Some artwork made with postermywall.com
Designed for potential product label.
Helionova name was inspired by heliotropin plants, which can be interpreted as "turns towards the sun". Nova as "new". The heliotropin plant is toxic, so heavy regulations and framework for obtaining it made me drop it. The scent is powdery, almondy, vanillin-like, and I've acquired tonka beans instead, which can be used within limitations to reach similiar aroma profile. Going to work nicely with the honey-based wine.
Middle one is just samurai-typed logos in tiki-totem vibes and the final one is my favourite. 8% abv, small can size, cool name along with tropical graphics makes you wanna think caribbean warm spices, aromatic ginger, smoke, cacao... All those went into the alcoholic extract, which inturn was used to spike up the abv towards aperitif levels. Somehow this turned out to resemble the exact copy of that early 2000's pink bubble gum candy you pulled out of the small measuring-tape-like box. Funny, but not really palatable. I dropped the recipe since, but took new xp.
Have a nice day everyone,
Koju Beverages
I've always had this reductive smell in my meads since forever.
Yesterday I had an epiphany, that maybe the wort doesn't have enough of oxygen to kickstart the fermentation. I thought oxygen as a kind of nutrient.
Today I take a whiff from the same vessel and the reductive smell is replaced by intense fruitiness. I hope that it would be as since simple as that, since it wouldn't require any devices.
So that's the new Eucalyptus honey from Spain.
Since yesterday, I mixed a new wort from another honey.
For the round 2 of these new honeys, we did 23 brix worth of rosemary honey and 3 brix worth of lavender honey.
Aerated this according to my new standard, which is complete aeration with blender every 12h upto 48h mark. Oxygen from the air will get in solution because of strong turbulance. Presence of Oxygen then allows the yeast to assimilate ergosterols in the wort and the can't use them if the wort is not aerated, oxygenated etc.
Pretty far fetched but the fruitiness from the Eucalyptus gives me hope. I've been wondering about the reductiveness so long time.
So the chestnut honey developed Passion fruit aroma and the thyme honey developed Pear aroma. Both were the best out of these four.
I had issues with reductive aromas in the beginning but I added organic wine nutrients that cleaned up the aromas and the fermentation became healthy again.
My order of new honeys for the lab have just arrived to Helsinki from Spain and I'm waiting them to be delivered here to Turku.
I'll do a new post with the new honeys when I process them. I ordered exciting varietal honeys from Spain, because the Mediterranean environment allows bees to collect pollen from the plants that we don't have here in Nordics so they are very well worth to look into!
nostr:nevent1qqsys0z899huk9p6qnmapjuv425rdeku5wuj7gqmwesxsuffgq8gxaq8h9cxz
The worts are now mixed, just yeast left to be pitched. Having a coffee break atm.
As we can see from the photo on the right, there is a good variance between the tests in terms of color.
The aim was to prepare all the worts in similiar fashion;
1. Dilute the honey with water until 23 brix (if fermented dry, it will produce approx 13,5% abv wine)
2. Add homemade yeast nutrient made from bee pollen (the picture on the right)
3. Acidify with citric acid
4. Regulate pH with potassium citrate until pH is 3,9
Honey's sugar level is usually around 80 brix by nature, so not alot of variance there. The biggest variance I found out so far was the buffering element in the honeys.
The order of the worts from the left are: forest honey, chestnut, thyme and lemon.
The chestnut resisted pH change the most when the citric acid was added; this means that it contains minerals which act as a buffer during fermentation. It's usually a good start for a successful fermentation. The potassium citrate as a pH regulator is driving the same effect.
On the other hand, the palest worts (thyme and lemon) were more sensitive to acid and salt additions. This was expected, since pale honeys usually are lower in minerals compared to the dark ones.
I wanted all the worts to be at the same acidity and sugar level before fermentation so that the tests would be comparable between each other. I ended up adding more acids to the thyme wort than the rest, because I corrected the pH too much with citrate, so I had to dial it down again.
Lemon honey didn't have a strong aroma of it's own like I mentioned in my earlier post, but I gotta say that after adding citric acid and the citrate salt, the lemony freshness really started to come through when I tasted it.
The homemade bee pollen nutrient solution might be helpful enough for all the tests to finish the fermentation without reductive aromas or other fermentation issues. It contains naturally all the essential amino acids and also vitamins and minerals. In theory, it's perfect nutrient for yeasts. Hopefully theory meets practice.
All worts will be fermented with Laffort's XAROM, which gave nice results earlier with the carrot wine
Until next time! nostr:nevent1qgsqxv8sswx7ggnjr2rakwgxezf79nyl8a0cvwep6nv8jxw3np9k7rqqypy60z5eamv4c73peed6pf2uaq8cen8tjhmehv9lzjjfpl3nayygshexway
Some projects of the day;
- We are processing raspberry leaf extract with Aromase H2.
H2 is a beta glucosidase enzyme, which can enhance the aroma profile of plant based products if used correctly. Right now I'm heating the extract to 60 deg celsius and keeping it there for one hour to see if the extract has better aroma in it. If success, I will make a cocktail cordial out of it
- We also got 4 new varietal honeys to be tested in fermentation today
- "Metsähunaja" means "forest honey" in finnish. This type of honey is something that is called honeydew honey, meaning the bees have collected some of the nectar from the leaves of the forest plants, which are actually secretions from other insect! Dark colour might imply to good amount of salts present, so this might be easy to ferment. Very excited for this one. It's from Salamanca, Spain
- "Miele Italiano di Castagno" is honey, which the bees have collected the nectar from chestnut tree. It had a really nice aroma and flavour I can't describe.. Not like perfum, but has a distinct aroma. Clear and runny.
- "Timjami-kukkaishunaja" is honey from thyme plant harvested from Greece islands in Aegean sea. Surprisingly, almost no aroma at all by itself. Hopefully it reveals itself better during fermentation...
- The last one is honey produced from lemon tree nectar. This one also has almost no aroma on its own straight from the jar and it has the lightest colour from them all. Also, fully crystallized.
I'll do another update when the worts have been put together.
Zap the project at:
koju @ strike . me
We're back with another test batch featuring carrots!
In our previous carrot metheglin experiment, fermentation progressed remarkably fast—reaching the same specific gravity in just four days that traditional meadmaking would take twenty days to achieve.
This time, I didn’t add any nutrients at all. Fresh carrot juice is likely packed with everything the yeast needs. While slow, sluggish fermentation is common in meadmaking, an overly rapid fermentation isn’t ideal either. If yeast gets too many nutrients, it can overpopulate the must, consuming resources too quickly. Normally, yeast reproduces 15-20x after inoculation, which is balanced. However, overpopulation can lead to starvation and bloated cells, neither of which are desirable.
That said, the aromas in the last batch were fantastic—notes of pineapple, strawberry, and boiled candy emerged, just as described on the XAROM yeast package. It was great to see the fermentation delivering on those promises! The carrot’s natural earthy aroma was still present but had mellowed significantly, no longer dominating.
Acidity was dialed in at 0.5% by volume, using a 50/50 blend of citric and lactic acid, which worked perfectly.
Today's Experiment
We’re running another test, but without any nutrient additions.
Carrot Juice Pressed: 9 dL
Native Brix: 9 → Adjusted to 22 Brix with honey
Acidity: 0.5% (lactic acid only)
Fermentation Temp: 15-16°C (lower range for XAROM yeast)
No salt additions, no nutrients additions.
Excited to see how this batch develops!
Support with sats: koju@strike.me
The ferment went crazy!
For the 3 days it looked like the yeast is in lag phase, and maybe it was. My cooler is set to 15-16 celsius, but usually by the second day there is some activity noticeable.
Well, today I measured brix. 15 left from the original 23!
It translates to about 7% abv / day of ethanol generated.
News like these are very scarce in the field of meadmaking and it's possible to notice how important the medium is where the yeast is doing it's work.
I read that carrot contains thiamin and riboflavin, which are known yeast nutrients. Now I'm starting to come to an idea that there might be no need to use nutrients at all when using carrot juice as the base for the fermentation!
OG post:
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Latest project is carrot mead... From purple carrots!
Honey is a poor medium of nutrients for alcoholic fermentation, so the producer has to take that into account. I've managed to produce meads with just honey and water which are not repulsive, but they are not meeting standards either. Using water for diluting the honey to create a mead must is problematic, since it usually lacks nutrients and minerals.
If the producer switches the water for a vegetable juice, the category of mead becomes "Metheglin". In this case we are making a carrot metheglin.
Purple carrot was purchased from a local farmer and juice was made using a household vegetable juicer.
Local produced honey was used to raise the fermentables from 11 brix to 23 brix. If all the sugars gets fermented by the yeast, it would produce a 13% abv carrot metheglin.
pH was high with this one at the start; juice was at pH 6 and the enriched must at 4,4 (honey itself is acidic and I also added lactic acid 5 grams per liter), so it's quite high in terms of winemaking.
The minerals in carrot work as a buffer for the acids and they resist the pH change, which is agreeable when in proper levels.
First time ever though, it might be that there is too much of buffering capacity! We'll see when the fermentation goes forward.
I'm going to ferment this one with Laffort's XAROM, which is intended for both red and white wine.
Support the research to: koju@strike.me !
Have a nice day,
Janne
Hello Nostr!
Koju Beverages studies the traditional japanese beverages like sake and shochu, aswell production of honeywine.
Cheers,
Koju