wine yeast. The yeast which gets the highest strength is champagne yeast which can go up to a maximum of 17% before the alcohol kills it.

Most meaderies, if they purchase yeast, I think use wine yeast (which is what I did), but I want to get to the point where I maintain my own local yeast culture.

You can make mead strong as fuck if you want to. Most of the stuff you buy is comparable to wine because most of America still has that state liquor thing going on.

It's the same with ales. They usually cap out around here (commercially) at around 7-8%, I think, because going too high means it gets license as liquor and then you have to go through state distribution. This is one of those areas where I would fall squarely inline with Fife in burning it all down.

I don't know about mead, but wine and beer can get pretty high here. Distilled liquor is where the serious regulation comes in. I have seen beer and wine in the 15-20% range being sold without a problem.

About 20 hours since first fermentation started.

There were some bubbles on the surface a few hours ago before I gave it this morning's stirring.

If all goes to plan, I should be ready in another 28 hours or so to siphon it all into the carboy to start the second fermentation. Second fermentation is closed and this one is open; i.e. the carboy is plugged with a water valve that only lets gas escape but no air to get in, whereas the bucket is open to the air. However, I decided to loosely place the bucket's lid on the top of the bucket last night because I was worried about ants, as well as not really wanting dust or anything like that to get into the mead. I am not sure if I sabotaged the fermentation by doing that, however.

I plan to add the rest of the grapefruit in at the 24 hour mark.

Keep a journal of all those little details for next time, I guess you kind of are with these posts. I used to brew beer, when my son gets older I may get back into it.

[Speaker to Animals]

Are you using a wine or a beer yeast?
What % alcohol are you aiming for?
My brewing experience is mostly in beer but my dad was a prolific hedgerow wine maker.
It has been a while but from memory 4.4lbs of sugar made 40 pints of ale at around 6 or 7%.
Honey may make stronger ale per lb though.
If you want anything stronger than that you need a wine yeast. The yeast which gets the highest strength is champagne yeast which can go up to a maximum of 17% before the alcohol kills it.

Most meaderies, if they purchase yeast, I think use wine yeast (which is what I did), but I want to get to the point where I maintain my own local yeast culture.

You can make mead strong as fuck if you want to. Most of the stuff you buy is comparable to wine because most of America still has that state liquor thing going on.

It's the same with ales. They usually cap out around here (commercially) at around 7-8%, I think, because going too high means it gets license as liquor and then you have to go through state distribution. This is one of those areas where I would fall squarely inline with Fife in burning it all down.

I don't know about mead, but wine and beer can get pretty high here. Distilled liquor is where the serious regulation comes in. I have seen beer and wine in the 15-20% range being sold without a problem.

About 20 hours since first fermentation started.

There were some bubbles on the surface a few hours ago before I gave it this morning's stirring.

If all goes to plan, I should be ready in another 28 hours or so to siphon it all into the carboy to start the second fermentation. Second fermentation is closed and this one is open; i.e. the carboy is plugged with a water valve that only lets gas escape but no air to get in, whereas the bucket is open to the air. However, I decided to loosely place the bucket's lid on the top of the bucket last night because I was worried about ants, as well as not really wanting dust or anything like that to get into the mead. I am not sure if I sabotaged the fermentation by doing that, however.

I plan to add the rest of the grapefruit in at the 24 hour mark.

Keep a journal of all those little details for next time, I guess you kind of are with these posts. I used to brew beer, when my son gets older I may get back into it.

I plan to learn brewing next since the payoff is immediate rather than 8 months or years down the line from the start of a batch. At some point, I will likely do a batch of short mead and a batch of regular mead every three weeks or so. The regular mead gets aged, so that I only have 6-8 carboys aging at one time, and I can drink the short mead a few weeks after starting. Beer is kind of the opposite, I guess, where it's ready pretty soon and you have to drink it or give it away before it goes bad. So if you did this as a weekend project, brew beer one weekend, make mead the next weekend, and the third weekend off.

[SuburbanFarmer]

About 20 hours since first fermentation started.

There were some bubbles on the surface a few hours ago before I gave it this morning's stirring.

If all goes to plan, I should be ready in another 28 hours or so to siphon it all into the carboy to start the second fermentation. Second fermentation is closed and this one is open; i.e. the carboy is plugged with a water valve that only lets gas escape but no air to get in, whereas the bucket is open to the air. However, I decided to loosely place the bucket's lid on the top of the bucket last night because I was worried about ants, as well as not really wanting dust or anything like that to get into the mead. I am not sure if I sabotaged the fermentation by doing that, however.

I plan to add the rest of the grapefruit in at the 24 hour mark.

When we make sauerkraut, we put a towel or other cloth over the opening with string or a rubber band. You want airflow, but nothing else.

[Speaker to Animals]

About 20 hours since first fermentation started.

There were some bubbles on the surface a few hours ago before I gave it this morning's stirring.

If all goes to plan, I should be ready in another 28 hours or so to siphon it all into the carboy to start the second fermentation. Second fermentation is closed and this one is open; i.e. the carboy is plugged with a water valve that only lets gas escape but no air to get in, whereas the bucket is open to the air. However, I decided to loosely place the bucket's lid on the top of the bucket last night because I was worried about ants, as well as not really wanting dust or anything like that to get into the mead. I am not sure if I sabotaged the fermentation by doing that, however.

I plan to add the rest of the grapefruit in at the 24 hour mark.

When we make sauerkraut, we put a towel or other cloth over the opening with string or a rubber band. You want airflow, but nothing else.

The lid has a little vent on it, and I will open it up twice today to stir it.