Recent content by CuAllaidh

Short answer: yes it will be drier... Longer answer: While champaign yeast will ferment drier, it does not mean your end product need be dry, you can backsweeten, and/or use a starting S.G. that is higher than normal (AKA add extra honey to compensate). In the end what you'll do is end up...

I never sulfite my meads. I find that sulfite adds an off flavour that takes a long time to age out. I can see the point of sulfiting when you add fruit, but I have never had an issue with my cysers or other melomels.

I stumbled on this topic. I made some garlic mead, its strongly garlicy and strongly alcohol flavoured, pretty much the most vile substance I have ever tasted, but I think it should make an interesting cooking wine.

I made a strawberry chocolate mead and I used a blender to chop the strawberries up (they were frozen) allowed them to thaw and added them straight to the fermentation bucket, I didn't bother with the nylon bag, currently the batch is aging on the strawberries still. Hopefully the result will be...

For something like that I'd go for some unique looking wine bottles or scotch bottles cork it and wax it. Sounds like a GREAT idea.

I personally use wine bottles, but I know a lot of mazers who use swing top and standard beer bottles without issue as well. While conpewter has a point about the volume of liquid in a wine bottle being more than you usually want in one sitting he obviously isn't as much of a lush as me :tank...

It is possible to over age meads, especially melomels and such. While mead tends to mellow and interesting notes come through over time, it is possible for off flavours to come through and intensify over time as well. The best way to determine how long to age is put away a number of bottles and...

some sweeter meads are fine early, however generally speaking six months to a year is perfect. Oak is another matter all together. I made a chai mead recipe that I aged in oak and the oak really made the mead wonderful. It was quite popular and I ended up winning an award for it at an SCA...

Buckwheat is wonderful, I'd suggest just a plain mead :D

BBBF ya some meads are wonderful warm, event to the point of mulling them :D

Well mead is heartier than wines and it takes more to oxidize, as such I don't think a decanter would really help all that much. You wouldn't hurt it, but I doubt it'd improve it. The only advantage could be if there were unsightly sediment you wanted to hide.

Well yes, however pyments, cysers, melomels, metheglins, etc are all varieties of mead, and not separate entities themselves.

I beg to differ, it all depends on the recipe. I have made historical mead in a weekend (started in on Friday night, drank it Sunday night) it was weak, but perfectly accurate. The original recipe only called for a couple of days worth of aging. The recipe was a slight variation of Digby's Weak...

Traditionally to be called a mead it must have 50% or more of its flavouring from honey, anything less and its a wine variety. Wine is any fermented beverage that gets 50% or more of its flavouring from fruit juices. At least that's what I've always been told.

Blackberries are high in pectin. Pectin will clear out eventually even without pectic enzyme, it just takes a lot longer. I'd go with a pectin enzyme if heating up like that, but that's me. Then again I probably wouldn't boil it either.