Welcome to /r/mead!

Can I put a gallon of honey in a carboy with some yeast and leave it to ferment into something? I've heard I need to use fruit to provide some sort of juice but is it possible without that?

Literally about 1/8 inch from the airlock lol Blueberry maple vanilla (Blueberry pancake mead) by the way

I want to make a pineapple mead soon (basic recipe: 3.5lbs orange blossom honey, 1 uncut habanero, tasting every week until I hit my target spice level), but I’m unsure about using pineapple juice vs chunks/blends for the pineapple flavor.

If I just use juice, should/can I substitute all the water for pineapple juice? How would this affect the overall end result? Or is it better to just blend up about a pound of fresh pineapples and add that to a brew bag?

I checked the mead wiki on juice vs water, but I couldn’t find anything. If I’m overlooking it, can I be pointed in the right direction? Thanks in advance

Hi I've been fermenting pineapple mead under my sink for 2 months but it tastes like cough syrup i don't know how much alcohol is in it is there any chance to save it or do I toss it?

Many many bottle options out there. The obvious answer is a 750mL wine bottle thats corked. Love the look of the 500mL whiskey style bottles that are more squat and wide. They come with T tops that I know are a no-no. Can normal wine corks be used in one of the 500mL bottles to create a protective seal? My immediate thought is, of course, dummy, but I want to make sure before I do something to ruin the fruits of my labor. Bottles in question: https://www.amazon.com/GUANENA-Bottles-Capsules-T-shaped-Kombucha/dp/B0CL9KQMV8/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?crid=1E73DPFH5QHXV&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.IS02b3_ZrXbU31U8TMj2NIkx0O6CXeTNlB4KDVKmhjjJy0BuM-nQcDLpONsszVeKaSnILdmVPzqF_tI4FvTkNUVrArUp7stZiwY5cHtkyeviH69_foaEa7JiofQRU2YpisROIEvZdMYWR3Bx3OcLZce9fejOXzySJ7Q_1lEaQe-gmpao_w77zx4a88uOPFNYAIL0cSvMpSoeJY6VEn8y-vyNKQApV0OkS0M60uDOf36Swp7ohDdyJQ3G3sslXHC_LC7t5SBG-jlW1Guie_e5pTCU82jZ1JzIeNBsgriBh_Y.6sH-7_P_mBreFgGjEYPEiafWJAbT2b9ou1MZbzqGwT0&dib_tag=se&keywords=500ml+bottles&qid=1732720938&s=home-garden&sprefix=500ml+bottles%2Cgarden%2C303&sr=1-1-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&psc=1

Not related to my actual batch but i'm curious, is it OK to add honey to a batch after clearing it up? would it make the final product cloudy again even after stabilization and clearing it or it would stay clear?

Hi I have made a few batches of mead with my honey this fall. I took hydrometer readings and wrote them down. And planned to take more when fermentation was done to find alcohol content. However I have 2 kids under 4 and the paper with my hydrometer readings no longer exists. There is no other way to get the alcohol content? Thanks to a dad who is considering painting the SG readings on the ceiling next time.

Hey all,

I've been trying to research the milky side of homebrew. What would be the difference in application, taste, and mouthfeel between adding lactose, lactic acid, or using malolactic fermentation culture? I thought this would be a good community post since I don't know if I've seen a comparison of all three on this or other subreddits. If I'm wrong drop the link plz.

So, I understand that lactose is a non fermentation sugar but isn't crazy sweet. What does it do when added to a brew in terms of taste and mouth feel? What is a """normal""" amount thats typically used in a brew?

Lactic acid I've always seen sold as a liquid solution in little bottles, hovering around the 88% mark. From what I've read this when added will give acidiacidity that's been associated with a sour beer.

Lastly there's MLF. I've seen this sold in bags from Wyeast. You pitch it into primary and it eats malic and spits out lactic if I'm understanding it correctly.

So what would be the application, the way adding these tastes, and what they do for mouth feel. I don't want to assume they're interchangeable in terms of these qualities so I thought I'd ask the class. Thanks for the help. Happy brewing!

My first traditional/first,mead is done primary. OG was 1.132 fermented down to 1.000 over the last month. But i have nothing to transfer it off into.

Can I just leave it here now that primary is done? Will headspace be a problem? Its gotten shaken up/swirled a couple times since fermentation slowed.

Since i dont have another jar or carboy yet, can i bottle it now and let it age/do secondary there?

Hello :D I just bottled my first batch of mead. I used turbo yeast, honey and raspberry. I didn't take a gravity reading at the start so I can't tell you the alcohol percentage. It doesn't taste bad but it doesn't have much flavor. Is there anything I could do now, aging or adding something?

Bottled left to right. (got a bit of the yeast in the last 2 will rebottle once settled.) Started fermenting 9/25 bottled 11/25.

Well, I heard it's a common and tonight after a short 7 batch run, I broke my beloved hydrometer. I will need to get a new one ASAP as I have 4 carboys going...

Started this cranberry hibiscus mead last night (36 oz cranberries, 1/2 gallon hibiscus tea made from dried flower, 2 lbs honey half sourced from a local beekeeper and the other half gifted to me so I don't know it's source red star premier classique yeast, sprinkle of fermaid k starting gravity about 1.100) and though I was worried the acid of the cranberries may make getting fermentation started difficult I've instead had the problem of an overly vigorous mead and have been forced to assemble my first blow off tube with a spare fermenting jar and a length of tubing I had lying around

If i poked a small hole in a balloon, and put it over the top of the jug i'm fermenting in, will that cause problems?

So I started a cranberry hibiscus mead last night. (36 oz cranberries, 2 lbs honey, 1/2 gallon hibiscus tea, red star premier classique yeast, sprinkle of fermaid k, starting gravity about 1.100 1 gallon fermenting vessel) and while I was worried getting fermentation started may be difficult due to the acid content of the cranberries I have instead found myself with a very vigorous fermentation that keeps bubbling up into my airlock. I am going to go away for a few days for the holidays and am worried about a blow off tube attracting vermin. Any ideas?

Hello, all! It has been a couple of years since I had tried to make a mead. The first batch was poured out due to some kind of bacterial infection (using a wooden spoon because I’m a newbcake and it was recommended by another newbcake/troll) - which I should have realized from a ginger beer experiment with a similar outcome. The second batch was a natural ferment (honey, water, and additives (chamomile, cinnamon, and rosehips)). I didn’t have a hydrometer, so I tasted the batch before bottling and it was bone dry with no honey character - I can’t be sure, but I estimate that it was 20% or above. Gnawing on a mouthful of gauze would have been more pleasant. Anyway, I feel quite disappointed with myself after going to my local brewer supply and speaking with the owner - she seemed quite somber when I told her that I poured out the second batch I made in the midst of moving as she suspected it would likely have been quite good with age on it (this week would have made close to two years if I remember correctly).

That is all of the experience that I have with mead, and now I want to make a traditional batch that is basic and semi-sweet. I find myself anxious because I don’t want to screw up again, so I’m looking for feedback/recommendations. I bought a 2-gallon bucket to start the first ferment/primary, 4.5 lbs. of wildflower honey, I already have a 1-gallon carboy for secondary, and I picked up other accoutrement to be better prepared this time around (ie, hydrometer, yeast, tartaric acid, malic acid, potassium sorbate, campden tablets, Fermaid O, bentonite, pectin enzyme). My questions are: In a 2-gallon bucket, is it appropriate enough to do a 1.25 gallon batch and just deal with the dregs/what is left when racking for secondary? Is secondary “necessary,” or would that be a time for stabilizing, clarifying, and back-sweetening? For nutrients, are there recommendations for the amount of nutrients to add, specific nutrients to add, a specific schedule/timeline for adding them? Are there any recommendations for the amount of honey needed for a semi-sweet mead? I am still trying to figure out hydrometer readings, and sweetness is something that I understand to be highly subjective, so whatever semi-sweet means to you is good enough for me to reflect on and keep note of as a point of comparison.

I have seen several “recipes,” but I’m more interested in figuring out formulae that are scalable. I’ve been doing sourdough for close to a decade now, so maybe I’m trying to apply the principle of a scalable formula inappropriately. Even so, I’d love to hear others’ thoughts on this. Several “recipes” that I have found say something like X- amount of honey to 5 gallons of water (none of which have been identical), and I don’t know how to then figure out the amount of honey for 1.25 gallons, aside from dividing the total amount of honey by 4. I don’t know if that pans out in other people’s experiences, though.

The left and right and both Earl grey. Middle left is blueberry and middle right is strawberry.

Hey, so I see that Hawaiian Honey AT&S is having a big sale right now on their 5 gallon bundles. (I know they do this pretty often, at least from their emails I get). Part of me sees that it's $44/gal and wants to buy it or ask for it for Christmas. Part of me says, "MeadMan001, that's impractical, costs a lot of money, and you don't even know if you like it / it's worth it." 🤔 But I like honey, and I like making mead, so how could this not be worth it? My only thought is that I'm not good enough / don't like traditionals enough to use it in a way that keeps all the flavor profile. But it's less expensive on sale than the honey aty local homebrew store. Sooo... Thoughts?

For reference I've mostly done melomels. Wildflower honey for most, clover for a couple. Batches below:

Pineapple

Guava

pineapple and Guava (mixed juices before fermentation)

Pomegranate (soaked)

Blackberry Hibiscus

Pomegranate and Blackberry Hibiscus blend (mixed leftovers from two batches above)

Açaí (with blueberry juice added at backsweetening for color and sweetness)

Passion fruit (still in its infancy)

Cyser (with cinnamon, and using clover honey)

One trad on clover honey, to which we added vanilla and then cinnamon in secondary, and now I think it tastes pretty decent after being on the cinnamon stick for 3-4 weeks

One box hey, to which we added vanilla. It tastes a bit like a stout, which is not what I thought it would taste like 😅

Two packets of ec-1118, about two and a half gallons of my original cyser that was being sluggish, 10 pounds of honey, about a pound of brown sugar, a little maple sugar, cinnamon, cloves and cocoa powder. Fed fermk during pitch (this might come with opinions from some people) and fed again at 24 h with more firmk and yeast energizer. I intend to feed again at 72h but I honestly think it’s fine. I don’t know what the actual sg is after the addiction of some sugars and the cyser but the before the additions it was 1.085. This thing is absolutely ripping through the sugar, my whole room smells like fermentation haha 😂

I was taking a gravity reading of my cyser which has reduced activity to determine next steps

When I dropped the hydrometer in, it cracked the bottom of the cylinder. I wasted some mead as it drained out onto my kitchen counter. I couldn't get a reading

On the bright side, this mead is only 2.5 weeks old and already very tasty. Much more flavor complexity and less off flavors than my first mead, which started in summer in my no-ac socal apartment.

No questions, just a little vent for my cylinder

Made some mistakes along the way, but got some good stuff in bottles, learned a lot and next batch is already underway!

Recipe: -3.5lbs local non-pastuerized wildflower honey -I bag of earl grey steeped in 10oz of water for 5 mins -2oz raisins -peel of half an orange -1 packet fleischmans bread yeast -filtered water to 1 gallon mark

Its my second time trying to make mead, it's a simple recipe, honey, water, yeast, and some nutrients. I hydrated the yeast with go-ferm as well. So the first 24-36 hours of fermentation looked really active with lots bubbles. But now it looks like it's come to a standstill. I think it's too early for the activity to suddenly stop. Could I have done something wrong? The yeast is lalvin d47 if it helps. Is this something normal, or did I do something wrong? Could adding a bit too much nutrients cause this problem? It's currently been 4 days since starting this batch of mead, yesterday there was some slight activity when I degassed the mead, but now it doesn't look like much of anything is happening. Do I give it more time, or should I do something immediately to save it?

Made 28 L of mead 1/3 honey in volume, rest was bottled water.Added yeast and nutrients and around 2 spoons of lemon juice, as I figured out later - not enough. Then I left it for month near my heater (in the background). After that time i made sure that it is under 18% alc and there isn’t antyhing sus on the surface. But when i tasted it, it came out very very spicy. I mean not like high % beverage spicy but idk toxic spicy. I had decanted it from sediment, added proper amount of lemon juice and left it in my basement.

Out of my research I concluded that toxic taste comes from byproducts of yeasts stress caused by often used, at that time, heater.

Is there any hope for my mead? I know that time heals all wounds, but will it heal particularly this one? Is there any other explanation? I don’t want to poison anyone with it.

P.S: Sorry for my english, I’m not native.