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Transferring to a fresh carboy was a great idea, as long as you only got the liquid sitting above the sediment at the bottom of the carboy. At the ambient temps you’re at, it could help it cold crash nicely. Leaving for 2 months isn’t a bad thing. Just make sure that the airlock is nice and full...

3 gal batch of coffee mead 6+3=9

It’s all good to ask questions and double check yourself Dutch. Perhaps you could try a blueberry extract as well to help give that extra berry boost. You can certainly buy that at your LHBS, but be careful of the lemon extracts. Not sure how others are but Brewers Best lemon extract IMO adds...

RPh_Guy pretty much nailed it on the head there. I can confirm, less is more with dried. And try to avoid any dried fruits coated in sort of oil or sugar. As close to O’naturale as possible is best

3 pounds of blueberry purée to 1 gal of mead would be a lot, you do lose a lot of volume. Gosh, you could expect to lose probably half of the gal batch to it. Not worth it IMO. As for lemon flavor, fresh lemon zest can be good, but careful as to how long and how much is added. An unpleasant...

Tart cherries sound like a good match for the saison yeast. No personal experience using the Belle for a session, but it sounds like a good idea. It just depends on what you’re looking for in the fermentation character. Go for 60-65F (15.6-17.6C) for subdued saison flavor, or crank it up towards...

If your SWMBO likes wine, buy some of those Carlo Rossi 4L wine jugs. Drink up and then you have a glass jug that’s slightly more than 1 gal. If you’re ever concerned with headspace in a 1 gal batch. Hope these batches turn out well for you! Edit: misspelling

This looks like it could be cool to use in a mead, haven’t heard of this until now. Backsweetening may not be advisable, as this may be best to use in secondary fermentation. There’s about 500-600g of sugar in one of these 64oz (1/2gal) containers. That amount of sugar could be enough to...

Agreed. Blackberry FTW.

If you have a hydrometer on hand, take a reading and see if the gravity had changed since you pitched the yeast. If you can’t do that then maybe check the lid of the bucket, it might not be fully sealed. This is the entire reason I don’t like fermenting in small buckets. Just a personal...

That exactly what I was wondering to, how much would you need to rely on the wood for sweetness to balance. Then again 1.008 for a bochet does have a lot more sweetness than your average trad mead at that FG. Man that wheat bourbon bochet sounds really good.

Sounds like a great bochet! Especially with it being marshmallow forward. What kind of barrel are you using? Also what was your OG/FG for the 5 gal? Just curious about what the alcohol and final sweetness was, thinking about making a spirit barrel-aged bochet.

Nice, thanks everybody! It’s much appreciated, just post which test you’d like to do and drop a thermometer in that puppy.

I’ve used one of the Winexpert/World Vintners 1 gal wine kits of pinot noir must in a 5 gal batch of imperial gose (10.3%) before. The 1 gal kits should come with a 1/2 gal bag of must that’s to be diluted up to 1 gal and fermented. When dumped the 1/2 gal bag in the 5 gal batch, it...

I need some input though on yeast selection for the rest of my batches. For these first two batches, I used EC1118 (champagne yeast). What should I use for the rest of the batches? Would prefer something fairly clean in profile and low-foaming, and also not be incredibly alcohol tolerant...

Still working out how to put all the data so far in a chart that I can get on here for everybody. Nevertheless, to the metalchef’s point, it’s all about how the heat is applied and at what pace. For instance, in the kettle it took just 3 minutes for the honey to increase from 80F (ambient)...

Currently working on graphing and plotting all the data in an easy accessible way. Will post when finished. One thing I can say is that the data collected from the traditional method were quite surprising. The oven actually got to a higher temp than the kettle. From what I’ve gathered, I may...

Welcome friend! If you want a nice flavor to a basic mead, a good start is to try some orange blossom honey. IMO wildflower and clover are perfectly good honeys to use on their own, but are best used with additives like fruit and spices. Varietal/specialty honeys will give you the most complex...

Welcome HHFM! Are you adding any nutrients for the yeast? Bernardsmith is right, batch size doesn’t matter. Given the exact same conditions, two different batches would ferment the same way.

The cloth idea is a good one, and you can also use 70% isopropyl alcohol to fill your air locks. Murders anything that finds its way in. Even the S-shaped airlocks get little fruit flies in them. Just cleaned out all the airlocks of my 6 current meads. Fruit fly graveyard. 2 of the airlocks...