/diy/ - Do It Yourself

I racked some Queen Anne's Lace mead a couple days ago. It's the 5-gallon carboy in foil in this image. It's bound for bulk storage before bottling it. It is 15.23%ABV if I did the calculations and measurements correctly. Some notes I made,
---
Odor: Sweet, strong alcohol; no floral or carrot smell now
Looks: Great dark reddish amber color, no indication of infection, but there was a "semi-suspicious thin-white film on top of the brew" (decided to taste test because of this), fairly clear, but could use a fining agent to get rid of some finer suspended material (will try clay, if I use any fining agent.) There was a very tiny amount of CO2 build up on the bottom of the test glass.
Taste: Somewhat sweet, burns the back of the throat and stomach a bit, okay aftertaste; no floral or carrot flavors detected yet.
Outlook: Good. Aging and degassing should help remove some of the bite and bring out more subtle flavors, if they survived. Since there is a lot of head space with oxygen in it, I will age this in bulk for about 3 months then bottle it with solid natural cork where it can age longer.
---
I normally don't taste test a young brew, but there was a suspicious film on it. Everything seems fine, it just tastes and feels "young". Hopefully, as the stronger stuff breaks down during aging the florals and carrot flavors will be noticeable. It seems bound for being a great mead.

The other two bottles are Pagan Queen's mead (2010) and Dandelion (2009) wine that have been in long term aging. I don't hold much for those two. They were awful when racked last time. I hope the aging will help, but I'm still leery of the dandelion wine, (too much green in it due to laziness when picking and separating the blossoms.) The 1st batch was really good though. The Pagan Queen's mead is an experiment though.