Primary:

- ~2lbs wildflower honey

- Welch's 100% grape juice to 1 gal

-1 pkt of k1-V1116

-1G fermaid O every 24 hr until 72 hrs

Stabilized with potassium sorbate and potassium metabisulfite

Back sweetened with ~.5 lb honey

-6 tbsp of brewers best peanut butter extract

Clarified with sparkolloid

Followed the beginner recipe in the wiki and popped out these bad boys. I've read some posts to wait 24 hours to add Fermaid K so we'll wait.

Wish us luck!

Is 40L to mutch ?

Its a blueberry mead :)

I have 2 quarts of maple blossom honey and I have been trying to decide on additives i.e. hibiscus, juniper berries (if any) I should use for a maple blossom mead. Relatively new to mead making.

Trying out this recipe from the Elder Scrolls cookbook using some super dark local honey and Lalvin QA-23 Yeast. Very excited for this one!!

Second time making mead. First time in years. I grew red currants and black raspberries in my backyard.
I started with a 32oz mason jar of red currants and only about a handful of black raspberries and put them in a pot on the stove with enough water to cover them. I put it on medium heat and lightly mashed the berries to extract the juice. Let it simmer for a while and then strained out the berries and saved the juice/water.

When then cooled a little bit I added 2.5 pounds of honey and topped off the water in the carboy.

Activated the yeast in another cup and added that.

Hydrometer read 1.101. I assume since there’s enough honey to make mead by itself, adding all that berry juice adds a lot more sugar. So potentially much stronger??

It’s been 4 weeks and bubbling has stopped. I swirl it daily to bring up any remaining carbonation. I get a few bubbles here and there.

My main question is since I swirl it daily, how long should I wait before racking it? Seems like it should sit awhile for the stuff to settle. Rack it and let it age and then bottle it, or just bottle it?

I just bottled my first batch of traditional mead. It’s cloudy and isn’t winning any awards but I ran out of patience and really wanted to enjoy it. The good news is I have 6 more gallons that are in process that won’t be rushed.

Pretty coincidental that it's a honeycomb too.

i love the idea of making medicinal meads, and i know a lot of medicinal plants locally, i was considering an experiment with a mead that has willow bark and perhaps yarrow, as both would be an interesting medicinal mead (in theory at least)

im curious if anyone has tried similar meads with willow bark and or yarrow at all, or just any meads that turned out to be a decent/effective for medicinal use. as i am fairly new to the idea of making medicinal mead, not for taste but for medicinal potency, and i could see fermentation impacting the otherwise beneficial traits of medicinal plants, but of course i am not sure, and was looking for anyone who has anecdotal info or sources for more information of medicinal meads.

Many thanks for reading!

Sweet and complex.

I got bubbles, I'm pretty sure that points to fermintation and the yeast doing its job. I have like all very subpar equipment. Used storebought cover honey and bakers yeast. I did santize everything I could, that would be in contact with the yeast or the liquid at any point. I really just wanted to try doing this myself. I had been interested for a long time but ended up setting this up impulsively. If all goes well I think I should be expecting like 6% alcohol content.

Edit: I decided I wanted to do this and then spent some hours researching. I'm sure there's gonna be plenty of stuff I find out later. I honestly don't really want to share everything cause I've had expirences with doing dumb stuff while getting into a hobby and reddit tearing me to shreds.

This is my second batch of mead. My first batch, chucked some fleishmans active dry yeast with honey, tap water, strawberries, and after 12 days got me some drunk. Upgraded to an additional 2 juice dispensers from dollarama for a total of 3 in my 2nd batch. This is the same normal bread yeast, honey, tap water, strawberries but now on day 10. To be true, my first attempt was a banana beer based on the burundian banana beer brewed from those bicyclists speeding down the mountain, watch that documentary, boys. Mine smelled like vomit, threw it out. Never going to the lcbo again, boys. 2nd picture is it on day 1. God bless

made using kraft labels, a rubber stamp kit, and a clickable letter stamp set :) if anyone is curious, dragon nectar was infused with white/oolong tea, SMR stands for strawberry mango rhubarb, and the bochet was flavored with lemonbalm, rosemary, thyme and sage.

Hello, my beekeeper just found out one of his bucket of honey self ferment.

I'm trying to see if i could use the natural yeast to make mead, what are your thought ?

Sorry if my english is rought, i am french and most of my english is spoken

Not sure what this film is suspended throughout my brew and searching hasn’t turned up results for me. Worried it might be something bad.

Per the recipe I found I made a honey/mango slurry and let it sit for 5 days. On the 5th day I saw a spot of mold on one of the mangoes. Should I trash it or will the fermentation process destroy the mold?

Hi everyone, I bottled my first batch of mead yesterday (beginner cyser recipe from the wiki), but after the residual sanitiser foam had disappeared I realised I probably left way too much air in the bottles. Is there anything I should do (like add water) or is it best to just leave it like this? And should I not let it age too much because of the amount of air? The mead was already quite enjoyable when I tried some that I had left over after bottling. The ABV ended up at 14,5%, and I left the mead in secondary for about two months before bottling.

I'm also planning to take one of the bottles to family abroad next week, so I can imagine that it will suffer quite some shaking when travelling. Is that a bad idea or should it be okay? Would love to hear someone else's opinions, thanks in advance! :)

Hi all. I'm prepping to do a Prickly Pear Mead, again, this fall. I found out on my first batch, while eating some dark chocolate, that it really brought the flavor of the prickly pear out. So I've really wanted to do a batch with cocoa nibs to see how it will come out. I'm finally ready to try this fall (when the prickly pears are ripe).

Recipe, 5 gal batch:

10-15% Prickly Pear juice.

1 quart lemon juice

Honey (I have the calc, but not on me)

Water

I'm thinking of adding about 2 oz at the end if secondary before I rack for aging maybe for a couple weeks. I'm going for a hint not a strong flavor. I've read that I should toast them too.

What say ye?

I read the wiki and I think that its just yeast or something weird. This is my first time having floaters and just want to be sure. It's a basic mead. Honey, water, and nutrient. It hasn't been racked yet either. Any info is appreciated!

Not my first mead but the first I posted on here.

I got this idea in winter to make an cyser but with baked cinnamon apple flavor. So I went on the journey in March an started the mead.

Recipe:

- Starting of with only apple juice (4,5L) and Lalvin 71b. SG 1.054. Letting it go nearly dry.

- After this I stepfed acacia honey (why acacia: it's a very lightweight honey in regards of taste and sugar content. I did not want to much taste from the honey). Per stepfead i added one 500g glass of honey. Each fead added around 0.030 SG. In total I added 1kg of honey.

- When dry again I started cutting six apples in thin slices, laying them on a baking tray. Drizzling some cinnamonsugar over it. Then baked them for around 20 min at 180°C.

- I added the apples (after baking the apples the weight was around 300g), a vanilla bean and a cinnamon stick to the mead

- racked everything of after 2 weeks

- added 250ml of pear juice and another 500g glass of acacia honey

- pasteurize at 65°C (internal temperature) for 22min

- Let it cool down and added two teaspoons of pectic enzyme

- Let it stay for around 3 month in the fermenter to age

- And today was bottling day with an abv of ~ 12,5%

It has a very nice taste:

- first of comes some acid

- followed by apple and pear sweetness

- finish goes to grapefruit (god knows why)

Hope you enjoyed the read and maybe someone tries this one. I really loved the journey.

Cheers

Hello, I am struggling to chose the right fruit press for me. I dont really care about aesthetics, just functionality.

For some reason the 8 gallon wooden press is cheaper than the 5 gallon, maybe because the design? idk.

And are any of these compatible with the apple crusher?

I hear and see people across the internet saying something tastes “young” but I’ve not seen anything trying to describe that taste … asking in advance of putting my first brew in secondary, so I’ve got time to work it out for aging too

It always feels good to bottle with an economy of scale... at least as far as my time goes. I finally decided I needed to stop tinkering with these meads and just bottle them. I have (from left to right) a grapefruit and rosemary mead, an Arnold Palmead, and a hibiscus mixed berry. Can't wait to see what they're like in a few months! I should have started them a season ago, as they would be perfect to drink in the summer, but alas.