Snuffalupagus
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Aug 25, 2008
- Messages
- 247
- Reaction score
- 4
While I was eating my sunday morning bagel and drinking a cup of Joe at the neighborhood cafe with SWMBO. a crazy lady wandered by (Maui is full of weirdos) who insisted i try a kumquat -as she was carrying a a butt ton of the things in a box (had to have been 30 pounds...)
she was intent on leaving this box of kumquats at the cafe so that folks could help themseves to them - after eating one... i was struck with a brilliant idea. This could be the caytlyst to making my first mead (which I have been contemplating) so I took 10 pounds of them home (all but a pound went into the deep freeze for later -should this recipe actually work I may make a 5 gallon batch later.
I stoped at the store and obtained a gallon of distilled water, a 2.5 pound jar of clover honey, a 1 pound jar of local Ohi'a Lihua blossom honey (lol... dare you to find THAT on the mainland)
and set about making a brew -
probably did this ALL wrong but the activity at the airlock 2 hours later says I'm getting fermentation - so if i made mistakes they were minor. and the power of the yeastie beasties rules all.
I ran out of camden tabs - since a new supply would be a week out (and I rarely use them anyway... in favor of a a bleach solution soak and a hot filtered water rinse for my equipment (which wouldn't work on fruit) since I mainly work with sealed pastureized juices and frozen fruits, I figgured I'd need to do something to treat the fresh fruit - so I boiled some filtered water and dunked them in that (briefly... not long enough to actually cook them - only long enough to - hopefully - kill anything on the skins)
meanwhile I heated up 1/2 a gallon of distilled water to 140 -50 and dumped in 3 pounds of honey, 2 pounds of the clover and the 1 pound of Lihua I set this aside to cool, Added 1 tbs yeast nutrient to my 1 gallon glass jug, squished and added 14 kumquats, added the honey/water solution when it had hit 100 degrees topped the it off to 1 gallon with the distilled water, then shook the hell out of it. to this I pitched one of my two remaining Lavlin EC-1118 packets, which seems to be quite happy in there as while I'm typing this 2 hours later - it's actually already bubbling 3+ times a minute.
I still down't own a Hydrometer - so no gravity readings... one of these days. the outfit I order online from for supplies won't ship glass via USPS priority mail (which is the only cheap + relitively quick way to get stuff to Hawaii)
is there such a thing as a plastic Hydrometer?!
so Mead misters... How bad did I screw this up? what did I forget? and dispite whatever mistakes I made... will this stuff actually be drinkable someday?
she was intent on leaving this box of kumquats at the cafe so that folks could help themseves to them - after eating one... i was struck with a brilliant idea. This could be the caytlyst to making my first mead (which I have been contemplating) so I took 10 pounds of them home (all but a pound went into the deep freeze for later -should this recipe actually work I may make a 5 gallon batch later.
I stoped at the store and obtained a gallon of distilled water, a 2.5 pound jar of clover honey, a 1 pound jar of local Ohi'a Lihua blossom honey (lol... dare you to find THAT on the mainland)
and set about making a brew -
probably did this ALL wrong but the activity at the airlock 2 hours later says I'm getting fermentation - so if i made mistakes they were minor. and the power of the yeastie beasties rules all.
I ran out of camden tabs - since a new supply would be a week out (and I rarely use them anyway... in favor of a a bleach solution soak and a hot filtered water rinse for my equipment (which wouldn't work on fruit) since I mainly work with sealed pastureized juices and frozen fruits, I figgured I'd need to do something to treat the fresh fruit - so I boiled some filtered water and dunked them in that (briefly... not long enough to actually cook them - only long enough to - hopefully - kill anything on the skins)
meanwhile I heated up 1/2 a gallon of distilled water to 140 -50 and dumped in 3 pounds of honey, 2 pounds of the clover and the 1 pound of Lihua I set this aside to cool, Added 1 tbs yeast nutrient to my 1 gallon glass jug, squished and added 14 kumquats, added the honey/water solution when it had hit 100 degrees topped the it off to 1 gallon with the distilled water, then shook the hell out of it. to this I pitched one of my two remaining Lavlin EC-1118 packets, which seems to be quite happy in there as while I'm typing this 2 hours later - it's actually already bubbling 3+ times a minute.
I still down't own a Hydrometer - so no gravity readings... one of these days. the outfit I order online from for supplies won't ship glass via USPS priority mail (which is the only cheap + relitively quick way to get stuff to Hawaii)
is there such a thing as a plastic Hydrometer?!
so Mead misters... How bad did I screw this up? what did I forget? and dispite whatever mistakes I made... will this stuff actually be drinkable someday?