It has been decided in our household that my husband, since he is the bee keeper, should be the mead maker. He made one batch in the summer but it was too good, and it has been difficult to save even two bottles to see how the wine will improve with age. Finally, last week he started another batch. When I checked the specific gravity 5 days later it had not changed at all! It wasn’t working. Had we killed the yeast somehow? We decided, after popping a thermometer into the primary fermenter, that it was just too cold. So we brought it out to the kitchen and set it by the stove. After a couple of days it began to work and the SG is slowly going down. Hopefully it’ll ready for the carboy in a few days.
In the meantime it appears like my raspberry wine is doing okay in our usual wine room (ie our small first floor once upon a time bedroom that has become our catch all space for anything we can’t find a place for). It’s still working - slowly. We are in a quandary as to wether the mead will continue to work if we put it in a carboy in that same room. On the other hand putting a glass carboy next to the kitchen heater could be a bit concerning as it’s a busy high traffic area - not just people, 4 dogs too!
I have enough raspberries to make 2 more batches of raspberry wine, enough honey to make one more batch of mead. But, should I wait till spring???? If I don’t wait, will I have to fill my kitchen with wine jugs?
We do not have central heating. We have a propane space heater in our living/dining room and a wood stove in the kitchen, so the spare room is always a few degrees cooler. We could, for about $150, get an electric carboy heater and thermostat, but it obviously uses power and we try to avoid buying stuff that increases our electrical use. And we would need more than one! In winter the sun shines less making solar power less efficient and necessitating more diesel generator battery charging. So I’d rather solve this chilly air problem some other way. So far I’ve given my wine a blanket. Does this keep heat in or insulate it from the heat? Maybe I should heat up bricks in the fire (or a bean bag in the microwave) and place them inside the blanket?
Hopefully we can solve this winter wine makers dilemma...
