Welcome to /r/mead!

Mead has been brewing for 4 days and I have a ton of sediment already on the bottom already. I’m not sure if there is something wrong with my brew. (Starburst for scale)

I have a wide mouth 1 gallon jug with a traditional that was mixed with 3 pounds of black Berries and now the seeds are all mixed in. My question is how to I get the mead out while leaving the gunk in there

So far I've made 3 Metheglins, 2 Cysers and 5 Methemels (Metheglin-Melomels), all in 5 gallon batches. But in reworking my traditional Metheglin recipe, I decided to incorporate maple syrup. So I ask you, will it be a Metheglin, an Acerglyn or both? Genuinely want feedback on this.

Hello r/mead!

I am a first time brewer. Last night I racked my first batch to secondary fermentation after 21 days in primary. I definitely picked up a fair bit of orange pulp I was hoping to leave behind in the primary carboy.

When it comes time to bottle, what should I do to make sure this stuff gets left behind? Is there some kind of strainer I can use? Would a clearing agent pick this stuff up? Unless there’s an urgent need, I’m fine to leave it in until it’s time to bottle. I’m Just trying to be prepared.

Recipe: 1 large orange (sliced) 1 cup blueberries 48oz honey (3 lbs) 1/2 gallon water

Thank you in advance!

My mead has been in this mason jar for a couple weeks and has some floaters. What are we working with?

Hello wonderful people of reddit. I made a batch of the "Skyrim" mead with yarrow, hibiscus, and juniper. It has a stronger herbal flavor than anticipated. Besides letting this age, what should I add into secondary to compliment the flavor profile I've got going on?

Hi all! I have been lurking on this subreddit for a while getting tons of useful info and cool recipes, so thanks for that!

I am currently on my third batch. I used 2&3/4lbs of local wildflower honey and filled up to a gallon with spring water. Starting gravity is 1.102. I pitched with a 5g pack of QA-23 into hot water with 6.25g of go ferm. After 24 hours I added 2g of Fermaid O. My plan for the rest of the nutrient additions was to add 2g of Fermaid K and 2g of DAP split into thirds over three days, at 48 hours, 72 hours, and at the 1/3 sugar break. I did the 48 and 72 no problem and everything is looking great.

Today, which is 96 hours, I took a hydrometer reading and am at 1.054, obviously this is past the 1/3 sugar break. My question is should I add the last aliquot of nutrients today or just let it do it's thing because it's already so far past the 1/3 sugar break. Any advice is appreciated!

Also as a side note, what is everyone's general guidelines for how long you can keep a traditional on the lees after fermentation has completed before getting off flavors. Thanks for all the help!

I started an 11% acerglyn and a 15-16% traditional mead. The acerglyn is clearing nicely but the trad is not. Is this due to different amounts of time it takes the yeast to consume the sugars? The trad is more active (I know should take SG but was feeling lazy). Just something I noticed and wondered if others had too.

I had to pour some out to give some head space as it was overflowing after 24 hours. Do I need to add yeast again?

Just made this gallon batch about 10-15 mins ago with honey, mead yeast, peaches, one Campden tablet and some yeast nutrient just noticed this floating thing

Hello everyone,

I have been reading a lot about certain bottles and I just wanted to do one last sanity check before I place the order.

The product I am questioning is the following:
https://a.co/d/gQ8jbKz

The floor corker I was also looking at is the following:
https://a.co/d/8N113dt

I was also told by someone to use the synthetic corks, because they can't allow any bacteria to get into the cork? I am not quite sure which corks to use with those bottles if any.

I personally wanted to use the corks that you can twist off, but with a heat-shrink wrap.

Would anyone have any recommendations on those types of corks and wrap?

Thanks to all in advance who take the time to respond.

Wondering if anyone has used the orange blossom honey from bee seasonal (product of Mexico).The 60lb bucket after shipping costs about what I am currently paying for local wildflower of the same weight. Does anyone have experience with this company and their orange blossom honey? Can anyone compare the quality of bee seasonals orange blossom vs Flying bee ranch's?

Thinking about starting a 5 gallon batch of spiced apple with the idea of heating it up around the holidays.

Would it be better to use apple cider as a base or to cut up apples and use them?

I'll be thankful for all recipe ideas and wisdoms.

First batch, just racked it and it resumed fermenting a bit. Will this clarify over the next few months, or do I need to add a clarifying agent and/or filter it?

I just dipped a measuring cup into the bucket and realized right away this was going to be a sticky disaster, and I would be completely unable to accurately measure the amount of honey added to primary since the measuring cup was coated in honey. So what are better ways of doing this? Do you measure by volume and pour the bucket directly into primary until you reach a desired volume? How do you cleanly add 1 pound increments?

Good day folks. Brand new to the homebrewing. Bought a beginners kit online and jumped in to making my first batch pretty much blindly about a week ago. Since doing so, you could say I've caught the bug and am already planning on starting a few more batches within the coming weeks.

With that being said, I've started doing a lot more extensive research since then, however I have seen a lot of conflicting info on several subject matters that I was hoping I could get some clarification on. (This may be a lot for one post, but figured it was better than spamming the sub.)

1.) Approximately how long should primary fermentation actually last? I figure this varies a lot as I've seen some folks say as little as a week and up to 6+ weeks. Is this purely dependent on yeast strain and sugar content?

2.) When it comes to primary vs secondary, should racking to secondary be done only when fermentation has completely stopped in the primary vessel (according to a hydrometer) or should it be done sooner?

3.) While on the subject of secondary, I'm also quite curious about the bulk aging process. Should my secondary vessel be fully corked off or should I keep an airlock on it throughout the entire aging process? Also, how much head space is too much in this process? (Single gallon carboy for example)

4.) My first batch is purely a traditional, but I plan to experiment with some melomels here in the future. I've seen a decent bit of debate on whether adding fruit in primary or secondary is the better option. Could anybody share their thoughts on this matter?

5.) So I did not have a hydrometer when I first started, but now realizing how important of a tool it is, I have one on order and am awaiting its arrival. How often is it suggested that reading be taken and additionally is there any more info this would give me aside from how far along fermentation is and approximate ABV?

6.) As far as making more batches in the future goes, is there any sort of tool I can use that will tell me how much nutrient a batch may need and how often I should be adding nutrients into my batches? From what I've researched, this is the area I feel most in the dark about because from what I can ascertain, nutrients need to be added somewhat periodically in the early stages.

I think that is all for now. I'd appreciate any answers you guys may have for me whether you can answer all or even only one of my questions. I promise to credit you all to any future successes I may have in mead making, and I'm sure I'll be back in the future.

I'm pretty much a noob at meadmaking (I made it once with just honey-water-yeast with a fineish result) and am trying to now make some more with some more complex recipes with fruit and spices. I've been going through the wiki and am getting a bit overwelmed with info regarding nutrients. Where I live I can only really get my hands in GoFerm PE and Fermaid K, is that enough for creating a good quality product? And how should I scale it with recipes that call for a mix of other nutrients? Seriously some of this recipes read like Walter White wrote them.

Howdy all,

I'm looking to make a blueberry mead following along with the Blueberry and Cinnamon mead video that Man Made Mead has on youtube from about a year ago. In it, he recomends using Lalvin DM 4x4 yeast. I am having a devil of a time tracking that down in person and looking online, I'm also coming up kind of short. Does anyone know if this yeast is still available and in production? And if it's not, what the closest replacement?

I'm looking into potentially setting up a Mead-Up somewhere in the Milwaukee area (most likely the northwest suburbs). I wanted to gauge the interest of anyone in the area to see if there are enough people to make this possible. Potential dates would be in the June - September timeframe depending on what works best for most people.

Let me know if you are in the area and have any interest in meading up. Thank you!

So I had an alcoholic, brewed, creaming soda over the weekend and really enjoyed it. I did some research and discovered that creaming soda is basically just sugar and vanilla, and I thought could you replace the sugar with honey and make a creaming soda mead?

I'm assuming it would be a heap of vanilla essence in primary and/or vanilla beans added to secondary, but does anyone have any numbers I could start off with?