I'm a new brewer - I made my first cider with TJ's apple juice and S-04 a few months ago, and it turned out great, and only took ~5 days to get to 5% ABV, which is where I cold crashed and then bottled.
So after that early/easy win, I decided to step it up a notch and start a mead and a couple of maple-wines. For the mead, I used 6lbs of orange blossom honey, 1.5lbs of blackberry honey, and water to fill a 3 gal carboy. I pitched 71-B yeast with go-ferm and fermaid-k and fermentation started without a hitch. OG @1.086, and I added more fermaid-k at the 1/3 break, and maybe again a week later (it's been a crazy month, so the brewing's been a bit neglected). So fast forward a month when I finally got time to pay attention to the thing again - fermentation had juuuust about stopped (and I don't know how long it had been slow/done at that point) so I racked off the lees and measured at 1.002, so ~10% ABV. It prettymuch tastes like cough drops. I'm not sure what to do with 3 gallons of cough drops. Is this the alcohol taste that mellows over time, or did I under/over dose the fermaid, or wait too long to rack, or what?
As for the maple wine - This was just a "what the heck" project, so got a gallon started at 1.126 with ec-1118, and 1/2g started at 1.086 with 71-B. The EC-1118 is still chugging along, no samples yet. The 71-B batch smelled like vomit about halfway through. Seriously, like when you buy those bertie-botts jellybeans and forget to check the colors against the flavor map on the back, it was bad. Fermentation had slowed/stopped when I racked the mead, so I bottled and refrigerated the 1/2 gal yesterday too. It had come a LONG way from 'barf' to something (roughly) along the lines of a hearty/bready ale, sort of like abita's abbey ale. Pretty surprising.
So after that early/easy win, I decided to step it up a notch and start a mead and a couple of maple-wines. For the mead, I used 6lbs of orange blossom honey, 1.5lbs of blackberry honey, and water to fill a 3 gal carboy. I pitched 71-B yeast with go-ferm and fermaid-k and fermentation started without a hitch. OG @1.086, and I added more fermaid-k at the 1/3 break, and maybe again a week later (it's been a crazy month, so the brewing's been a bit neglected). So fast forward a month when I finally got time to pay attention to the thing again - fermentation had juuuust about stopped (and I don't know how long it had been slow/done at that point) so I racked off the lees and measured at 1.002, so ~10% ABV. It prettymuch tastes like cough drops. I'm not sure what to do with 3 gallons of cough drops. Is this the alcohol taste that mellows over time, or did I under/over dose the fermaid, or wait too long to rack, or what?
As for the maple wine - This was just a "what the heck" project, so got a gallon started at 1.126 with ec-1118, and 1/2g started at 1.086 with 71-B. The EC-1118 is still chugging along, no samples yet. The 71-B batch smelled like vomit about halfway through. Seriously, like when you buy those bertie-botts jellybeans and forget to check the colors against the flavor map on the back, it was bad. Fermentation had slowed/stopped when I racked the mead, so I bottled and refrigerated the 1/2 gal yesterday too. It had come a LONG way from 'barf' to something (roughly) along the lines of a hearty/bready ale, sort of like abita's abbey ale. Pretty surprising.
