Opening the fermenter the smell is very nice but also acidic. Basic measurements:
pH around 4
denstiy 1.008
The taste was very acidic with a harsh aftertaste. I know the fresh elderberry juice has a very similar taste which is very well complemented by the sweetness of honey. Ergo, I would have to add quite a bit of honey to this mead to get it to taste like I planned for.
Also I figured I could remove some of the acidity by adding K2CO3 like I did previously
The taste of the star anise was gone - so a lesson for the future is not to add taste components until AFTER the fermentation. So I would have to redo this.
When adding honey I did not want the fermentation to start up again, so bisulphite/sorbate also had to be done
So first step was to move the mead to my 10L plastic carboy. Even though it is pitch black when looking into the fermeter, the sample for density has a nice light red appearance. The mead is also crystal clear. When the fermeter was emptied the yeast in the bottom was like a thin pitch black layer - wondering if the yeast take up the color components during the fermentation?
Then it was time to add the honey. From my sack mead I knew that I would get a density of 1.120 from adding 7.2kg of honey in 20L, so to raise the density from 1.008 to 1.025 in 8 L I would need about 400 g of honey. I had a half full glass with 270 g of honey so I figured I would start with this. 200 ml of water was boiled with 0.5g of star whole star anise and poured onto the honey to dissolve this. when dissolved, the solution was added to the carboy.
To knock out the yeast I wanted to add a premixed bag of Bisulfite/Sorbate, but the packages is for a 20 L batch. When the bag is opened it is clear that there are two different types of particles in there. Since the content was so inhomogeneous I decided to make a slurry in 100 ml and then add about 40 ml to the batch.
So far so good and time was up for the day but during the following week I had time to finish up.
Again I decided to add base rather than any acid adjustments. I did the same tasting setup as I did for the sack mead. To 10 ml of mead a stock solution of K2CO3 (0.3g in 4 ml) in steps of 0.1 ml. I ended up adding 0.2 ml for the most pleasant taste but even 0.3 was quite OK. Considering that 0.2 ml corresponds to adding 12 g of K2CO3 to my 8 L batch there must be loads of acids in there. All in all I decided to add 10 g
To get some taste of star anise I crushed 0.80 g (0.1g/L) and boiled it in 50 ml of water for 10 min under lid. I put the crushed star anise in a long tea bag which was lowered into a 50 ml in a metal measuring cup (100 ml) which again was put in a pot with water. Little tedious, but it worked nicely. I did not get a picture of it boiling but here is one of the general set-up.
The 50 ml was then used to dissolve another 140 g (410 g in total) of honey and, wow, did that smell and taste good :o). Finally I added the 10 g of K2CO3 to get it dissolved and add the entire solution to the carboy......
DUMB ASS IDEA
Since CO3(2-) is very basic the pH star anise/honey solution probably rose to beyond 10. A nasty smell of ammonia suddenly filled my nose and even though the carbonate was not fully dissolved I just added the entire slurry to the carboy to get pH down as fast as possible, closed the carboy and shook it well over and over for about 30 min, remembering to degas the carboy after each shake.
Fortunately no harm seemed to have been done.
pH about 4.5 (must be very buffered to take that much CO3(2-))
density 1.025 (spot on)
Taste - wow, so nice and with just a hint of anise in the aftertaste together with a little bite of the acid.
Since the solution was so strongly colored, reading pH was not so easy - perhaps pH was closer to 4?
Considering that this was just a test for fun I think this is going to be my best mead so far, but lets see what maturing does for the taste
Next step is bottling in a few months from now.
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