A bit of an update as to how things are going with our budding mead. Visit here to catch up on the process.

Things got unexpected hectic yesterday. One of the things going on was realizing I hadn’t heard from my mother for more than a week, and my own calls to her were all going to machine. My siblings had also not heard from her. I was going to make one more attempt to call her yesterday morning, and if it went to machine again, I was going to drive over for a wellness check.

Thankfully, I did get through to her. She just happened to be out the times I called. She got my messages, but didn’t call back.

Shortly after her call, I got a reminder notification from my phone for a medical appointment. I had completely forgotten about it! It was a follow up appointment from my last visit 2 weeks ago.

Things are looking good, but he still wants to drug me more. *sigh*

I needed some serious stress reduction after that, so I spent some time on the beach, played some Pokemon Go, then headed home. At the last minute I swung by the one store in town that carries wine and beer making supplies, where I got our fermentation starter kit from. While the mead is past the 4 weeks it needed before bottling, we don’t have bottles.

The store does carry 750ml bottles, in cases of twelve, in clear or green, so I got the prices for those. These are the type of bottles that need corks, which means we also need a corker.

I suddenly remembered something I saw in our basement, so I asked her if there was one I could see. They had a very large one on the floor, but smaller ones were also available.

Once I got home, I went into the basement and looked again.

We have a corker.

A very dusty, abandoned corker.

When I first saw it, I had thought it might be a bottle capper or something like that. I’d never seen a corker before, so I wasn’t sure.

I don’t know why we have a corker. I’m finding buckets and bottles all over for wine making (but not air locks or other such necessities) around. My dad used to make wine, but he never used any of the equipment now available. As far as I know, he never used anything that required corks when bottling his wine. I have a brother and sister who also make wine, but they are actively doing this at home, so there is no reason for them to have left a corker at the farm. This one has obviously been sitting the in the basement for many years.

So where did it come from?

I have no idea, but I’m thankful for it. This is smaller than the one that was on display, so it would have cost around $150 to get a new one.

Meanwhile, I’ve also been doing some more research on mead making. I had expected the must to clear during the second fermentation, but as you can see from the top photo, it’s quite cloudy. Some meads are cloudy, though. One site I found suggested that, if you wanted it to clear, it could be racked into another carboy and left for a third fermentation for 3-6 months.

We shall see how ours turns out. For this amount of mead, we’ll need about 30 bottles, though we will likely buy 3 cases (36 bottles) and have extra. I hope we’ll be able to pick those up soon. As far as I can tell, it doesn’t hurt for the mead to stay fermenting longer, though, so if we can’t do it until the end of the month, it should be fine.

Until then, our baby meat will just stay hidden away, slowly maturing. 😀

The Re-Farmer