Acerglyn?

Well so if you don't want to "cheat" then the only thing you can do is waste the maple up in the primary. You won't get any "noticeable" maple profile. Of course, you will notice if it's left out. But unless you have fermented it and know that taste you wouldn't call it out in a blind tasting. I don't think it's cheating and love the ones I make. Do you think it's cheating when you add fruit or spices post-fermentation?

Hi. I haven't tried an Acerglyn yet, but it's on my list. I'm not trying to hijack Ty520's thread, but I did have a few very related questions...

1 - I haven't done a lot of research on them, but most recipes I've seen for Acergylns have been sparkling/carbonated. I'm guessing that's due to balancing out the sweetness of the maple syrup added in secondary. Are they typically sparkling/carbonated?
(relative questions)
2 - What oaks, if any, have folks used for Acerglyns? (I was thinking Hungarian, and maybe a slight blend with some French)
3 - Are there any yeasts folks have used that have a flavor profile matching up with the maple?

I like American oak for the Carmel/vanilla fractions. I would, and have always used a strain to support the type of honey.

I’m trying a 1 gallon acerglyn now for my first time. I have a couple maple trees in my back yard and make my own syrup. With that said, instead of using maple syrup, I boiled about 2 gallons of sap down to under a half gallon and used that in place of some water. I’m hoping the mineral content will be higher than using commercial syrup and will result in a more robust maple character out of primary. It also has a high enough OG that I should have residual sweetness. It’s 6 days in and well past the halfway mark. All else fails, I’ll back sweeten with syrup.

I think that if we are making mead at home, NOTHING we do to improve the taste is cheating. Nothing. Adding things like glycerin or tannin or acid blend isn't cheating AT ALL. 90% of home brewers, mazers and vintners are just making it for themselves and friends and I don't see any problem at all with using shortcuts to produce a delicious end product. Leave the snobbery to the commercial makers and people who enjoy competing. They HAVE to be snobs because they want to win (in the latter case) and sell (in the former).

Adhering to strict guidelines or rules is important and admirable when you want to sell or win, but for most of us, just having someone genuinely enjoy what we pour at home and ask for more is the ultimate goal and it really doesn't matter how we get there.

So go ahead and "cheat."

mannye said:

...NOTHING we do to improve the taste is cheating. Nothing.

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Well said!
The only way you can cheat is if you don't do everything you can to wind up with a result you really enjoy. And then you are simply cheating yourself out of a great batch.

I'm not sure which other thread you were referring to, but I think there may be some miscommunication going on here. Beginners that screw up their first batches of mead may try to cover it up with various adjuncts. As Squatchy has said many times before, you can add enough sugar and honey to make gasoline taste good, but the more experience a mead maker gets, the more adjuncts they will try to achieve a certain taste, balance, complexity, etc that they are looking for. Adjuncts are not just for covering up mistakes.

As far as controlling the final gravity goes, about the only way you can do that is to ferment completely dry, stabilize it, and backsweeten to the desired level. Shooting for a final gravity of 1.010 without backsweetening is next to impossible because there are too many variables that affect the process. It could easily ferment drier than you wanted with a higher ABV or sweeter with a lower ABV.

Ty520 said:

In another thread, you were the one who said that adding adjuncts is typically used by people who haven't mastered the traditional mead process in order to cover up a bad product.

So if someone is incapable of controlling their final gravity, and end up with something way too dry than they wanted...doesn't that mean they really don't have the basic process under control? and are thus covering up for a subpar fermentation? I see no difference based on your comment from the other thread. so in that sense, adding additional adjuncts to build more complex layers of flavor is quite different than blowing the final gravity.

If you personally like the final product, fine. but if you're going to claim to be a "master" of the process, but not have FG under control, those things can't coexist in my mind

Like i said earlier, no self respecting vintner would add raw grape juice back into their product, and i don't see why we shouldn't hold ourselves to that standard either

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Your a smart ass punk dude. I've won more medals in a year than you will in ten lifetimes. You're really making an ass out of your self. For one. Somewhere you are misreading what I said.

It's easy as hell to figure out how to hit an FG. I can teach that to my youngest grandchild. One thing you don't seem to understand at all is balance. If in any mead you want to leave it with residual sugar (RS) you have to go beyond a yeast ABV tolerance level. And almost all of them will go to 16% and some as far as 21%. So if you think your always gonna have a sweet mead without backsweetening. Then you will always have a really high (too high) amount of ethanol to ever find a sense of balance between the honey and the ABV. And just because the yeast is listed with say a 14% Tolerance. That doesn't mean it will tap out then anyway. With today's modern methods almost every yeast strain goes beyond it's listed tolerance level in the book. May yeast don't even list the tolerance level so you could never no.

Now let's say you want something to end up with 17 points of RS naturally all on its own with no backsweetening. First, you have to somehow know where that strain will stop producing ethanol. Now, on top of that,you have to have figured where it would stop. And have an extra 17 sugar points left over to hit your sweetness level. I can tell you. You could use the same stuff over and over and you couldn't hit that 1 time out of ten. Plus let's say you picked one of the lowest listed yeast strains for ethanol tolerance. And let's just say that 14%. That's not normal at all. That's a very standard wine level. Same for mead. But what are you going to do if you want an 8 or 10% finished ABV? You can't get that with any strain out there. What if you want an 8 % session mead with a semisweet finished profile. How you gonna do that.

This is the very last time I will waste any typing time with you. I'm here to tell your smart ass that everyone picks the ABV they want and start their ferment with the appropriate SG. They ferment it dry. This way. You can very accurately pick any ABV you want. Now once it's done you can stabilize it with honey, juice, spirits. Anything you want and that totally acceptable. As for your stupid. " No one would ever add any grape juice once the product id finished". That's absurd. And if you didn't think you knew so damn much you would find that this is normal and done all the time. Adding anything after fermentation is totally allowable. In fact. The real skill in making good mead is what you do to it after it's finished fermenting.

You don't know enough to even comment on this forum. And you especially don't know enough to want to argue with me about this either. I don't ever promote myself. I never tell anyone here how many medals I win each year or in any certain competition. I don't need to. I do this for fun and could care less how many medals I win. I have enough that I don't really need anymore. I know my stuff is good. And so does everyone else in the mead community. But just to make my point I went and dug this is to show you so you might consider taking into consideration the thing I will post on other people threads from here on out. You're dead to me because I have had my fill of people like you over that past several years and don't need to spend my time talking to fools.




The AMMA is pleased to announce the results of the first ever National Mead Maker of the Year competition!
The purpose of this competition is not only to help spur even more participation in mead competitions, but to also motivate higher standards of mead making practices from amateur mead makers around the country.
The big announcement and awarding of prizes to the MeadMaker of the Year and the 1st and 2nd runners up will happen at the 2019 AMMA Annual Meeting at MeadCon in Broomfield, March 12, 2019. Winners will be contacted to arrange receipt of prizes.
Here are the top ten mead makers by points for 2018.
Congratulations to the winners, and to all of those who put your all into competing for the ultimate bragging rights in the mead world.
Details for the 2019 NMMY season will be updated on the AMMA website at a later time.
HOW WERE THE WINNERS DETERMINED?
We include medals won in participating competitions. A mead competition must have more than 100 entries to be included in MeadMaker of the Year.
Points are awarded as follows:

• Gold medals awarded 6 points
• Silver medals awarded 4 points
• Bronze medals awarded 2 points
• 1st Place BOS awarded 4 points
• 2nd Place BOS awarded 3 points
• 3rd Place BOS awarded 2 points
• Honorable mentions awarded 1 point

* Entrants must be an active AMMA member at the time of each competition in order for those points to qualify towards the NMMY award
QUALIFYING COMPETITIONS

• Mazer Cup International
• Mead Free of Die
• Domras Cup
• Orpheus Cup
• Texas Mead Cup
• Michigan Mead Cup