Brew Day - Blueberry Ginger Mead

Come on, little bubbles! Let's
see what you've got!

A long time ago (1997?) in a galaxy far, far away (well, at an apartment I used to live in, anyway,) I brewed a batch of blueberry ginger mead. It was (as nostalgia tells me) amazing! I've been wanting to brew another batch ever since. Yesterday I got all the supplies together and today I threw down another 5 gallon batch of blueberry ginger mead.

The recipe was a slight variation on the traditional barkshack ginger mead. More of one some things, less of others.

Recipe:

• 16 lbs 10.5 oz - cotton honey
• 1 lb corn sugar
• 1.5 oz fresh grated ginger
• 0.6 oz lemongrass (two small stalks)
• zest of one small lemon
• 7 tsp yeast nutrient (the recipe called for 3 but it also only called for 7 lbs of honey)
• 1.5 tsp gypsum
• 0.5 tsp Irish Moss
• 1 quart Knudsen Blueberry Juice
• 2 packs of Red Star Pasteur Champagne yeast

Yesterday I put a gallon of water into the refrigerator to chill and decrystalized the 1.5 gallons of honey that had been sitting under the kitchen cabinet for the last year or so.

Today I started by heating 1.5 gallons of water (in two stainless steel spaghetti pots) to around 180 degrees, took them off the fire, poured in the honey, and stirred like crazy to completely dissolve it and not let it rest on the bottom. Once the liquid was consistent throughout, I gave it a brief pause to let the floaties (wax and whatnot) rise to the top and then skimmed the surface to clean it up.

I then split the rest of the ingredients (except the blueberry juice and the yeast) between the two pots and stirred again while I brought the temp back up to 180 on both pots. For the next 20 minutes I played games with the stove to keep the temp between 180 and 190 and stirred frequently. After shutting the burner off and moving the pots to other, non-recently heated burners, I gave both pots a quick stir and a 5 minute rest to let the remaining floaties gather and then skimmed again to remove the ginger (as much as I could), the lemongrass, and a fairly thick foam that had sat on top through most of the cooking.

While the pots cooled (only getting down to 140,) rehydrated the two packs of yeast with room temperature water and then I prepped the primary fermenter. To get things started, I poured a half gallon of room temperature water into it. The contents of both pots then went into the fermenter through my funnel with the highly useful strainer that kept out a lot more grated ginger. Another 1.5 gallons of room temp water followed and was then chased by the gallon of chilled water that I'd put in the refrigerator yesterday. Finally, the quart of Knudsons Blueberry Juice (also chilled) went in.

Sadly, this only got us to 94 degrees. It required an ice bath in the kitchen sink to get it down to 86 degrees, at which time I pitched the yeast. The mead is now sitting in the front bathroom bathtub (in case it overflows) and needs racked to secondary in about a week.

The original gravity (taken before the yeast pitch) was 1.105.