Recent content by thm57

3 gallons pumpkin spice Bochet = 396

292 + 6 apple cyzer = 298

I did a bit of quick research and found that it is actually a white wine sweetened with honey and herbs. That point could help trying to recreate the recipe because it won't take as long as a mead would to do some experiments.

Well the one thing I do know is that they were important. Archeological digs show that from the beginning of agriculture that brewers were rich, based on the fact that they accumulated stuff the fastest. Then again, they may have just run into our modern problem of not having enough fermenters...

Did you use any nutrients? Because if you didn't then it's fairly normal to have a very slow ferment.

Somewhere on here is a thread on skyrim mead recipes, if you look for it. It's got over 50 pages I think.

Just so you know, freezing will kill the insect type bugs, but the bacterial kind don't much care either way. Mead is fairly resilient and you don't usually need to specially sanitize fruit and other additives though.

Actually I would say some DAP would be good, honey is pretty much devoid of nitrogen that the yeast can use. Also, keep it cool with that yeast as I hear that getting over 20C with D47 causes some serious off flavours.

For most mead I would say that's just what it should taste like right now. It's only bad if you don't want it to taste like that. Without further details about what you were trying to make or how you are making it, it's hard to give a good answer to that.

Might need some actual nutrients with that high gravity. also it won't ferment very quickly with whole raisins in my experience. Chopped has easier access to the nutrients. Or, because you said it was fermenting some, just let it ride and check the gravity on occasion. If it sticks, just deal...

So.... first things first. I would suggest not shooting for the sky to start with. Without a very advanced understanding of mead fermentation it will likely take 2 years plus to get that high alcohol mead drinkable. Also it's not likely you'll get there with bread yeast as most bread yeast will...

+3 gal cherry melomel 116 + 3 = 119

I'm doing something similar right now, a black forest cake bochet. I caramelized the honey for 30 min. in a pot, added water and 1 oz of unsweetened baker's chocolate then boiled for 20 min. Once that cooled I added black cherry juice and 71B yeast. That fermented for 5 days before hitting 1.01...

So I think we are all in agreeance with the protocol Maylar layed out. The debate is over exactly what it is achieving. And that's a very good point about the sna Brenard, after some reflection the co2 would blanket the surface and reduce any oxygen input. The science is also important to me...

Aerating in early days is very important in my opinion. I made a huckleberry mead 4 years ago when I was first starting to make mead. I used the same recipe in November but used SNA and aerated 1 or 2 times a day. The first one took about 8-10 months to be able to drink, the second was so good...