New Mead, and Racking Old Mead
This weekend was fairly busy, brew-wise; nothing is done yet but I'm still pretty excited. First, on Thursday I started a blackberry short mead kit (really a metheglin, since it includes some spices, interestingly steeped in boiling water), given to my by my mother, which she bought over the summer, using two pounds of blackberry honey from the same source. The kits are pretty slick, but I didn't follow the directions entirely —I used boiled tap water rather than bottled, and I didn't trust the instructions to just cover the bottle with the supplied cloth, so I put a bubbler on instead. I'm using a new three-piece bubbler, which is easier to clean. This recipe calls itself a "short mead" because it suggests that you only ferment for 7-14 days. I'll have to see how it tastes—mead doesn't normally have a lot to cover up off flavors produced by short fermentation, but maybe the blackberry and spices will hide it. I also racked my existin