Hello all,
I have been reading the forums for a couple months now and I just decided to join. I got turned onto mead from my girlfriend’s father about six months ago; it was delicious so I decided I would give it a try.
I now have six gallons of mead that I have brewed. I did two one gallon carboys and one five gallon, all of them following the JAO recipe. One gallon I followed to a tee, on the other gallon carboy I switched the cinnamon sticks for vanilla beans and local wildflower honey and instead of all raisins I used threw in dried cherries, blueberries and used Red Star Champagne dry yeast. On the five gallon batch the only two things I did differently was used dried blueberries, cherries and raisins and pitched it with Wyeast dry mead activator.
The two month mark was last weekend, everything cleared beautifully. I bottled the original recipe gallon and it tasted very nice, my girlfriends’ father said it was pretty green but he could tell after a little more aging it would be very nice. The other batch with vanilla beans smelt like pink bubble gum and had a slight taste of it as well. The five gallon batch I decided to rack off into another five gallon instead of bottling because there seemed to be some activity still going on, I ended having to add about a gallon of the vanilla bean stuff to get it back up to five gallons.
Anyway, I just wanted to drop a line and say hello. The biggest mistake I made was not keeping a brew log of any sort and or taking any SG readings, I know not good. Looking forward to being on here and starting another batch in a couple weeks with a brew log!
Sorry if this in the wrong place.
I have been reading the forums for a couple months now and I just decided to join. I got turned onto mead from my girlfriend’s father about six months ago; it was delicious so I decided I would give it a try.
I now have six gallons of mead that I have brewed. I did two one gallon carboys and one five gallon, all of them following the JAO recipe. One gallon I followed to a tee, on the other gallon carboy I switched the cinnamon sticks for vanilla beans and local wildflower honey and instead of all raisins I used threw in dried cherries, blueberries and used Red Star Champagne dry yeast. On the five gallon batch the only two things I did differently was used dried blueberries, cherries and raisins and pitched it with Wyeast dry mead activator.
The two month mark was last weekend, everything cleared beautifully. I bottled the original recipe gallon and it tasted very nice, my girlfriends’ father said it was pretty green but he could tell after a little more aging it would be very nice. The other batch with vanilla beans smelt like pink bubble gum and had a slight taste of it as well. The five gallon batch I decided to rack off into another five gallon instead of bottling because there seemed to be some activity still going on, I ended having to add about a gallon of the vanilla bean stuff to get it back up to five gallons.
Anyway, I just wanted to drop a line and say hello. The biggest mistake I made was not keeping a brew log of any sort and or taking any SG readings, I know not good. Looking forward to being on here and starting another batch in a couple weeks with a brew log!
Sorry if this in the wrong place.
