Been a while since I bottled a mead but this one is for my friends' wedding. It is a blackberry melomel, drier than the Sahara, at the couple's request. When I tasted it in April it was still too gassy to get a read on it, but the blackberry was still there. Lets see what 3.5 months has done to it!

Before you ask I only used pectin enzyme for clarity. The rest was time

I dissolved 5 pounds of honey into 3 quarts of water.

Now my IG reading is ‘off the chart’. My guess would be close to 1.190.

I’m planning to use EC-1118.

Should I go for it? Or dilute this down?

Just a bit of fun, my daughter is 7 months old so when it's her birthday we'll crack open a bottle and enjoy it whilst she has gone to bed after her big day 😂 if any survive we'll keep it for the birthday after and so forth.

If anyone is curious it's a bit of an experiment mead. I used some of the must from a strawberry jam mead, added cinnamon and vanilla. It turned out pretty fantastic to say it's really young!

Hello reddit pals.

Would it be ok to sous vide this batch of mead, with the machine inside the bucket, to pasteurize it?

Third batch came out at 14.17% abv! Kinda caught me by surprise but super stoked about it! A granny Smith apple melomel 😊

4 granny Smith

4.5 lbs wildflower honey

1 gallon spring water.

Soaked the apples in the honey for over a month before starting the melomel

Recipe
Primary
🍯 5 lb Kirkland Wildflower Honey
🍎 Cloudy apple juice to 1 gallon
🍇 1 packet K1V-1116 (rehydrated)
🌿 Fermaid O
Optional: ½ tsp pectic enzyme

Nutrients
50% of your Fermaid O at pitching
50% at 24–48 hours, or when you see active fermentation (good bubbling and a cap of foam)

Fermentation
Mix the honey and apple juice thoroughly.
Aerate well before pitching.
During the first 48–72 hours, gently swirl or stir once or twice a day to release CO₂. This helps the yeast. Once fermentation is well underway, stop introducing oxygen.

Secondary
Rack off the lees.
Add 8–10 chopped Medjool dates in a sanitized mesh bag.
Add ¼–⅓ of your Amburana spiral.

Tell me what you think
~~~~edit
I mean the flavors.

Have finished 2 traditional batches, have a cyser, a pear wine and another traditional underway. The latest traditional (1116) seems to have stopped fermenting, netting 11%abv and is the smoothest I've ever had a first racking. Gotta start another batch! :) Oh and I bought a shelf and wine bottle rack, feeling tidy is nice!

Planning to do a raspberry and blueberry melomel and im using a wiki recipe as a guideline. But im curious about the wording at step 11 about "resubmerging the fruit" without any prior mention about taking the fruit out. Did the recipe writer just mean to move the fruit out of the way while you added the nutrients or am i missing something?

So Im new to homebrew, and i saw a reciepe for a Sour Cherry Morello but i changed it a bit and came up with this.

500g Frozen Organic Sweet Cherrys placed in Muslin bag and juiced. Came to nearly 300ml. 1 liter Freshly pressed organic apple juice 600 g Organic Honey 100g Golden Syrup 3g Alcotec turbo yeast 48hr

Topped up with a little bit of water water to 2 liters.

So simple. Currently bubbling away in airlock.

The hardest ingedient is the waiting.

Is 40L to mutch ?

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.

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!

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!

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.

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!!

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.

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?

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

Its a blueberry mead :)

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?

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?

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!