Recent content by Sharkman20

I'm making a prickly pear mead at the moment. The fruits are intense in color, but mild in flavor and don't have a super high amount of sugar. I'd probably chop up a pound and throw it in the boil in a bag for some color, then throw another pound in secondary in a bag for some flavor. It will...

Well... adding the fruit solved the stuck fermentation issue and took it from 1.036 to 0.098. lol It smells amazing, but it is 100% dry with absolutely no residual sugars left. I'm really not sure how much sugar over 9lbs of the prickly pear fruit added to the mead, but seeing as the gravity...

It's going pretty well. The flavor of the prickly pears comes through pretty well but it's not overpowering at all. For all their color, they're actually a very mild flavored fruit. I say go for it.

Well, for the last 3 or 4 days I've been seeing signs of active fermentation starting up again so I'm pretty stoked. I'll take a gravity reading in a day or two to see if it has dropped at all. Hopefully the addition of all the fruit matter will let it come down at least another 10-15 points.

So far so good. We'll see how this one turns out.

That's exactly what I wound up doing. Plus the taste of the orange blossom mead compliments the fruit much more than the other one. I don't even think of bottling my meads until after a year or more since I'm in no hurry.

Earlier this year I fermented out two batches of mead, one using raspberry honey and 71B-1122 which came out to 13.5% ABV, and another using orange blossom honey and D47 which came out to 11.2% ABV. The orange blossom mead D47 batch crapped out early at 1.036 and attempts to restart it have...

Mine works great. No complaints here.

I'm in!

Chaucers is kind of middle of the road. It's probably the most common mead you'll find that doesn't taste horrible. If you see any Redstone mead, pick that up. Slightly more expensive but ten times better.

I'm fermenting a couple of batches of mead at the moment that are almost done. One with pure orange blossom honey, the other with raspberry honey. I threw them in my keezer and set the temp for 61 degrees. They'll both be 13% + so it will be interesting to see how the meads turn out with temp...

I tried 2 attempts at the collar. I had originally wanted to do a 2x6 collar but found there are absolutely no boards straight enough to pull it off. I had to rummage through the kiln dried pile of 2x4's at home depot to get pieces straight enough to make a collar that sealed all the way...

Picked up a 23 cubic foot chest freezer on craigslist for 100 bucks and it was on. Didn't intend to make one this big initially, but hey the opportunity knocked and I couldn't say no. lol It's a little dirty but works flawlessly and I love having the stout faucet. The imperial chocolate stout...

I'm in!

I've been playing Elder Scrolls Online quite a bit. I actually just created the Homebrewer's guild just for fun to see how many other brewers there are on there. My username on there is Brewdiver if anyone plays and wants a guild invite.