>One problem remains. I am not near a dairy farm. Where does
>one purchase non-homogenized milk?

If you are in the U.S. it is very difficult to buy non-homegenized milk
due to pesky FDA regulations. Your best bet is to find a local farmers
market and find someone who has some cows/goats and would be willing to
part with their milk. They may not bring it to the market, so you might
have to make a trip to get it. But it is well worth the drive, if that is
what you are looking for.

What a friend of a friend does is sell containers for $5. Unfortunately,
she had been using them to store her delicious home-made goat cheese, so
you'd have to clean them out before you used the container you just bought.

How you chose to clean it out was up to you.

Regards,

Ian

"Todd Miller" <todd.miller@borderlandnet.net> asked:

My typical mead recipe uses ~12 lbs of honey for a five gallon batch.
For my next batch, I'm considering bumping the amount of honey I use
wildflower, from southern Wisconsin) up to ~18 gallons. Just curious=20
about how dry I can expect it to ferment out to, if anyone has=20
experience with that. Thanks!

I have used K1V-1116 and EC-1118 and never have got above about 15 percent
ABV. Both of these are suppose to tolerate up to 18 percent but I haven't
messed around enough with the fermentation conditions (temp., amount of
yeast nutrient added, etc.)
I made a 5 gal batch using 15 lbs. of honey and EC-1118 yeast. It
managed to get to 15 percent but it is very sweet. If you want it
more dry, you might try Mile High Distilling's 48 Hr. Turbo yeast at
<http://milehidistilling.com/>. The instructions say it can manage 20
percent in 5 days from 8 kilos of sugar in a 6.5 gal solution. I have no
idea what it will taste like in mead but it might be worth a try if you
like higher ABV levels.

Enjoy,

John Mealey

Addition to my previous post

>>Place spices in a cheese cloth bag with a string or fishing line to retrieve
You can then control the amount of extraction by monitoring.<<

An another even better method is to make a strong "tea" of the additive and
add to a known amount of mead.
i.e. add one of "tea" to part to 100 parts of mead, if it still too strong
add 10 parts of the first dilution to another 100 parts of mead.
That will put you into 1 part per 1000
5 gallons = 640 ounces therefore ~ 1 per thousand will ~= 0.64 ounces per 5
gallons
Just another method that you can have very good control.
I would not go for the full rate in the carboy but add only 3/4 of the
required amount. Reevaluate later as a full wine glass will behave
differently than a small sample

Dan Veilleux
in the mountains of NC
zone 6a

Gonna make a dry lavender mead. Any experiences? I was planning to use an
ounce of dried buds (3/4 pint?) by putting it in a couple large tea bags and
boiling it in a gallon of water, then removing the lavender and starting out
with a gallon of lavender tea. I've seen recipes that just add it in primary
and let it go, straining out the lavender later. I've also seen both done in
a recipe.

What do you guys do? Add it in primary? Boil a tea? Both? What are the
advantages/disadvantages? Is this enough lavender? I'd be glad to hear any
experiences with lavender, roses, or anything similar.

Thanks!
Jeff Tollefson