Recent content by svenalope

Airlock activity may not be a good indicator of a finished fermentation, but clarity definitely is. It's true, you should rack your mead until the lees are gone, or mostly gone, just because it can be aged so long, but it sounds to me like you're safe. It's about 2.5 gravity points per volume of...

Hey guys! I've read (mostly in the stickies, here) that degassing is critical to a speedy fermentation with mead. I've tried a couple different things, with varying results, and want to solicit some opinions on stirring/degassing. First - I made me as stir plate, one of those cheap easy...

This is fascinating. I'm researching to do a sweet potato wine. I'd suggest country wine as a gluten free drink, and also mead. (Although the whole mashing thing is half the fun of making beer) Here's my two cents on the awesome beer idea though. I've made banana wine, which was nearly...

That would be a blast. I'm in Wyoming. I had two five gallon buckets of it, which didn't heat up very fast. I gave them a couple hours in a bathtub of hot water before i decided to get elbow deep and start kneading it into the water. That is something everyone should experience.

I dissolve it. Last time, I used 10 gallons of honey and it was a long, sort of all day process. You kind of end up hacking at it with knives or whatever kitchen implements seem to work best, then putting warm water in the bucket, and sort of kneading it in the water to get it to dissolve...

Around here it's about 3 bucks a pound at the grocery store, but i'd definitely try finding a beekeeper with raw honey. I know you said it definitely would not be cheaper, but I've gotten raw honey from a beekeeper for half the grocery store price. The thing about raw honey is it's solid, so...

Hey guys, I've got a bunch of mead and for various reasons, want to bottle it before it ferments dry to make sparkling mead (instead of adding sugar after it has dried up). I've done some high power beers before which I eventually got to carbonate to (mostly) appropriate levels, although never...

I'd recommend crushing the fruit and maybe removing the stones. Fruit skin is supposed to be a pretty good barrier for keeping fruit stuff in. I tried making a wine with intact fruit (eating grapes) one time and the fruit hardly did anything for flavor. And the stones - I don't know anything...

Here's my input! I totally agree that we shouldn't expect well-fermented booze to come without experimentation. I also agree that it's good to pay attention to what's happening, and not worry about time. I started my brewing career with hooch (wine, if you call it that) and learned a lot from...

Hey guys, thought you may be interested in a thing. I've been reading art of fermentation by Sandor Katz, which is like the top five books I've ever read. Anyway, there's a recipe for corned beef, something like a brisket in a brine of 10% salt and 5% sugar for two weeks. I cooked it for st...

Here's a crazy thought from a guy who has no interest in NA beer. I've got a barrel of mead going right now, and degas/sample it pretty much daily. It's in my basement, which is relatively temperature-stable (it's climbed maybe 8 degrees steadily in the past two month of springtime), but I've...

I've been making a few gallons of beet wine each yeah for a couple years now, and I have to say that the very best stuff I've made was with bread yeast and halfway rotting beets. The worst was the stuff I made last year, I used wine yeast and added a campden tablet the day before pitching...

Thanks for the feedback guys! Now that I read your comments and think about it, it becomes clear to me that in beermaking, we control the body of the final product with the mash. This is good, and bad in my eyes. In hooching (winemaking), we control our body with the specific gravity and the...

Here's an update! I've bottled the small beer and it's actually pretty drinkable. It came out around 1.005 FG, which is a little light for my taste, and there's not any noticeable (to my palate) malt flavor kicking around, which is disappointing, but the hoppiness actually worked out. It...

hey guys! I'm one of those guys who started off homebrewing by making mead, then moved on to various fruit/vegetable/koolaid wines that they call country wine. I just stumbled on a recipe I'm interested in because it sounds like a real nice session beer, and I think a session beer would be...