Flavor Fixing for Mead, Wine and Cider
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- Опубліковано 12 вер 2024
- How we fix flavors in our mead, wine and cider. This video is shown on an already made and bottled mead, but, you can use the techniques and additions before you bottle just as easily (it's better that way too!). We talk about how to easily adjust and even fix flavors in your mead, wine and cider to get the most out of your homebrew. While far from a scientific take on things, it's an easy way to understand what flavors affect what other aspects of your beverage.
Racking: • Racking Homemade Mead,...
Bottling: • How to Bottle Mead, Wi...
Pasteurization: • Easiest Way to Pasteur...
Wood Aging: • Wood Aging Mead with B...
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I love it when Derica takes over the show. Hope it happens more often.
There was one a couple summers ago in which the two of them switched roles because Brian had burned his hand. I'm sorry Brian got hurt, but it was nice to see Derica take over.
Believe it or not we share the responsibilities pretty evenly. I just don’t mind the spotlight as much as she does. Most every video is created from the two of us putting ideas together:)
@@CitySteadingBrews Of course. I only meant it is nice to see her take the lead once in a while. Mix things up.
It can be disheartening when a brew (or any food) turns out awful, but it is so satisfying to be able to balance the flavors to recover it. I made a pork green chili last year that was way sour (chalk it up to super sour tomatillos). It took me 45 minutes of research and adjusting, but I managed to get it tasting really good and won my office chili cook-off.
Gotta love your style! I started with printed recipes and had to scour the internet for info before the guy who sucked me into this incredibly fun art(I consider it art because it's someone's vision being created) told me about your channel and have been religious about watching one of your videos daily. I have learned more in 2 years than I have ever. Thank you for keeping it K.I.S.S.
Awesome video! Been watching your videos for a couple years. I never wanted to ask about what mouth feel was cause I thought it was a dumb question. Well you totally answered that question for me!! Thanks so much you made my day! 🤗
Brian's facial expression after taking the first taste of the mead is hilarious. Ha ha ha
There is a Greek red wine which adds bay leaf called Koutouki. It is amazing. I tried it and it makes a simple bev very complex. I'd like to see what you think. I put one small leave for each 750ml.
Thank you for yet another great video that provides a plethora of answers to the age-old exclamation of so many beginning home brewers “Oh no, my mead/wine/cider tastes like crap? What now?”
Possible answers:
“Let the games begin”
“Time to start playing”
“Break out the bag of tricks”
“Let’s have some fun with this one, shall we?”
I’m looking forward to my daughter’s boyfriend being done with his exams. He’s taking his first steps into the world of home brewing. I’ve got a few fermenters that have cleared and need finishing before bottling. Time to learn, Grasshopper. Let’s pour a few glasses and find out what those beverages need… He likes my product. It’ll be fun to have him test his palate and see him discover possibilities. 😊
I had the same problem with a triple berry. Added three pounds more fruit to secondary. When it finished I added honey to backsweeten and then a touch of lemon juice to brighten it up.
Hey guys. Absolute newbie here. Have been kicking around the idea of trying to make my own wine for years. A friend sent me your link and I have been binge watching as much of your stuff as possible. Just started my first batch of Cider and so far so good 😉. Thank you for all the great information!
Very informative video. Thank u for taking the time to make it. I prefer sweeter brews too. Except for cooking wines , Then both.
Really appreciated this discussion. I think my palate is definitely developing, but I appreciated that you talked about what mouthfeel and other flavors add so I can look for different things and think about what I like in storebought beverages (:D) to improve my brews.
This was super helpful. Some of my brews may no longer be a lost cause.
Decided to try this with acid blend and wine tannin in a 6 month old strawberry jam wine. First off tannin is NOT what I expected and what I thought it was. The tannin basically enhanced the sweetness greatly in a good way and melded? The other flavors along with the expected flavors sticking around longer. The acid blend did kinda what I expected and "brightened" but also lowered the mouthfeel and made it more "refreshing". This is going to take a LOT more experimenting and experience to even begin to master.
Acid blend in our experience adds to the mouthfeel of a brew. I don't recall it ever making something sweeter.
Brew is an awesome word. I love Brews. Brews make fine beverage.
Great Topic !! Thank U😊
Oh perfect timing for this video! I made some sake and it ended up being too dry, like 26% alcohol . It tastes really bitter. Still experimenting with my "Brews" 🧙♂️ 🪄. Also I love your shirt Derica and thanks for this video!
Would love to have a mad scientist live stream just talking and exploring adjusting flavors, mouthful, acid (and types), etc. IMO it really is the 2nd most challenging thing to do, much less master for new brewers right behind just jumping off the cliff and starting brewing.
"Plethora" and "utensils" are both great words.
Another great show you two. Always love the banter back and forth. You really make the content interesting.
I do have an inquiry though. Seeing as I have a pair of oak trees in my yard. Would it be possible or wise to crack open a few acorns and use them for their tannic properties? And I guess another question would be. Could I use a raw piece of oak for my brews (bark removed of course)? And does the wood have to be (cooked) before use? Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks again for a great show. God bless.
Thanks!
good info, without charisma, doesn't get out. Charisma, without good info . . . dare I say "evil?" You have both. 💕
Thanks Ray! We appreciate it!
the respect you show each other is part of your charisma, and it makes me happy for you 😉
Thank you. Sharing your life with another is the highest honor.
This is my first time getting an inkling that you might be a Whovian Derica! =] I wish I had a TARDIS too, it would make life so much easier!
So...what exactly is triggering about "brew"?
How about adding extracts? Have your experiences been good?
Definitely enjoy watching you interactions together and the unexpected conclusions. (At least unexpected for us)😁.
I paused the video near the end and took down an old bottle of coffee mead that was over strengthened with coffee (brewed coffee way too long). I poured a short glass and went to work backsweetening with some wildflower honey. After the third tablespoon it lost the bitterness and the viscosity (mouth feel) became acceptable. I added a tspn of vanilla and it is now one of my favorites. Smooth, rich and amazingly not too sweet. Now for my question, it (the coffee mead) still has a pungent odor. It has sat for two months plus and this odor has not depleted. Any suggestions?
👍❤️🙏
It might dissipate in time.
I make a cherry wine that is super delish. After the juice has fermented, I add 2-3 pounds of cherries (in 1 gal.), and that makes the cherry flavor pop as well as adding several more points of gravity.
Sounds good!
@@CitySteadingBrews It's my favorite thing I make. To drink, that is.
So what happens if you OVER sweeten? I had a 2 gallon cider (your recipe of store bought) that went dry. I added to much allulose and it brought out the flavors but man is it way to sweet. Can that be adjusted? Keep up the great work by the way.
Sadly not much you can do. Maybe mix with a dry brew? This is why we add some sweetener then taste and add more if needed. Can’t overdo it that way.
Good morning guys
Thank you for all the efforts in making those videos. You talked about improving the acidity in the mesd or beverage, my last batch of mead started at 1.074 and ended up totally dry and i like it so much only it has a high level of acidity. Can you please tell me if there is a way to fix it without backsweeten cause i like it dry.
Thank you again.
Well, you could try buffering the acidity level with something like potassium bicarbonate, or even baking soda. Start with small amounts, like 1/4 to 1/2 tsp in a gallon.
@@CitySteadingBrews thank you so much 🙏
Another good video from you guys.
I have a question about the blueberry mead I'm making right now. After 2 weeks of fermentation I racked the mead to a carboy. The mead smelled good and looked perfect.
Now a day later I smell a sour smell at the airlock. it could be H2S.
Do you have any idea what I should do? Do I have to wait? Or should I still add splash rack or copper?
Hopefully you can help me.
cheers
Hydrogen sulfide smells like rotten eggs. I doubt much changed in one day to be honest. Was it done fermenting? Do you have any readings or a recipe you followed?
@@CitySteadingBrews
Recipe,
4 pounds of honey
1,5 pounds of white sugar
4pounds of blueberrys
1 pound of strawberry
Peels of 1 lemon
1 cup of thee (2 black thee bags)
3 gallons of water.
Gravity,
OG 1100
After 2 weeks FG 1000
I sanitize with star san and demineralized water.
Its wierd because the wine i made before this had the same problem :(.
Is the smell sour or rotten eggs?
@@CitySteadingBrews Hard to tell. It's not like the whole room stinks or anything. It's just an unpleasant smell. I'd say it doesn't really smell like rotten eggs. Unfortunately, sour isn't really the right name either. If I had to guess I'd say it smells more like rotten eggs than it smells sour.
If this is H2s smell, will this go away if I let the mead get old or should I use splash racking/copper? Or do you tink it could be something else?
I use vegetable glycerin as an additive when a wine is too tart or sour or harsh. It seems to smooth things out.
I could see that.
What kind of honey did you add? I've never seen honey that dark. I need a TARDIS too.
So question. What if I already added sorb K? Can I still back sweetn? Dried fruit makes it slimy. But you said cooked fruit? What about maltodextrin?
We have never used sorbate. I use dried fruit all the time. Maltodextrin is a mostly non-fermentable sugar.
I have a question for you guys! How can i contact ya’ll? I love your videos, i started making wine 2 years ago and when i have a question that i need answered i watch your videos!
You can just ask right here, that's what the comment section is for :)
Ok and i am sure there is a video for it so if you can reference which one i would appreciate it. I have a Blackberry and Blueberry wine that i started about 5 days ago and the first two day were insane, good, strong, borderline volatile fermentation. Day three was steady and day 4 nothing, no activity. I woke up today and still dead silence, no activity. I am gonna take a gravity reading to be sure but i am afraid its stuck. How would i solve that problem? I have never had that happen to a brew of mine
Depending on your recipe and readings, it could be done. I would take readings before worrying if it stalled :)
This is a 5 gallon batch, berries were frozen and then thawed.
Bruiser wine
(Black berry/blueberry)
12 lbs black berries
4 lbs blueberries
10lbs sugar
One large mug of triple bag black tea(earl gray)
Starting date: January 20, 2023
Starting gravity: 1.090
I took a gravity reading and its at a 1.010 so i thought yeah it might be done put the lid back on, came back in a few hours to check on one of my other brews and it was rolling again. Idk what happened. It didn’t make a peep for two days and now its going steady. Anyway, thank you guys! I love your channel
Sorry if this is a stupid question..
Can I add wine ya in after fermentation if there is not sufficient “mouth feel”. Have wanted to experiment with it, but hoping someone else has already.
What say you?
What’s the word after wine supposed to be? :)
So I started a traditional mead on the 8th and racked it on this past Friday. Taking a sample of it it came out dry at 0.998 (lavlin d47 and local hive southwest blend about 2.4 lbs) all it taste like is straight ethanol very cedar woody. No idea how to even fix it.
In most all of our recipe videos we have a section all about adjusting flavors.
Sorry if I missed a past video, do I need to pasteurize anytime I back sweeten?
If there is a chance of refermenting, yes!
Can you add more honey in secondary/conditioning for mead? My first ever mead is probably done fermenting (I'm about to do a second final reading today). I didn't have a hydrometer when I first started it, but the reading I took last week, after 3 weeks of fermenting, was at 0.993. No idea how it went so dry as I just did a simple 1 gallon carboy, 3 pounds orange blossom honey, lalvin d47, and the nutrients that came with the kit I bought.
I'm wondering if it will keep fermenting if I add more honey, or if the yeast is tapped out at that low of a gravity. I want to sweeten it up, but I'm a little intimidated by the pasteurizing process.
You can add more honey, yes. It's possible it will keep fermenting. If you wanted to NOT have it ferment, you can add the honey to taste then pasteurize and it won't ferment any further, but will be sweeter. ua-cam.com/video/zWBU3EI-EFo/v-deo.html
@City Steading Brews Thank you for responding! So glad I stumbled upon your guys' channel! I love your style of simple, natural brewing.
Would stabilising and then adding honey and bottling work?
Depends on what you want to achieve. If it’s adding sweetness and perhaps viscosity without re-starting fermentation, then the answer is yes. Be prepared for your brew to turn hazy. It’s called ‘honey haze’ and it’s caused by the proteins, traces of pollen etc. in the honey. It should normally settle out and fall to the bottom of the bottle.
@@eddavanleemputten9232 That’s exactly what I wanted to achieve, thanks! The haze as well, I love that in Hydromel.
@@valterspatriks8752 - If you don’t mind/love the haze, then of course it’s no problem. Especially because if it does fall out simply giving the bottle a little shake will mix it in again.
If you do choose chemical stabilisation, be careful to follow package instructions of your stabiliser of choice.
Personally I do not use them. My preferred method of stabilisation is pasteurising. I rack my product, fiddle around with my collection of flavour additions/sugars/etc to balance it, back sweeten and bottle. Immediately after bottling I pasteurise if I’ve used fermentable sugars to back sweeten. On occasion I’ve bulk-pasteurised, then back sweetened, waited for the honey haze to fall out, then bottled. As I don’t mind a bit of honey solids I found it was too much faff and reverted to my usual MO.
All of this for meads, ciders and wines where the yeast didn’t hit alcohol tolerance. I’ve got several on my shelf (sack meads) that definitely wouldn’t ferment more and that I wanted to back sweeten, then clear again. So I dumped in the desired amount of honey, stirred it in and let it sit some more. Bottled it once it cleared.
@@eddavanleemputten9232 This was very helpful, thanks!
Are there any drawbacks to using chemicals?
@@valterspatriks8752 - It’s simply my preference not to use them. Using chemical stabilisation means that if someone is sensitive to them, they may experience discomfort from drinking what I produce. Both my daughter and my mother are sensitive to sulphites, so I steer away from them. In addition, if I want to use some bottled wine/mead/cider to top up a fermenter after racking/removing fruit or some similar measure, the presence of those stabilisers might make it impossible for me to bottle-carbonate that new batch, should I want to. This is not an issue with heat-stabilised drinks.
I’m absolutely not against chemical stabilisers. It’s just not something I use.
I'm trying to kick around the idea of a apple and orange more specifically blood orange cider but only video I've seen is a guy use sunny d and that's not orange juice. But I want to use fresh apples and blood oranges. My question is this a bad idea? I don't see much on that kind of flavor profile to a cider.
Seems fine to me.
I have a question if you know that you will need some adjustments. Why not just pasteurization after the second conditioning or does that change it in some other way? Then sweeten or Tannen and refruit after that. If so why would we not always use pasteurization after you reached the final fermentation? Unless you want to carbonate your brew yes I said brew.
We pasteurize last because adding other things will still require time to settle out. May as well do it all in one shot.
That makes sense I just about have everything to give this a go just need to look back for the bid with 15lb scale link.I have been using your links to Amazon because I enjoy ya'll and you said it helps ya.
How best to correct if you accidentally over sweetened?
Dilute.
Hi! Apple chat. One of the very first fruit wines I made was apple. We had a bunch for free.
It came out dry, astringent, watery and gross, (before I know about back sweetening). Malic acid is something I’ve learned from you.
Since then I’ve made some beautiful wines, especially tea, but haven’t returned to apples in any form for my wine brews, And it does seem you’ve also wrestled with their flavours too. Is there a good reason for using them as a base for other fruits (I’m thinking of the Fey Wine here) or would you recommend a less temperamental fruit?
The way I understand it, it's that ciders usually is made using crabapples, or apples that are less on the sweet side that bring some additional tannins and body to the beverage. I haven't personally tried yet, but I've played around with the idea of complimenting apples with rose hips. Those have a lot of tannins and pectin that could complement their lack in commercial dessert apples varieties
@@Carlos-Mora thanks! The apples I used were a bit weird. They had red flesh as well as red skins. They are from a friends tree. I’ll try again this year now I’ve learned a lot more about brewing with fruit from City Steading vids.
So... about tannins. Can you add apple skins in the store bought apple juice brew to increase tannins? If yes, do you have any idea of how much to put in a gallon (4lt to be exact) of apple juice?
Also, can you charr a cinnamon stick to add smoky flavors as well as cinnamon flavors? Have you tried it? The idea came from various coktails that I've seen.
You can add skins yes. It will add sone tannins. You would need a lot though.
Charred cinnamon… never tried it, but as long as it’s not burnt it might work!
@@CitySteadingBrews Thank you for your answer. Can't wait to see more videos!
What an interesting idea! I never thought of charring cinnamon and I’ve been brewing for years. That’s one of the wonderful things about this hobby: No matter how many years you’ve been at it, there’s always a new idea or a new twist to try out. Thank you for bringing this up. Now I want to try this in a future brew. Even toasting the cinnamon on a dry pan can add new notes. 😊
I am making your Vikings blood 2020 recipe, and it turned out just like you guys did in the video, until I went to back, sweeten it with more honey. Once I added the honey, it went from that gem like clarity to very hazy. Will it clear out and settle out with time back sweet like this? Have you guys experienced similar issues?
It should clear yes. Make sure you pasteurize too or it could start up fermentation again.
okay so i was thinking is it possible to make mead, tho i guess it wouldn't really be mead at that point, with maple syrup instead of honey?
It’s maple wine. We have videos on it.
@@CitySteadingBrews !!!! oh awesome i am going to binge them. Thank you
Instead of pasteurization can you use chemicals
We don't, but if you prefer, you can.
On the topic of enhancing flavours... has anyone experimented with *salt* ? What effect would a tiny pinch here-n-there have on a brew/ferment? The psychotic 'Foodie(?)' in me is curious.
Just a bit of honey brought back all the fruit flavors!
Do you two ever make Cocktails with your Wines?
We even have videos of some!
Brew, beverage, who cares. They know what you're talking about (as the term is fine to use for wines).
Ignore the petty complaints, you don't need to acknowledge it...
Was mostly a joke :)
: )
Bone of contention: you repeatedly state that "if you back-sweeten, then you must Pasteurize"
I think that you should consider adjusting this statement to say, "if you back-sweeten, then you should not immediately bottle, unless you Pasteurize".
What if you don't bottle immediately and you back-sweeten your beverage? It will either accept the extra input of sugars and begin to ferment again until it reaches the alcohol tolerance of the yeast, or it will remain sweetened from the addition of the sugars and not continue fermenting due to already reaching alcohol tolerance. I understand that this may be in the realm of a safety statement to prevent bottle bombs, but consider when you make a sack, aren't you back-sweetening a must without bottling?
What say you?
If you expect it to ferment more you are step feeding not backsweetening.
@@CitySteadingBrews true, but that is based on expectations. If your fermentation has already met alcohol tolerance and there are some remaining sugars, then it won't continue fermentation. Could there be any remaining fermentable sugars with a specific gravity lower than 1? Probably not. But you don't know exactly when the yeast has met its alcohol tolerance. If you add sugars, and then wait, check again, repeat as needed, then you could achieve your goal of increasing sweetness eventually due to reaching alcohol tolerance of the yeast and won't require Pasteurization. I suppose you could consider it step-feeding if you knew that the yeast hasn't reached the point of alcohol tolerance, but if it has, then it would be back-sweetening and not step feeding, right? And then no further fermentation will occur even if you add fermentable sugars. I guess what I'm suggesting is that there is a point in which step feeding will become back-sweetening, and no Pasteurization would be required for bottling, and no carbonation after bottling could occur.
Words like beverage and utensil I prefer more technical terms like thingamabob the who's what's its the thingamajig and doohickey.
People mad over the word brew. What?
The technicality that making mead is not brewing.
It’s the internet where everyone wants to be mad about something silly
Yup!
@@CitySteadingBrews Someone should tell these companies making mead brewing kits their wrong, not going to be me mind you.
@@RileyGein just like real life I see.
Sorry Brian and Dericia, some brews are fixed points in history.
What?
Dahmuch.
A plethora? I am not as smart or as handsome as you.
Do yall have a discord or somewhere we can all chat about brews and give advice?
The comment section here or our VIP club: city-steading.com/vip-club