Subject: Mead Lover's Digest #1348, 28 October 2007 Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 14:04:00 -0600 (MDT) Mead Lover's Digest #1348 28 October 2007 Forum for Discussion of Mead Making and Consuming Dick Dunn, Digest Janitor Contents: Re: Mead Lover's Digest #1347, 18 October 2007 (AFDoty`at`aol.com) RE: Mead Lover's Digest #1347, 18 October 2007 ("Paul Johnston") Alternative to yeast aeration -- Olive oil! ("Dan McFeeley") 2007 Great Lakes Old World Syder Competition (Meads Too) ("Jeff Carlson") NOTE: Digest appears when there is enough material to send one. Send ONLY articles for the digest to mead`at`talisman.com. Use mead-request`at`talisman.com for [un]subscribe/admin requests. Digest archives and FAQ are available at www.talisman.com/mead A searchable archive is at http://www.gotmead.com/mldarchives.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Re: Mead Lover's Digest #1347, 18 October 2007 From: AFDoty`at`aol.com Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 05:37:14 EDT I want to thank everyone for their help with the Pumpkin Mead. Gonna get a batch going for next year. Cheers. ------------------------------ Subject: RE: Mead Lover's Digest #1347, 18 October 2007 From: "Paul Johnston" Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 07:46:10 -0400 Hi, I have a question to post but didn't see a place to enter it on the home page. I made a Chambourcin Pyment about a week ago and just pressed the grapes last night. I started with 40 lbs of crushed grapes and 8 lbs of honey (SG of 1.100 gravity on the nose) and used EC-1118 yeast hoping to get it dry. I usually do malo-lactic fermentation on my red wines to soften the acids but am not sure about doing M-L on the pyment. I haven't done any testing on it so don't know where the total acid is yet. Does anyone know if M-L is beneficial on pyments Thanks, Paul=20 410-575-6100 X 12 FAX 410-575-6200 ------------------------------ Subject: Alternative to yeast aeration -- Olive oil! From: "Dan McFeeley" Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 18:08:23 -0500 I kid you not. Saw this one come over on another list -- here's the link to the article and following discussion: http://www.babblebelt.com/newboard/thread.html?tid=1108752780&th=1180990051&pg=1&tpg=1&add=1 Here's the lead article in the discussion: - -----------------------[snip!]--------------------- A new way to aerate - using olive oil! Tomme mentioned this at the swap session last night. It seems at New Belgium they experimented with replacing aeration with something that would serve the same purpose - a bit olive oil! He just sent me the explaination... A few weeks back, I had an interesting conversation with a local craft brewer here in NH. When he was at the Craft Brewers Conference in Austin this year he saw a talk given by folks from the New Belgium Brewing Company about how you can add olive oil to wort, instead of injecting oxygen, to essentially "aerate" the wort. I emailed the folks at New Belgium, and here's what they said: "The olive oil thing was the result of some research done first at the University of Leuven in Belgium, and then some full scale testing we did here at New Belgium. "The basic concept is that since yeast uses an oxygen atom to pull a hydrogen away from an 18 carbon chain unsaturated fatty acid to make a monounsaturated fatty acid chain to help it grow, you could simply provide an 18 carbon monounsaturated fatty acid and it would be able to use that. This works well in practice, we made a little over 1 million bottles with beer where the yeast had had olive oil added. "The main thing to remember is that since you're working on a molecular level, and the olive oil has a high concentration of that molecule, the amount you actually need is pretty small. Additionally, you want to use a very small amount to avoid any detrimental effects that the oil would have on the beer's head retention. "For the volume of wort we normally ferment, we would pitch about 4500L of yeast, and to that we would add around 300mL of olive oil. To translate that into a 5 gallon size, you would need to measure about 0.0000833mL of olive oil. For any practical purpose, that is much too small an amount to accurately measure out. You could fudge and just add the tiniest imaginable drop to the yeast you have, but you'd be over-dosing the oil by thousands of times the required amount, and run the risk of having zero foam retention. Not a good compromise in my opinion. "The bigger picture is this: for us, we did this as a way to avoid potential for oxygen free radicals to contribute to staling off flavors, and hopefully could count on getting an extra 2-3 weeks of shelf life time in the finished product." ------------------------------ Subject: 2007 Great Lakes Old World Syder Competition (Meads Too) From: "Jeff Carlson" Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 15:38:25 -0400 The 2007 Great Lakes Old World Syder Competition (3rd Annual) will take place on Dec 8 and 9. The competition includes all fermented beverages, Beer, Cider, and Mead, provided they contain apples and/or pears. There will be 2 divisions, one for commercial producers and one for home hobbyists. A tasting and judging seminar will take place on Dec 8th, given by Gary Awdey and Charles McGonegal, with judging on the 9th. This years events will again be held at Schmohz Brewing Company in Grand Rapids Michigan. Complete information and registration packet can be found at. http://www.michiganbeerguide.com/pdf/2007GLOWSEntry.pdf Jeff Carlson Lead Registrar carlsonj`at`gvsu.edu ------------------------------ End of Mead Lover's Digest #1348 *******************************