just started my first mead

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Brewtalygood

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well im 48 hours into my first batch and i have been doing a lot of reading and the problem i am having is that every site has different stuff. so i wanna know what you guys&gals think im putting som pic up so any advice/critisim is most welcome\
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some advice... be more specific. We have no clue what you are needing advice on. Post your recipe, your methods... or are you just looking for a complement?


btw welcome to hbt :mug:
 
thanks Limited,
I Used 15 pounds Pure Virgina Brand honey
1 lt canberry juice
1 lt pomigranite juice
cinnomin
cloves
ginger
red star champaine yeast

i heated it to 160 for 35 minutes skimming every 5 and then cooled it to 70f then pitched the yeast.

I guess mostly what i am looking for would be some advice on recipes cause i must have look at a hundred different ones and they were all different and i would like some of the guys on the site that know what they are doing to look at the pictures and to tell me if everything is looking ok (mead is the right color or a ok color that much foam is good or bad that kinda of stuff)
 
First thing is there is no real need to heat and skim your honey. It will throw off your honey flavor and aroma. If you are using a brand name honey it has already been filtered and/or pasteurized. For best results use fresh honey from an apiary of a known varietal of flowers.
 
Well 1st off, don't heat honey. If you must, heat the water to help dissolve honey. Heating honey will lessen the honey flavour in your end product. 2nd, try to use whole spices. Powdered spices tend to make a nasty looking mess & don't give you any more flavour. 3rd, you'll get better & more true spice flavour if you use them in secondary, you can often use less too. Also, there are few nutrients in honey, you might want to add some yeast nutrient/energizer/DAP. You might want to get a copy of this: Amazon.com: The Compleat Meadmaker : Home Production of Honey Wine From Your First Batch to Award-winning Fruit and Herb Variations: Ken Schramm: Books it will help a great deal. Good luck on your mead. Regards, GF.
 
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the reason i pasturized the honey was because the bottle says un pasturized right on it is that still wrong to do and where and what would the right kind of nutrients be
like i said some places say you dont need them some say you do.
 
Well, if you want to separate the really good advice from all the noise on the sites, I'd recommend that you read the postings by those folks who 1) have been recognized by others as having given good advice, and 2) have been around a while. Hightest (one of the forum members here) has been making mead for a long time, and has taken the time and trouble to post many of the tips and tricks that he's learned in a FAQ that you can get to right from this site. He, and folks like him, consistently offer the same good advice over and over, and it works.

As far as your question about pasteurizing honey, let me say this. It isn't necessary, and doing so will degrade the aroma and the taste of the honey. Honey naturally is so high in sugar concentration that no harmful bacteria can live in it. Concentrated sugars, like those found in honey, draw water out of their environment (they are hygroscopic), so any hapless spoilage bacterium that happens to land on honey will essentially be dessicated (mummified), unless it has natural protections that keep that from happening. In almost all cases, the bacteria that do survive on the surface of raw honey don't spoil your must because they can't then stand the diluted honey found in must (they get too wet). So, the bottom line is that honey is naturally antibiotic to anything harmful to your must. So, if you dilute your honey and PROMPTLY pitch yeast, nothing else will have a chance to grow in there until your yeast dominate. Pasteurization is not needed.
 
thanks man so is this batch fubar or is it ok. and what about acid i read that if you use fruit juice you really dont need it because of the natural acid in the juice
 
No worries. It'll be good, but your next batch (with no heating) will be even better! I also believe that you don't need acid additions to any mead. older recipes (the ones that generally recommend acid blend or other additions) were concocted by winemakers who were afraid that the lack of natural acids in honey would result in a "flabby" tasting drink. What they didn't know was that there is a natural acidity in honey that comes from gluconic acid, which tends to form a natural equilibrium with gluconolactone in mead must.
 
im amazed thanks guys 2 things though any recomendations on nutrients and is it supposed to be that dark
 
I like to use Fermaid-K and DAP, pretty much the way the Hightest has recommended in his nutrient FAQ. The reason is that Lallemand (the manufacturer of Fermaid) tells you exactly what is in it, and provides the amount of yeast assimilable nitrogen. Most, if not all, the other nutrient manufacturers don't give you that information.

Dark? How do you mean dark??
 
About the color - I guess I should be more clear in my response. It doesn't look dark at all to me, given that you have both cranberry and pomegranate juice in there. One thing to notice is that everything looks darker in a 5 gallon bulk carboy than it will in smaller bottles, or in your glass. It looks fine (from here)!
 
The color is definitely due to the juices and you are in the midst of primary fermentation, which means lots of yeast in suspension making it opaque and dark.
 

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