Pineapple coconut melomel (mead) - 1/2 Break is here! Day 4

Popped the fermenter tonight for the usual maintenance work.  Stir, Aerate, Measure, etc...  First the gravity...

SG = 1.052

This is awesome.  So I've reached the 1/2 way point.  (Not exactly but close enough!)  So that means its time for the final nutrient addition.  Cool.

Pineapple Coconut Melomel (Mead) - Added juice! Day 3.5

I've been worrying about the volume of the must.  I was at just a touch over 5 gallons.  That's not going to be enough to fill up a 6 gallon carboy even with the shredded coconut I plan on adding.

So today I bought 1 gallon of pineapple juice at lunch and brought it home.  I drank a glass and made up the volume with honey.  The pre-addition gravity of the must was 1.060.  The additional juice + honey came to a gravity of 1.077.  I mixed the juice/honey into the bucket and stirred it all up.  The must gravity measured at 1.062.  According to my math this all works out to make sense... and my total volume is now ~6 gallons.

Originally I used DOLE in a can, but this stuff should do...

I figure I'll loose about half a gallon or more as sludge after racking.  That should leave enough room in a 6 gallon carboy for the shredded coconut.  Can't wait...

Pineapple coconut mead - Houston...We have lift off. Day 3

Okay, so I started my usual mead maintenance tonight and aerated the must, skimmed a little more of the strange pineapple puke off the top.  But I noticed a very active and visible 'boiling' effect in the fermenting must.  I took a video.  Check it out...

Pineapple Coconut Melomel - Day 2.5

This morning was a bit rushed so I didn't get a chance to take and photos.  The big thing is I guess I hosed up pretty bad when I took my last gravity reading.  There was so much foam I couldn't really get a good read.  Today the foam was quite a bit less and I got a very clear hydrometer read @ 1.082

That make me a bit disappointed as the fermentation kinematics are less than I thought.  Oh well...

pH measured @ 3.4  So it is still dropping but within limits.


Update - 1:00PM I came home for lunch and decided to pull a Gravity reading.  1.080.  So, this is going a lot slower than my other mead's have.  Not a bad thing at all, just not what I normally get.

Pineapple Coconut Melomel (Mead) - Daily Maintenance Day 2

The fermentation is accelerating.  The airlock is starting to chug along now.  Let's see what the numbers will tell us.

First of all, I cracked the lid and saw this layer of pineapple vomit looking substance floating on top again.  In the end I'm going to be racking it off this crap so I've decided to skim it off.  Perhaps I've just ruined the whole thing... but I don't think so.

Doesn't that look appetizing

Pineapple Coconut Melomel (Mead) - Aeration Day 1.5

This morning the airlock on the pineapple mead was going along at a decent rate.  I guess the lag phase is now truly over.  Anyways, I got my aeration rig put together and started to aerate the must.  The degassing produced an impressive head of foam.  At one point it did overflow just a little bit.  Here's a video and some stills:

Pineapple Coconut Melomel (Mead) - First night aeration.

So tonight was the first aeration for this batch.  The fermentation is still yet to really take off as the airlock isn't moving very fast at all.  I cracked open the lid to start the aeration with my trusty high volume aquarium pump, sanitary inline filter, and bubble wand...