Tasting Notes

Moved, so I can get back to it. In preparation for bottling, which is in turn preparation for refilling carboys with new stuff:

Rose petal mead: very sweet and gorgeous. Rose and honey aroma play so well, just enough clove to balance. Might benefit from that orange peel I skipped. Need to be sure it's stopped. A little bit thin - feeling, I think to counteract that and the sweet I'll bottle it sparkling. I hate the rapey awful term 'panty remover' but yeah. Have two carboys full, might bottle one sparking as is, try adding orange peel infused vodka to the other and tasting to see if it'll be good still.

Apple mead: crazy apple aroma, again sweet like candy but with enough other stuff going on I'm not worried about needing carbonation to complexify it. There's some sort of secondary fermentation going on with this, it's sucking air very slowly in. I will filter this before bottling therefore. Weird taste disappeared.

Barleywine: wouldn't be bad if it hadn't oxidized. I understand what they mean about a flat papery taste at the end. I'm not sure if adding some raisins would help? It's ok but not great.

Kousa: I love the taste of this. Lots of yeast flavor, which plays in a super fun way with the taste of the kousa itself. There's a lot of alcohol in here, which a touch of bitter finish, that could maybe usr another six months. Good to be bottled though.

Up next

So.

My lovely ladybrewer friends introduced me to the wonder that is Spagnol's warehouse closing - out sale. I ended up with a LOT of wine kits (I've never made grape wine before!): 6gal reisling ice wine, one need and one high quality gewurtz, a 12gal (med quality) chilean malbec, a 4.2gal alsastian riesling, a vioginier, a california muscat, a grenache syrah and a cab sauv.

My lovely boyfriend took me on a date to the brew store and I got ingredients for a beliguan sour cherry deal and for a lightish spicy strong ginger ale. (Plus I need to make a few litres of proper ginger ale).

I'm doing the beer first, and the malbec and the alsace riesling. I want to do the lesser gewurtz and add elderflowers, but not sure if I want to go with dried or with abottle of St Germaine.