somebody in the past day or 2 either posted or boosted with this link about chocolate and I opened it in a new tab and just got around to reading it. If it was you or you know who it was, please comment and I'll boost their post. But I just wanted to say that it reminded me of a "Cherry Chocolate Sweet Mead" recipe from Jack Keller that I made once that was one of the best wines I ever made.
In his recipe, he mentioned to rack the wine several times and then after bottling let it age about 12 months. I think it was about 2 years total from starting the process until recommended drinking time. I made a 1 gallon batch which is about 5 bottles of wine. I tried 4 of them at different times before the required aging time. Every one was bitter and terrible. Then the 5th bottle was opened about a month after the 2 year mark. It was so sweet and great that I felt so stupid for not listening about waiting.
Anyway, here's the link I mentioned:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/chocolate-flavor-microbes-ferment-cocoaand as for Jack Keller's recipes for mead, they are somewhere out there in winemaking forums. Unfortunately Jack passed away in 2020 and his website is no longer active. Some people were able to find and backup some of his recipes. If you're interested in winemaking/mead and experimenting with different things, then I recommend looking him up and trying out some of them. His site was definitely a go-to for me when I was heavy into it back around 2006-2011. I probably made 8-10 of his recipes and most turned out really well.
here is a pdf with many of his recipes:
https://swguildpa.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Jack-Keller-Complete-Requested-Recipes-Collection.pdf#wine #winemaking #mead #jackkeller #chocolate
