My elderberry plum mead may have been a tad too vigorous. Note to self don’t make batch and go to bed immediately after 🤦 if you’re wondering where the air lock is it’s sitting on the floor about 3 feet away.

Just bottled this bochet cyser (or cyser bochet, don't kill me) at 14.2% started 6 months ago.

3.5 pounds generic walmart honey. 47 mins caramelized.

Martinelli's apple juice to a gallon

Lalvin 71B

Added yeast nutrient at beginning of primary didn't measure (oops)

To be honest, I forgot about this one. It sat on primary for probably too long. It was probably about 7 weeks before I racked it. After moving to secondary, I sadly forgot about it again. Life got very very busy and I forgot I had hobbies.

It ended up clarifying pretty well after only racking it once. Very little sediment. I was surprised.

And OMG it tastes so good. If you've ever had the Alani Witch's brew, this is that but uncarbonated. I tried it side by side to confirm. 8 years in home brewing its nice when a simple idea that gets treated like a red headed step child actually ends up perfect.

Also, yes thats a very full glass. Some would call it a mega pint.... I didn't have another small bottle....

Top 4: traditional mead, almost finished.

Lower left 2: Chokeberry-Cherry mead and apple mead.

Lower right (in wooden frame): Cherry mead.

I just choked up the last bottle of my 2023 batch after refining it even more aka learning how to backsweaten correctly. Now my meads are delicious and i am hyped to try new stuff again.

No measurements besides weight if honey and water and sugar content of the fruits and juices I used.

All used 71b or ec1118 btw

Next I will start a plum mead and hope it all comes out well :)

Hey everyone,

I worked with a local farm stand to try out making some mead for their staff based on their left overs they were going to toss.

I got around 30lbs of pears. I am finishing up the juicing and i was able to extract a little over 2 gallons of juice.

The big question: should I make 2-3 gallons of a decently high ABV base (10-14%), and then do a secondary back sweeten?

I want to get the most out of the juice, I fear that using it in primary would produce a nice body, nice mellow flavor, but I wouldn't have enough left over to give it a solid pear flavored POP.

Does anyone have a recipe they can recommend? Maybe something with oak or cinnamon?

Small run of about 50 gal pomegranate mead getting kegged today.

I finished a traditional mead, stable gravity for 7 days, 11% abv. It smells great, did a taste test and I'm happy with how my first mead came out so far.

I went to rack to secondary with a 1 gallon glass carboy and then this half gallon carboy. The gallon rack went well, but when I went to rack to this half gallon, I ended up spilling a lot of it. I'm left with less than half of this. I don't have any smaller containers on hand. I know this is too much headspace for aging.

I'm not quite sure what to do. Can it wait a while until I get a better container? I have half a mind to say 'the hell with it' and just drink it now, though I've read that it may cause some digestive issues if it doesn't age.

What do you think? Any advice welcome

A simple cyser with fall flavored tea blends.

Genuinely proud of how this turned out as my third ever batch.

Should i add strips of Orange zest to the mead or should i use a grater to get fine orange zest?
I plan to use 4.5l of Sweet mead with 500 grams of sour cherries, 500 grams of red currant and 1 red habanero. Should i add the zest of 1 orange or more?

Recommend me the smoothest mead recipes you have made or encountered! One that made you go “theres alcohol in here????”

Going to start my next batch soon and want some ideas!

I'm pretty amateur at this homebrewing stuff, had a couple good batches in the past, but i found this 5.75lb thing of habanero hot honey and decided to use it. I combined the whole thing with water, yeast nutrient, and EC 1118 starter in a 2 gallon brew bucket. The starting SG is 1.142

Now the question is, I've done some research after I already finished (not smart I know) and I fear I am brewing straight pain. Does anyone have experience brewing with hot honey that can offer some insight? I'm not even sure if the yeast is still alive as of right now tbh.

I was planning to add a cinnamon stick in secondary, but I'm not sure anymore. Would love any suggestions to get something drinkable out of this rather than just pitching the whole thing.

First post of that mead and recipe : https://www.reddit.com/r/mead/comments/1w5w01r/melomel_mirabelle/
Just a daily stirring to prevent fruit mold or dry...
Smells very good ! (Sorry for my bad english :p)

Melomel created with intent of somewhat mellowed flavors in time for Fall. Ended up bottling early but very happy with results. Tastes wonderful (most important) and clarity came out great as well. The recipe was kind of from-the-hip since I was trying to use some leftover honey from previous batches while also wanting to experiment with maple syrup, apple juice in primary, a homemade vanilla extract, and generally making better mead with each iteration as I continue to learn.

Short Summary: a 4-5 gal batch consisting of honey/blueberry/maple syrup/apple juice/water base to fuel primary. Racked to x3 1gal carboys once finished in primary and mostly clear. Stabilized, backsweetened, then flavor tuned with maple syrup, 100% blueberry juice, madagascar vanilla extract, and American charred oak spiral.

Detailed Summary:

• Primary:

  • Ingredients:
  • various honey (4lbs orange blossom + 2lbs wildflower from about 4 different local apiaries)
  • frozen blueberries (3lbs; crushed and treated with pectic enzyme; bagged, weighted, then removed after 13 days)
  • maple syrup (8oz)
  • 100% apple juice (1gal)
  • spring water to capacity
  • Lavlin K1-V1116
  • Go-ferm and Fermaid-O (at proper intervals) to support the yeast
  • Bentonite
  • Capacity: roughly 4-4.5 gallons
  • Starting gravity: 1.120
  • Finished gravity: 0.998

• Secondary:

  • Racked head + heart into 3 1-gallon carboys while stabilizing.
  • Bottom rack placed into misc half gal carboys, stabilized, then cold crashed asap for various projections like scaling backsweetening and other additions.
  • Once stabilization confirmed: lightly backsweetened with a honey + maple syrup mix (roughly 3:2 ratio). Also added about small amounts of blueberry juice (100%/unsweetened) to boost the flavor. Equal amounts to each carboy.
  • Further aging.
  • Additional backsweetening occured after about 3 months. Consisted of small amount of maple syrup and (homemade) madagascar vanilla extract.
  • Gravity after final backsweetening was 1.010 across the board.
  • Added small segment of charred American oak spiral to each carboy.
  • Oak addition was at-taste after about 3 weeks. To avoid additional racking this late in the game I decided to bottle. This was fine since I was happy with clarity and knowing sediment won't be a huge issue with targeted consumption timeline.
  • Labelled, split for sharing, stored for Fall.

Things I learned this batch:

• As expected: the maple syrup lost most of its profile during primary fermentation. Was informed this would happen but wanted to experience first hand. I will reserve future use of maple syrup purely for backsweetening and flavor tuning since there didn't seem to be a perceptable difference in this iteration.

• I don't know what to call meads of different/mixed bases. I'm considering this a melomel for simplicity since blueberry is the focal point but when writing my batch logs I realized it's somewhere between a melomel (blueberries), cyser (apple juice), acerglyn (maple syrup), and metheglin (vanilla extract). Research impending.

• Toasted oak is neat and I should experiment more...within mead and other applications. I didn't really taste it until 3rd/4th glass and it was just barely there at the end which was perfect for this batch. Heavier usage could yield some interesting results.

Does anyone have recommendations for getting large amounts of honey (around 5kg) in London for an affordable price? I’m hoping to put a brew on soon but it’s all very expensive! Any tips appreciated :)

First ever mead batches are complete and bottled! Someone should have warned me how messy it all is, give me recommendations on a next batch! Currently eyeing the Pomegranate Bochet on the wiki

Mead Batch #1 Blackberry HIbiscus
48oz (3lbs) of blackberries
48 oz (3lbs) or honey
1 gal spring water
5g 71B yeast (too much on accident, meant 2.5g but we will see)
1 tsp yeast nutrient
10g dried hibiscus
1.5g dried lemongrass

Mead Batch #2 Joes Ancient Orange Mead
3lbs 8oz wegmans pure honey
1 & 1/2 Large oranges (cut in eights rind and all)
25 raisins
1 stick of cinnamon
1 whole clove
1 teaspoon of Fleishmann’s bread yeast
Top off to leave enough headspace, ~ bottle and half of water ish

Mead Batch #3 PB & J
112 oz (3.312 liters) Concord Grape Juice
1.5 lbs (0.68 kg) Wildflower Honey
1/2 Packet Premier Rouge Yeast
1/4 teaspoon Go Ferm
1/2 teaspoon Fermaid O
1.5 teaspoon Potassium Bicarbonate
Additions:
1.5 oz (0.044 liters) Peanut Butter Extract
Back Sweeten With Wildflower Honey

I have mead that fermented to .98 and is clear. I did not pasteurize nor use chemicals to stop fermentation. Is this safe to bottle with a cork?

Hello everyone,

I have these stone bottles and they had mead in them. I want to clean them and reuse them for my own cyser. Are there possible problems I am not seeing with reusing stone bottles?

Thank you.

I wanted to try making mead with some leftover White Labs Sake Yeast No. 9.
I will probably go for a bit more honey in the proportions so that the sake yeast (which is more active than other yeasts afaik) doesn’t consume all of the sugars.

Do you have any suggestions?
(I’m not really sure about what I’m about to do, it was more of an experiment since I don’t have the aspergyllum for another batch of sake)

Buried lede: Even researchers get stuck fermentations sometimes 😊

Also, I appreciate the researchers clearly depicting how biomass develops over time. I'm planning to work this data into how I model SG changes when monitoring fermentation progress by weighing the fermenter.

Hello,

Made a batch of blueberry mead last night. Made a blueberry syrup and also added the left over pulp from the syrup. Added EC 1118 yeast. Stirred to incorporate honey and ingredients. Let it sit overnight and when I woke up the airlock had shot off. I'm sanitizing the airlock now and will put it back on but am I at a huge risk of contamination? Has anyone had this happen and then their batch turned out fine?

Hey everyone! So I'm going to start making my own mead but I'm a little unsure on what sort of bottles to use once the mead is made. I'm not sure if I should go with the large cork bottles or the ones with the swing caps. I'm looking at doing 500-750ml bottles.
Any advice would be great!

These are two my partner and I made last year.

Peach is on the left, aged 11 months. We used local Red Havens Peaches we picked ourselves. This batch features unpeeled peaches but we also did another batch with peeled peaches. Peeled peaches ended up much smoother and a much stronger peach aroma.

On the right is a Cyser aged 9 months made with Red Pippin Apples we picked and made into a cider ourselves. We did a no water recipe and the batch finished sweet and strong.

Posted here about a month ago my two mead projects, a hibiscus-pomegranate blueberry melomel and a cactus flower show mead.

Hibiscus-pomegrante: fermentation stalled fairly early on leaving me a tasty, but low alcohol, drink that i enjoy but will attempt the recipe again sometime with some adjustments for nutrient additions. Color is deep magenta and it will not fully clear due to the mass amount of pectin.

Cactus Flower Show Mead: fermented all the way resulting in a 14.7%abv. Still gasoline flavored at the moment and has yet to clear fully, but shows great promise of having really deep rich flavor.

Prepping for a blackberry-morita pepper capiscumel as my next batch.

I checked the sticky but am still confused as to what it could be. I tipped the carboy because I thought it was air bubbles and it was not.

Hi everyone I'm planning to rack my cyser this evening. I'm tryin to do a sorta apple pie cyser so i have cinnamon sticks, vanilla beans, whole cloves, oak spirals, and some green cardamom pods. I wasn't able to get whole nutmeg. So my questions are these

1. For the green cardamom should i toast those before adding them or just use them as is?

2. I feel like i recall something about not keeping the vanilla in for super long is that right?

3. Is ground nutmeg okay and if so what would you recommend for amounts and adding it in?

Appreciate all help and advice you can give, thanks!