So whatever happened to the mead?

Over a year ago I started brewing. My first project was five gallons of orange blossom mead.

I don’t even remember the last time I had a peek at the mead that’s taken up almost permanent resident in my main bedroom closet. A while back I spoke to the brewmaster at my

LHBS about the seemingly stalled state of the mead. His prescription was to ignore it. The specific gravity of some meads just never drops very far and no one knows why, so just push the carboy to the back of the closet and forget about it for a while. The SG might not change but the mead will still mellow out and taste better.

So today I decided that it was about time to check in with the stuff. I dragged the thing out and popped the airlock. The mead still smells lovely, thanks to the orange blossom honey. It’s clarified well and is a beautiful pale yellow. Wine thief in hand I pulled out a sample and took a measurement. 1.030. The specific gravity hasn’t budged. Then I took a sip. It tastes drier than the last time I tried it, not cloyingly sweet. This strikes me as odd since less sweet == lower specific gravity, yet that doesn’t seem to be the case here. It also has a small amount of effervescence, so the yeast must still be at least minimally active.

My mead making experience is virtually nil, so I don’t know how to interpret these findings. It might be time to make another trip to my LHBS to talk to the professionals. Thanks to my sister and her Christmas gift of an introductory class in cheese making (woo hoo!), I’ll be up at the store in a couple of weeks so I’ll pick brains while I’m mixing curd. OK, not the most appealing visual. Sorry about that.