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First brew

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Philderbeast

NewBee
Registered Member
Feb 27, 2011
3
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Hey guys I'm a newbee mead brewer and i have just finished putting my first brew together to ferment.

I was planning on trying Joe's ancient orange recipe but i could not get any of the yeast here (that brand isn't sold here :() so i have ended up using lavin ec-1118

The only other change I made was to use a bit of extra honey (i used 1.7kg so just over the 3.5 lb specified) as my understanding is the lavin yeast will use up more of the sugar, the plan at this stage is to back sweeten once fermenting finishes to get it to roughly the same level of sweetness that the recipe produces using the bread yeast. (add honey and put the air lock back on incase it starts again of course ;))

Is this a wise course of action to try to get similar results, or should I just hope that what comes out is drink able
 
In the future any bread yeast will do.

The yeast you used will definitely ferment more of the sugar than the bread yeast. If you want to backsweeten (and you probably will), be sure to stabilize the mead first or the yeast will probably ferment some of that honey too, giving you even more alcohol and a longer wait until it becomes drinkable. Stabilizing is most often done with potassium sorbate and metabisulfite in combination.
 
ok I have another question, my mead is happly bubbling away and smells great! however im concerned with some of the sipeces, I used ground nutmeg and all spice and they appear the be floating on the foam, withh this affect the uptake of these by the mead? or am I worried about nothing?
 
Ground up spices will do that. You might end up with less extraction, but the thing to do is just wait and see. Taste it after it's done fermenting, and you can add more spices if it needs it.
 
well its been a while since I was on here, but I have just finished my first bottle from this brew, and surprisingly it worked out ok. In the end I just left the mead dry, and while it might have been nicer sweet I'm still happy for my first brew.

however i have noticed the mead came out looking a lot like muddy water this time, compared to being fairly clear when it was bottled, any idea what this could have been?
 
Did it get a little fizzy? If so, the cloudiness suggests the yeast may be active again. Did you check the final gravity?

Aging a mead will often have it develop more sediment, even when you though it was clear, but that usually settles to the bottom, and doesn't look like muddy water.
 
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