The "remainders" bottle, with hydrometer:
I made a nice sweet-potato soup with the lees when I racked, but where I had some fairly clear mead in progress that wasn't enough for another bottle, I threw it into this mixture. It's got
- some carob molassas "mead" from batch #1
- some carob molassas pyment (with Welch's white grape and H20) from batch #1-b.
- some of the Dole frozen fruit melomel that had just cleared a lot of solids, from batch #3...
That fermenting had slowed down, and I just added
- some of the brand-new orange blossom must and champagne yeast from batch #4, to top off the bottle and re-start the fermenting. That worked. There's some scum collecting around the top.
An experiment. A bit more experimental than the others.
8/23 update....YUM! Wow! I pulled out some floating solids with a clean turkey baster, then poured out enough to use the hydrometer. I tried to avoid the glug, glug. (My lack of siphoning skills doesn't make that a better option yet.) I just measure SG in the plastic tube the hydrometer came in...no cling problems thus far, and it makes a great tasting cup afterwards. The Remainders Bottle got down to 1.018, with components starting around 1.08, and all brewing for under a month. Back of the envelope says that's almost 10% alcohol? It tastes rather like beer, but a fruity one with perfect sweetness and no bitterness. I like medium sweet, fruity, with no unfermented honey taste, and this has that.
I topped the Remainders Bottle back off with the fizzy 1.088 orange-blossom batch #4 (which still tastes like unfermented honey, under that fizziness).
Sander...is a "perpetual," "stable" yeastie community to make your honey-based alcohol what you're looking for? That's kind of my goal for now, I guess. Something I can feed honey-water and a bit of fruit, and get a glass from now and then. This bottle's got some wild yeasts now, plus a little boost of champagne yeast in with its fresh food every so often. I'm going to see how long I can keep it going, testing (and tasting the tested portion) every time I rack another one that would blend well.
I'm keeping it airlocked when I'm not pulling a sample and refilling.