18% ABV Sweet mead

**JWPalmer** · 11-16-2019, 11:47 AM

Dan, how do you make the honey vinegar?

**JWPalmer** · 11-16-2019, 03:30 PM

Another update. After a little psyching myself up, I tasted the mead from the coffee filter set up. Still has a definite yeasty taste and is very sweet, but no other off flavors that I could discern. No hint of Jet A.

**Ravenseye** · 11-16-2019, 04:41 PM

As mentioned, time is the magic ingredient. I opened 2 bottles of Acerglyn (Maple Mead) this week. One spiced. One not. They were started on New Years Day, 2017. Both were better than anything you could buy at the store. And both were twice as good as bottles from the same batch that I opened and tried a year ago.

**beemandan** · 11-18-2019, 09:47 AM

Originally Posted by JWPalmer

Dan, how do you make the honey vinegar?

The basics are pretty straightforward. Begin by making mead. I would mix honey and water to a specific gravity that resulted in an alcohol content lower than that rated for the yeast I was using. I wanted complete fermentation.
Once fermentation is complete, I would mix in some vinegar mother. I would close the container using a fine weave cloth as the conversion from mead to vinegar is aerobic. Over time that process will run to completion.
The tricky part is making sure that the resulting vinegar has neither an acid content that is too high or too low. I made sure that my initial specific gravity would result in an acid content above 5%. I titrated the final vinegar and would add distilled water to dilute to achieve 5% acid content.
An interesting extension bulletin from 1935 on making vinegar from honey.

https://archive.lib.msu.edu/DMC/Ag.%...e/PDF/e149.pdf

**JWPalmer** · 11-18-2019, 08:23 PM

Thanks for the link Dan, good stuff. Uh, what exactly is a vinegar eel? Sounds disgusting.

Ok, I googled it. They are disgusting. Tiny little worms (nematodes) living in and destroying ones vinegar.

**JWPalmer** · 11-23-2019, 09:55 AM

Since transferring the mead to the secondary, I noticed that I no longer was generating CO2. As I mentioned in another thread recently, I tend to keep the house a little on the cool side in the winter. Apparently, too cool for fermentation to continue. So, last night I moved the carboy in front of a heater and was pleased to see CO2 bubbles forming again. Of course, I couldn't leave the carboy full of mead in the middle of the floor, so I took some quick measurements and discovered it would fit in my incubator. Just put it inside and set the thermostat to 80° F. We will see what happens.