Welcome to the third and final part to our series on Mead.  After about 10 months sitting in secondary fermentation, the Angel’s Share Mead and Erik the Red Cherry Mead were finally ready to be bottled.   The bottling process for mead is actually a bit easier than for your normal homebrews.  No need to add sugar for carbonation.

Here’s the final alcohol tally, the alcohol content in the cherry mead is likely higher as the O.G. reading was taken after the initial cherry steeping.  Additional sugars likely were added to mead from the cherries left in the fermenter. 

                                Angel’s Breath Mead – 12.73 % ABV            Erik the Red Cherry Mead  – 11.65 % ABV        

Additionally, the main difference between the two initially seems to be only in color.  The cherries have tinted the mead to a beautiful dark red color.  The taste of the regular and cherry mead is remarkably similar although the cherry mead is just a touch sweeter.  We’ll see if the bottle aging process serves to distinguish the two batches. 

Overall, I was very happy with my first mead makeing experience.  The mead turned out a bit lighter in alcohol but I think that this actually makes it somewhat easier to drink.  We are planning on having a mead release party sometime in the near future so look for that.