New Batch/Recipe: Bryser?

Today, I made a new batch of mead.  My last batch turned out okay, but not great.  I learned an important lesson and I will share it with you: what I said everyone will tell you about the bitter part of citrus peel having no place in the must, even for a short time, is absolutely true.  I can taste the bitterness that is unique to this even though the peel was only in the must for about half an hour.  Next time, I will get one of those bartender tools for getting large and decorative strips of citrus zest to get just the good part.  The batch is still drinkable, but I'm probably going to use it for meadmosas (like a mimosa, but with mead; try it).

So, I've been pondering over this batch for the last few weeks.  My goal, something awesome that could be even more awesome in the winter served warm or even mulled.  I got to thinking, and cider is an ancient love of mine, so I set out to make a winter cyser; mead made with apples or cider.

Of course, another love of mine is malt.  I love malted milk balls, I love malted milkshakes, and I especially love beer.  I've been wanting to use malt for a while and decided to include it in the recipe by replacing half of the sugar I intended to get from honey with malt instead.  I'm not really sure if this is the standard proportions of a braggot; mead made with malt; but I just went with what felt right, you know?

I started by getting the malt.  I like your standard amber lager as far as beer, so I got amber malt.  I intended to use local apple cider, but couldn't find any.  At least, not immediately.  If this batch works out like I want, I will source some.  In the meantime, I got 3 pounds of red delicious apples.  Also, I got half the honey I normally would for a gallon batch.

Since I didn't have the cider already pressed from the apples nor did I have a juicer or apple press available, the burden of separating the apples from their delicious cider-blood.  While I was boiling the gallon of water for the batch, I cored the apples and cut them into 8 slices which I chopped fairly uniformly and tossed them into the water to keep them from browning.  Once they were all done I covered it and let them simmer for a bit to soften the apples.  It smelled amazing.

Once the apples were soft, I scooped them out with a spider and tossed them in a blender to pulverize them and added the apple sauce back to the soon-to-be must.  I let this cool down enough to get a reading with the hydrometer; 1.004.  The apples provided about 0.014 specific gravity, and I was aiming for about a 1.105 to make this batch drier than I have in the past.  The remaining desired sugar, another 0.101 increased specific gravity, was to be split between malt and honey; 0.0505 per source.

3 ounces of honey in a gallon of water provides about 0.0075 change in gravity.  So:

• 3*0.0505/0.0075
• gives us 20.2 ounces of honey, give or take.

Dry malt extract, like I bought, gives a gravity of 1.044 at 1 pound in a gallon of water, or a change in gravity of 0.054 which is almost exactly what I needed, at least only 0.0035 off.  So:

• 16*0.0505/0.054
• gives us 15.96, or as close to make little difference, the full 16 ounces in a pound of malt.

So, pretty much 1 pound of malt and 1 and a quarter pounds of honey to get to the goal.  Warm back up the must just enough to dissolve the sugars, then cool it by setting the pot in a sink of ice water.

When it was cooled off enough, I used a new trick I came up with (and after discussion with my friendly homebrew store worker, confirmed that it was a good idea) and pitched in a beer yeast.  The beer yeast is specifically bred to process malt sugars where the wine yeast may not be able to handle them.  At least, not as well.  Once the fermentation stops on the beer yeast, I will siphon it off and pitch in wine yeast to finish fermenting the rest of the way.

I'm super happy with the color, a beautiful dark cider.  And the beer yeast is already bubbling away at a bubble every 2 seconds in the airlock.  I drank a little bit of the remaining must and it tastes and smells amazing, though of course too sweet.  

Well, that was certainly fast...

Today when I checked on the status of my bubbles, I was a little scared when I noticed that it had pretty much stopped.  I also saw a lees was already settling at the bottom!  I stopped and shook it up, checked the temperature, panicked a little.  You know, the norm.

Then, I thought, "maybe the fermentation is just about done?"  So I broke out the trusty hydrometer and pulled a sample.  I got a reading of 1.012, a whopping .09 less than the must started at.  That's an alcohol content of nearly 12% ABV.  The yeast I used had a tolerance of about 13% so it's possible the little guys just burned through it really fast and made so much booze they couldn't handle it anymore!

I'm going to go ahead and rack the mixture so it can settle for a few more days before I move it to a REALLY neat jug I've had around the house for years and totally ignored.  I'll show that off soon as I get it cleaned up!

The Math and Science Bit

A handy hydrometer illustration

I promised a long time ago, in my very first post, that I'd explain the math involved in using a hydrometer to measure and predict the alcohol content and dryness of your mead or other homebrew (mostly mead, as I'm not really qualified to talk about anything else just yet).  I promised that so long ago, but that was before I was laid off at my old job and things have been understandably crazy since then, but now I'm inspired to finally bring you this information.

Mostly this is for my mead mentor Amber, who is incidentally at her blog talking about mead she is working on and other things.  She mentioned how I never properly explained this math to her, but it is useful to anyone who spent the six bucks for a hydrometer!

To start with, reading the hydrometer and what it actually means.  The hydrometer is a weighted glass tube that floats vertically in a water solution and reveals the specific gravity of the solution.  The specific gravity is based on the sugar content of the solution and is measured numerically from 0.990 and up (but we won't really need too large a range as small changes make a big difference).

During fermentation, the yeast convert the sugar into alcohol and the specific gravity goes back down.  For reference, a change in specific gravity of 0.0075 creates approximately 1% alcohol by volume.  So we can look at the before and after fermentation measurements of specific gravity and calculate the alcohol content.  Warning! Math ahead:

You should have a couple of measurements at this point:

• Initial Specific Gravity (i);
• Final Specific Gravity (f);

Which we will take and find:

• Change in Specific Gravity (ΔG)
• Equal to (i-f);

Which will give us:

• Percent Alcohol by Volume (P)
• With (P=133*ΔG).

Now, the 133 is a number that has a lot to do with differential equations across volume, chemistry and physics, and some extra science you don't need to know.  Just take it for granted that someone else has done this really complicated part to make this math as easy as possible for you.

Also, since the measurement after fermentation is a literal measurement of how much sugar is left in the solution, it can tell us how dry of a drink we've made.  The scale for measuring dryness isn't exact, but there are some approximate guidelines that are generally agreed upon:

• Dry 
• 0.990 to 1.006;
• Medium
• 1.006 to 1.014;
• Sweet
• 1.014 to 1.020;
• Dessert
• 1.020 and up.

Now, this final reading and this scale can tell us what we ended up with or it can allow us to predict what we would like to make by setting our goals for (P) and (f) and determining the (i) for which we need to aim to achieve the desired results.

For reaching such a specific target, we need to set up our goals. Though maybe not the easiest decision when considering the ingredients and flavors involved in your recipe, it's a little simpler to decide how dry you want your final product.  Once you have a desired dryness, just pick a target (f) within your range.

Slightly more complicated is deciding on the desired alcohol content.  First, you should know a little something about your yeast, especially it's alcohol tolerance.  Every yeast has an alcohol content that is too high for it to survive and a natural cap to how much it can ferment.  If your local homebrew store can't give you this information, it is readily available for most major brands on yeast reference tables like this one.  You can't plan for a (P) higher than your yeast can tolerate.  On the other side, if you want to ensure something very sweet, you can use a yeast that you know will stop and not over-ferment and leave you with something that's too dry.  Otherwise, once fermentation slows down you can take regular readings until you have reached the desired dryness and then stopping fermentation manually.

In any case, once you decide on your desired alcohol content, you just use the reverse engineered formula:

• Desired Alcohol Content (P);
• Desired Final Specific Gravity (f);
• Gives Target Initial Specific Gravity (T)
• T=(P/133)+f.

As you mix up your solution before fermentation, you can add more honey or any other ingredient you have with more sugar to raise the initial specific gravity, or conversely water or any ingredient with less sugar in it to lower the initial.  Once your hydrometer says you've hit your goal, you have a very predictable and controllable fermentation cycle ahead of you!

Update! Bubbles!

So, the yeast I pitched just a mere 4-5 hours ago is already hard at work.  They got the airlock bubbling on a 2-3 second pace.  It's good to know things are working so well already!  Very reassuring.