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first post first mead

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Welcome to your new addiction. It wont stop at two!! You are doomed. I started with two and I keep growing... :BangHead:

I'm even buying 4 liter jugs of wine (for $8 - yuck!) just so I can have the glass gallon jugs to do test batches!!

But I love it. MEAD!!!!


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-Benjamin
 
Warkentin said:
It wont stop at two!! You are doomed.
Click to expand...
:laughing7:
You sound like a science geek like a lot of us :) Soon you'll have one gallon "experiments" everywhere while waiting for your big batches to turn out. Then you will be negotiating with the SO over closets.

WELCOME!
 
I'm even buying 4 liter jugs of wine (for $8 - yuck!) just so I can have the glass gallon jugs to do test batches!!
Click to expand...

Do you have a local homebrew supply store? I pay $16.00 for four 1-gallon carboys. They don't come with wine in them but you'd be paying $4 instead of $8.
 
nothing local. i have to buy pretty much online, or drive 2 hours.
yes im very much a science geek. love microbiology. though im used to 4" petri dishes. imagine how much fun a 5gal petri dish will be. just ordered another 6gal primary, 5 gal carboy lavin 71b yeast gonna do something with cranberries this time.
Wassial every one
DennyMcC
 
UprightJoe said:
Do you have a local homebrew supply store? I pay $16.00 for four 1-gallon carboys. They don't come with wine in them but you'd be paying $4 instead of $8.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
I do but it takes me an hour to get there so I do most of my brew shopping online. And most of my gallon carboys I bought online for $3 a peice but a couple weeks ago I saw some 4 liter jugs of wine at my local grocery store for $8 so I figured I'd give it a shot. They are actually pretty nice glass jugs. Right now im scheming to put another one into use tonight and trying to decide what ingredients to use :icon_scratch:
 
vanoob said:
Warkentin said:
It wont stop at two!! You are doomed.
Click to expand...
:laughing7:
You sound like a science geek like a lot of us :) Soon you'll have one gallon "experiments" everywhere while waiting for your big batches to turn out. Then you will be negotiating with the SO over closets.

WELCOME!
Click to expand...

"Negotiating"? Hmm, I just seized the closet. Oops. "I claim this land for MEAD!" :brave:
 
Hehe, my strategy is actually more akin to illegal immigration. I sneak 'em in until they outnumber everything around them.
 
I did it the old fashioned way...

Got divorced... ::laughing::

Actually, I have a live-in Nanny that is worse than my wife was.... I love her to death, but aghh... I swear, *just* because I made the entire kitchen sticky when I had an eruption from the demi of apple cider....

--L
 
yes living alone like i do, makes for a lot places to stick fermenters. i just got to find a good place to get honey. but there is something about hearing the airlock bubble that warms my heart, or is that my liver.
Wassial everyone
DennyMcC
 
Hello Denny -- coming in late on this one . . .

A couple of inputs here -- it's not necessary to pasteurize honey since it's relatively safe stuff to work with. The high osmotic pressure of honey kills just about anything that tries to grab a microbiological foothold, and the osmophilic yeasts that are adapted to high density micro-milieus don't survive in honey solutions diluted to must levels.

Oskaar's advice on stepfeeding is dead on, although if you take a close look at his post there's room for flexibility. Stepfeed with caution, and at most just enough honey that would have gotten you at a better starting gravity at the beginning of the fermentation. On the average (and this is only an average) one pound of honey will add 35 gravity points in a total of 1 gallon of honey must. You can use this figure to more or less work out a ball park figure.

Low gravity meads aren't necessaritly a bad thing -- Brother Adam's meads, in his 1953 Bee World article, were also low gravity meads, although the yeast strain he was using, the long aging period in used sherry barrels (eight years) also had a lot to do with it.
 
hey guys got my new stuff in. fixen to go buy some honey. cranberries are hard to find at the moment so ill try something else. im off to look for recipes
so far what ive got to work with
1 pk lalvin 71b-1122
wyeast vinter's choice nutreint
5gal syphonless primary
5gal better bottle
any ideas on a good second melomel let me know
Wassial everyone :cheers:
DennyMcC
 
Oskaar said:
Welcome to Got Mead? Denny!

Constantly changing osmotic pressure - by adding in fermentable sugars as the yeast are actively fermenting your yeasties are having to adapt to a new environment every time you add honey/sugar/juice. This puts undue stress on your yeast and will usually result in higher production of alcohol, off flavors and fusel oils.

Oskaar
Click to expand...

You know, I've noted that fusel character in virtually every step-fed mead I've tasted. I had attributed it to the fact that at the end of the fermentation, you would be dealing with an artificially selected population of yeast that could survive the trying conditions of a nutrient poor medium, but the osmotic pressure variance is one I had never considered. Thanks so much for the good info, Pedro. It makes perfect sense and I'd never even thought of that. Messing with the linearity of the concentration gradients would have to stress the living bejeebers out of the plasma membrane.

If I didn't mention it, that was spectacular Zin in Boulder, BTW. And if I did, it bears repeating.

KDS
 
Hey Ken,

Thanks for the nod on the Zin ;D

I noticed you changed your tagline to "Some goof who wrote a book." Dude, I damned near spit coffee all over my flatscreen array here in the office as I type this. You're killin me man! :D

Anyhow, I get where you're coming from on the Ink Pen comic. I bust a gut whenever I read the comic strip and find it entertaining. I also remember those "lose the horns" conversations we've had and wish we could shake that perception so we could get mead into a state where it can get picked up at any corner supermarket. I really think your presentation at the festival about food pairings is an effective way to get mead out there in the mainstream and to generate more than casual interest. So I say, good on ya Ken and "Vive le Bleu!" (paired with a nice dry dark cherry mead . . . maybe oaked a little too!)

Cheers,

El Pedro!
 
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