If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time (and I don’t blame you if you haven’t due to the non-regular updating), you might remember I started a dry mead on February 4th. As in three years ago – February 4th, 2006. This mead seemed to have problems along the way with lack of clearing and a lot of CO2 present for quite some time.

With the clearing problem, I resorted to using finely ground egg shell which certainly seemed to help. Over the past three years, I’ve done little to it except let it bulk age. I think about a year ago, I did rack it and added a 1/4 teaspoon of sulfite just to ensure some protection.

The other day I was looking at it and decided it was time to bottle it. I don’t filter my wines often, but after looking at this mead and discovering that there was a very powdery residue on the bottom, which was easily stirred up simply by inserting the wand of a racking hose, I decided to filter before bottling.

I was hoping to filter and bottle this evening but ran out of time. But I did get to filtering it – I’m not sure that the #2 filter will have removed all of the sediment, but the result sure looked nice and clear! Filtering can introduce some unwanted air to a wine, so it’s probably a good thing I didn’t bottle this evening. Instead, I’ll let it degass for a day or two to get rid of any air introduced. But I did take about 1 oz for myself to give it a try.

I’m impressed! It is a dry mead and clear like a white wine with a tint of light straw color. On the nose, it smells like.. well.. Mead. I can detect some light odours of honey.

On the tongue? Smooth! Very smooth, with a just a hint of spice and goes down nice. This mead might be improved chilled. Perhaps when I decide to open a bottle later, I’ll keep one at room temperature and chill the other. Instead of one bottle, I’ll have two!

Now after three years, it’s time to bottle this stuff!

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