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

Hi Everyone,

I've been researching for a few weeks and want to try my hands at making a mead. I was considering just buying a simple craft a brew kit to get my feet wet but I really like the idea of turning this into a mead.

Essentially i'd like to turn the green tea drink they had years ago at panera into a mead

While combing through posts and recipes for melomel along with also an ask from ai i've narrowed it down to this:

Ingredients (for 1Gallon)
3lbs of wildflower honey (ai seemed to think 3.5-4)
3lbs of papaya
1.5lbs of passion fruit

3 tea bags worth green tea (dragon well was recommended)
3/4gallon water
Lalvin 71B-1122
Yeast nutrients (fermaid?)
Pectic enzymes
Fruit mesh bag

Day 0:
Sanatize/mix honey/add papaya/pectec - It states to fill to 1 gallon volume, but wont fruit displace that leaving much less mead?
Read gravity
Add yeast + 2g of nutrients
lock

Day 2
2g of yeast nutrients

Day 7-10
Remove papaya
Gravity reading
hope its between 1-1.010 if not wait

Make green tea with 10oz of water steeped

Rack to secondary container
Add 1 lbs passionfruit in bag
Add green tea

Day 7-14 taste periodically

Day 10-14+
Rack and bottle to clarify

Aging period 4-6 months

Does this sound far out of the realm?

I've also considered still buying a kit for a more standard mead as it would be a shorter period, but is there anything you can add maybe in secondary that would make it a bit more interesting for a novice?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts!

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.

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 started three batches of mead 10 days ago with lemon peel added on day one - two 1 gallon and one 1/2 gallon brews. Im using honey that my backyard bees collected for me.

My main question is about yeast. I started my first three brews with Red Stars champagne yeast that comes in the yellow packets. What sort of yeast is that?

I removed the peel today and taste tested and, man, it was bitter and hot. Im sure it'll mellow and settle over the next few months.

What is a good yeast to use? I read that the yeast i used will make it very dry. I love sour beers and read a very old forum thread about Wyeast Belgium Lambic yeast so I ordered that and will start a batch of that soon.

Im really just posting to see what people use as their go-to yeast. Also curious about aging...since mead doesn't age as well as wine from what ive read, what is "the sweet spot"?

Thanks!

Are there any foods that pair well with mead? I've never found a good pairing.

Hello

Racked off my first 1 gallon batch (wildflower honey, 3.5lbs, est 15% ABV. I've learned so much from this batch and can't wait to experiment with different flavors. I already have some hibiscus flowers for my next batch!

Sup sup

My blueberry mead is about 5 months old. And it smells and tastes EXACTLY like potpourri. I feel like im drinking the air at my grandma's house. I was taking sips to see where it was at and my wife chimed in saying it tasted like potpourri..... dear god.... youre right! Now I can only taste that.

Its not bad per say but the perfume-y floral notes are the dominant flavor. Has anyone ever experienced this? Maybe its from the BM4X4? The honey was also super floral.

Recipe

--Primary--

8.5 lbs Blueberry blossom honey (Crystals)

10 lbs Blueberries (juice was 1.070)

8 g BM 4X4

4g Opti-Red

4g tannin

24.65g FermaidO (4x 6.16)

–Secondary–

8 oz French oak chips

1 lb 4 oz Blueberry Blossom Honey

SG: 1.104

Fermented to 1.000

FG: 1.010

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

Hey all,

Checked on my first mead (first brew too) this morning,I leant watching it for about 10 minutes and saw no bubbling in the airlock after a really busy day, I’m concerned about it stalling, I’ve just done a gravity reading and it’s 1.055ish +/- 0.02

0.045 points in 4 days seems reasonable to me.

It smells boozy, overly boozy for what I calculate as about 6%abv

Any suggestions? Starting yeast was a full packet of M05 btw

Really generalizing, but the issue with certain flavors is you either need a lot or it creates a lot of sediment. I make infused honey for cooking, and I've found myself wondering if that would be a good way to have more delicate flavors more readily integrated with the final product since it'll be IN the honey the yeast consumes. This whole thought exercise may also just be an exercise in increasing sediment but from a pure logic standpoint I can convince myself out of it not working.

I am currently doing my first very small wild mead experiments. On the top of my little peach batch big air bubbles have formed. These have been here for at least a few days now and they are now being covered by a powdery white layer. Is it mold, or just yeast or harmless bacteria? It's all white, not gray blue or green and it's not fuzzy. The stuff around the edges is a little bit of peach pulp accidentally left in during transfer to secondary. Sorry for the terrible pictures, it's really hard to get on camera because of the peach pulp and small bottleneck.

I'm currently making mead for the first time and making small mistakes and learning already. Got a heat map planned to help with the Melbourne cold. I'm loving the smell coming from the airlock so hopefully that's a good sign. Should I have my first batch only be back-sweetened or is it a good idea to add spices? I've still got 20 days to decide but hoping people with more experience can give me some pointers.

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?

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.

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

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 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!

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.

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)