So it seems my first attempt is done primary fermentation with a gravity reading of .992. No idea what OG was as I only bought the hydrometer yesterday.

Problem is that to take the above reading I poured the mead into my beaker, then poured the contents of the beaker back into the primary fermentation vessel.

How worried about oxidization do I need to be? I only realized it was a thing when trying to figure out if I cared how cloudy my mead is.

My next brew will be a Viking's Blood, but perhaps a little tweak on the recipe. I have some absolutely massive blackberries, and living in WA state, some gorgeous dark cherries. I have my hibiscus ready to go and some blackberry blossom honey.

I'm planning on doing the hibiscus infusion instead of water in primary and using 1.5lbs of fruit split evenly between blackberries and the dark red cherries I have because I couldn't find any tart cherry juice that didn't have things like citric acid in it already. I have enough fruit to do another 1.5bls of blackberries and cherries in secondary.

Do we think this will work? Or should I press my own cherry juice from the frozen cherries I have? It's been a record cherry year here in WA, so I have no shortage of access to great fruit!

My not JOAM after aging for 5 years. Despite it not actually being a JOAM because it used different yeast it has aged beautifully, photo makes it look a little darker than it is. Tastes very smooth and the orange is very subtle.

Original post - https://www.reddit.com/r/mead/s/UbdbeE45LN

Pacific cooler Caprisun mead! An experiment gone absolutely right. It's hard to describe the flavor properly. Very "floral" but almost how a flower smells instead of floral as a flavor? Very unique.

Ended up at about 10-10.5% ABV so I'm comfortable calling it 10%.

Also my first mead to clear up soo beautifully. Bentonite is absolute magic, do not hesitate to use in secondary!

Thank you all for indulging my childhood nostalgic nonsense.

I used cream honey for the first time with no added ingredients except yeast, fermaid K and O, go ferm and bentonite. Is it normal to still be this cloudy after a month?

My batch from 3 months ago was done and clear so i racked it onto another jar a week ago. Then i backsweetened with real market honey. Now there is this strange layer. Does anyone know what it is and what i could do?

Hello peeps.

Imma do a mead for the first time, I have a very basic equipment

(https://www.almostoffgrid.com/products/almost-off-grid-mead-making-starter-kit-with-mead-journal)

And my partner and I want to do mead for the 1st time. We are planning on making a fig and cinnamon mead now to have it ready for xmas.

Any advice?

(Figs are fresh figs from my garden, and the cinnamon is Mexican cinnamon)

So i racked this batch 2m ago and i noticed few days ago from distant its getting darker in color but i didn't mind it at first today i took a better look at it and i see this the top section is actually has gone dark and it seems its growing to the bottom even the separation line is visible any idea whats going on?

Its a traditional mead and i added stabilisers when i racked it

Hi all, just curious to see what everyone does about keeping yeast on hand? Like do people keep loads of different packs in stock or do you just buy them as and when needed?

I find it's generally a lot cheaper to buy 5 or 10 packs but worried about them dying off so I'm a bit reserved about buying loads of different types to try. I'd keep them in the fridge but my better half will throw them out if been sat in a while. I generally make about 20 different gallons a year so I don't use that much.

I've stabilized (campden tablet and 1.5 tsp potassium sorbate) and back sweetened about 2 weeks ago. I just added sparkolloid 2 days ago, but I can't tell if this gelatinous mass on the oak stave is just a weird reaction from the sparkolloid or if it's something growing. Any thoughts? See comment for recipe

Got my first batch of traditional bottled today! It's pretty tasty now. Can't wait to see what its like after aging.

I’m designing a recipe that will use a peanut extract in the secondary.
I’ve used peanut flavoring or extracts in the past in brewing beer with disappointing results.
Can anyone recommend or suggest a peanut extract that you have used that got good results.

Does anybody have experience using wood that they cut and dried themselves? I am thinking about making a mead from plants in my garden and I have lots of rosehip I never use and a small cherry tree. I wanted to cut some branches off the cherry tree, trim off the bark and younger wood, cut into small chips and leave to dry for a few months and roast it in the oven before using in secondary. Anybody done something similar? I know cherry has some cyanide (mostly in bark and leaves) so I want to be sure this is a sensible thing to do before just trying and accidentally poisoning myself.

May be one of those "no wrong answer" things, but is there a better answer? I'm learning by doing and trying different approaches to see what works best for me, but I'm interested in perspective from others. So, when adding fruit in secondary, is there a more optimal point to do it?

Normally when I'm brewing I wait for activity to stop, check the SG, recheck a week later etc.

But, when I'm going to add fruit, is there a reason not to add the fruit when it "seems" to be done and the SG gets to about 1.000? It could still ferment, I've had a lot of fruit meads go to .990, but is there a reason to wait for fermentation to be done done before adding fruit? I would still ensure it's done done (2 unchanged readings a week apart) after secondary before moving on.

A mead I'm going to add fruit to was at 1.020 last weekend when I was making some new batches and racking a couple that were done done...I didn't add the fruit and it's bubbling merrily on as we speak, would it have been OK to do so? Any pluses or minuses from not doing it last weekend.

Is having a little fermentation left to go a good thing for getting the flavor out of the fruit or does it counter the whole reason for doing it in secondary to begin with?

At the local discount grocery store there are these brands of honey, which one would work best with Rose nibs when making mead?

Sup yall.

Its a real feelsbadman when youve worked hard on recipe development, execution, etc all for it to go south when the auto siphon lets in a ton of oxygen. Ive seen its a reoccurring problem so was wondering about alternatives. To my knowledge its the tubing-siphon connection right?

Ive seen the Brewsssiphon but its a little pricey if its going to just have the same issues down the line. But also dont mind shelling out if itll work.

Anyone have any suggestions? Ive also heard about getting a hose clamp as well. Help me youre my only hope.

I've been reading up on yest types and Cider yeast appears to have more of a fruit flavor forward when it ferments. Is there any reason I shouldn't or couldn't use a Cider yeast in my Mead?

Do most of y'all taste a difference when using different yeast?

I made my first batch of mead and it’s turned out well. Nothing crazy but I’m happy with it

I was hoping someone could recommend me a book or site where I could learn a bit more about the process and different things I can do.

I googled a fair few times but always seem to come up with contradicting answers

P.S. I’m in Australia so anything using metric would be preferable

Hello!

I’m an amateur wine maker and I want to dip my toes into mead making. I plan on trying to make a cherry-rhubarb mead. The recipe I was looking at says to add half of the cherries in with all the rhubarb for the primary and then add the rest of the cherries in with the secondary (for another 2-4 weeks). I’ve never heard of adding fruit to the secondary and wanted to know if that was a normal thing for mead? The recipe says that it helps the Cherry flavor come through more.

Recipe for 5 gallons:
- 14 to 15 lb of honey
- 10 lb rhubarb
- 10 lb cherries (half in primary, half in secondary)
- 1packet Lalvin QA23
- Pectin enzyme
- Yeast nutrients
- Wine tannin

Any help or advice is welcome!

Basic: initial 1.18 now at 1.12 and steady, should I boil and bottle (was told I could essentially pasteurize it by boiling at 140 for 20 minutes to kill yeast instead of the other chemicals?) or should I age longer before doing that?

For added context, I accidentally started with 40 fluid oz of honey instead of using 40 weight ounces for my recipe and use E-1118 yeast, so my initial gravity was guesstimating 1.18, (it was off the scale on the gravity thing and approximately 2 segments further, anyways, after 3 months I transferred it into a second carboy and added water cause it was syrupy and thick and still registered 1.16, then 3 months later it’s now 1.12 and is thin and registers as a desert wine on my gravity thing)

I'm sure I'm not the first person to ask something like this, but this is my first brew so wanted to make sure I'm not screwing it up too badly.

I'm making a pyment with grape juice. It started very actively fermenting and appears to have foamed up enough to even get on the underside of the lid, but thankfully didn't clog the airlock. I wouldn't be worried except that its a darker color than most of the krausen images I've seen. Is this due to the dark concord grape juice or should I be concerned?

Editing to add the recipe to satisfy the bot: 2 lbs of honey 2 64 Oz bottles of 100% grape juice half a packet of yeast 8oz of black tea

Hey everyone,

I’m new to making mead. I started a hibiscus mead a few weeks ago, and now want to make a plum mead. I have about 8.8kg (19.4lbs) of various (wild) plums, harvested on my family’s property in France. They taste great, they are sweet and tart, about as small as cherries.

I initially wanted to do a wine by adding white sugar, but I thought it would taste better with honey, aka making a mead. I plan to use 71B yeast, pectic enzymes, and aim for 13-14% ABV, fermenting dry and then potentially back-sweetening with honey after stabilizing. I washed and froze the plums (didn’t removed the pits) and plan to use the fruits in primary in a mesh bag, which I would remove after 5-7 days.

The question I have is: how much plums should I use? I have seen wide ranges for plum meads/wines, i.e., 350-720g per liter (3-6lbs per US gallon). Some people say that, with stone fruits, the more the better. I have seen people juicing fruits (plums or other) and doing a no-water fermentation.

I wanted to aims for 10 liters (2.64 US gallons) of must (say after removing and pressing the mesh bag), would it be an overkill to use all of my 8.8kg (19.4lbs) of plums and add honey to it?

Thanks 🙏

This one was a bit special. A couple years back we had a local forest fire, and an area was just completely bare burnt earth, right along the cliff side completely decimating a beautiful oak grove. It felt pretty difficult to go there for a while just seeing nothing growing, until the fireweed (or rosebay willowherb) ripped through with its vibrant pink flowers and lush green leaves, now there are oak saplings all popping up and it's wonderful to see life return slowly.

It's a hell of a symbol for renewal and transformation, it's often the first thing to grow after destruction and fire, so much so it is also known as bomb weed here in the UK, because after the WWII bombings in London, all the destruction, this humble flower grew everywhere (people even thought the Germans were putting seeds in the bombs!).

It also flowers from the bottom upwards and so gained the folkloric name "summer's clock" and then it turns to fluff from the bottom up, gaining a lovely little saying "when fireweed turns to cotton, summers soon forgotten".

I hoped that this brew would be the perfect thing for late summer parties and revelry. CHEERS 🥂 (there were 6 bottles but they have been gifted already)

I am looking to put together a Bochet Cyser, that has an "Old Fashioned" cocktail flavor profile. This is a recipe I put together (No AI for the record), and wanted to see if there were any tweaks I should make before I start this project. I have made mead before, but it was a really simple recipe, and this is much more ambitious.

Ingredients & Equipment

For the Primary Fermenter:

1x Brew Bucket (Minimum 30L / 8-Gallon capacity)

1x Tilt Hydrometer

1x Nylon fruit brew bag + sanitized glass weights

24L Distilled water (Split: 8L in fridge, 16L at room temp)

7 kg Raw creamed honey (Split: 2.5 kg for roasting, 4.5 kg left raw)

1x Black Rock Apple Juice Concentrate pouch

2x Packets Lalvin 71B-1122 yeast

Go-Ferm yeast protectant

 By Weight: 12.5 grams

 By Volume: 4 teaspoons

Fermaid O yeast nutrient (Split into 4 doses)

 By Weight: 5.6 grams

 By Volume: 2 ¼ teaspoons

Powdered Pectic Enzyme

 By Weight: 4 grams

 By Volume: 3.5 teaspoons

600g Frozen cranberries (Thawed and lightly smashed)

3x Navel oranges (Peeled, zested with all white pith completely removed)

For Secondary & Infusion:

1x 26.5L (7-Gallon) Glass Carboy with Air Lock & Star San

Wine preservation gas (Argon/Private Preserve)

1x Large airtight glass jar (for the tincture)

1x 750ml bottle of Old Granddad Bourbon

2x Oak spirals

500g Dried citrus fruits

For Stabilization & Sweetening:

Potassium Metabisulfite (K-Meta)

 By Weight: 2.2 grams

 By Volume: 3/8 teaspoon

Potassium Sorbate (K-Sorb)

 By Weight: 8.7 grams

 By Volume: 3.5 teaspoons

4L Pure 100% apple juice (No preservatives/sorbates)

 Reduced to 500ml

500g Raw creamed honey

For Bottling:

Bottling bucket, siphon, wine bottles, and corks

Phase 1: Pitching Day

Prep the Water: Put 8 liters of distilled water in the fridge to chill. Leave the remaining 16 liters at room temperature.

Roast the Honey: Add 2.5 kg of creamed honey to your slow cooker. Set it to Low and let it cook for 8–10 hours. Once it reaches a rich, deep mahogany color, turn it off and let it cool slightly.

Mix the Concentrates: While the roasted honey is still quite warm (but no longer scorching), stir the Black Rock Apple Concentrate directly into the slow cooker pot until smooth.

Build the Must Base: Add 8 liters of your room-temperature distilled water to the bottom of your sanitized brew bucket. Pour the warm roasted honey and apple concentrate mix into the water. Add the remaining 4.5 kg of raw creamed honey. Stir vigorously until all the honey is completely dissolved.

Prep the Fruit Bag: Put your 600g of thawed, smashed cranberries and the pith-free orange peels into your nylon brew bag along with your sterilized glass weights. Tie it shut and drop it into the bucket.

Hydrate the Yeast: Dissolve 12.5g of Go-Ferm into roughly 250ml of hot distilled water (around 43°C). Let it cool down to 35°C. Sprinkle your 2 packets of Lalvin 71B yeast on top. Let it sit undisturbed for 10 minutes, then stir gently.

Target the Temp & Volume: Use your remaining cold and room-temperature water to top the brew bucket up exactly to the 26.5-liter mark. Stir well and check the temperature. It needs to be between 17°C and 20°C.

Temper & Pitch: Take a few ounces of the must from your bucket and stir it into your yeast mixture to acclimate the yeast. Let it sit for 10 minutes. Pour the yeast mixture into the bucket and stir gently.

Final Additions: Add your pectic enzyme powder. Sanitize your Tilt Hydrometer and drop it into the bucket.

Seal it Up: Close the lid tightly, attach an airlock filled with Star San, and open your Tilt app to manually log your Starting Gravity (which should be right around 1.094).

Phase 2: Primary Fermentation & Nutrients (Days 1 to 21)

The Nutrient Schedule: To keep a 13% brew clean and avoid stressed yeast, add your 22.5g of Fermaid O in 4 equal stages (5.6g per dose):

Dose 1: 24 hours after pitching yeast.

Dose 2: 48 hours after pitching yeast.

Dose 3: 72 hours after pitching yeast.

Dose 4: When the Tilt shows your gravity has dropped by 1/3 (around day 5 to 7).

Note: Always stir the must gently with a sanitized spoon to release trapped gas before adding dry nutrient powder, or it will create a foam volcano.

Day 14: Open the bucket quickly, pull out the fruit bag, give it a gentle squeeze with sanitized gloves to save the liquid, and seal the bucket right back up.

Monitor: Let it ride until your Tilt line goes completely flat near 1.000, confirming primary fermentation is done.

Phase 3: Secondary Aging & Infusion Prep (Month 1 to 2)

Rack to Glass: Clean and sanitize your glass carboy. Carefully rack the cyser off the yeast sediment into the carboy. Fill it right up into the narrow neck. Spray a layer of wine preservation gas over the top to displace any oxygen, seal it with a Star San airlock, and wrap the carboy in old shirts to keep light out. Store at 17°C.

Make the Tincture (At Month 1.5): Two weeks before you plan to add your flavorings, prepare your infusion. Put your 2x oak spirals and 500g of dried citrus fruits into a large, airtight glass jar. Pour the entire 750ml bottle of Old Granddad bourbon over them. Seal the jar tightly and let it steep at room temperature for 2 weeks.

Phase 4: The Bourbon & Oak Infusion (Month 2 to 3)

Add the Infusion: Open your carboy and carefully pour the entire contents of the bourbon jar—liquor, oak spirals, and dried fruit— directly into the cyser.

Steep: Let this infuse for 1 full month. Taste a small sample after 2 weeks. If the wood flavor becomes exactly as strong as you want it before the month is up, you can rack the cyser off the spirals early.

Phase 5: Stabilization & Back-Sweetening (Month 3.5)

Stabilize: Add your Potassium Metabisulfite and Potassium Sorbate directly to the carboy according to the package directions for a 7- gallon batch. Let it sit undisturbed for 24 to 48 hours to completely lock down the yeast.

Make the Apple Syrup: Pour your 4 liters of pure apple juice into a wide pot. Bring it to a boil and reduce it down until you have exactly 500ml (about 2 cups) of thick apple syrup. Watch it closely near the end so it doesn't burn. Remove from heat and let it cool until it is just warm to the touch.

Mix the Honey Blend: Stir your remaining 500g of raw creamed honey directly into the warm apple syrup until it is fully dissolved. Let the entire mixture cool completely to room temperature.

Sweeten: Pour the room-temperature apple-honey syrup directly into your stabilized carboy and stir gently but thoroughly with a sanitized degassing rod or spoon.

Clear: Re-seal the carboy and let it sit for 2 weeks. This allows the sweetness to marry, any remaining sediment to drop out, and the honey haze to completely clear.

Phase 6: Bottling & Cellaring

Final Rack: Rack your crystal-clear, stabilized, and sweetened cyser into a sanitized bottling bucket, leaving all the sediment behind.

Bottle: Fill your wine bottles, leaving standard headspace, and seal them with fresh corks.

Store: Leave the bottles standing upright for 3 to 5 days to let the corks expand and seal, then store them on their sides in a dark, cool place.

Age: Let them mature for 3 to 6 months before cracking your first bottle to let those bold bourbon, oak, and bochet flavors perfectly smooth out.