New into mead making, need a hand

Hello guys, been lurking in the forums for about 3 months. Got excited with mead making and made a JAOM which in 3 days will be making 1 month. (Will be making a homemade smoker soon too )

Haven't even tasted mead yet, but I'm really pumped to make more (really loved making it). Planning to do a bochet next and some other's melomel soon.

I live in Brazil and some stuff I see you guys using is kinda hard to get, like those lovely gallons of pure juice, concentrate juice using only vitamin C or some fruits like Blueberry. But I have a some fruit trees in my backyard like :

Mangos (5 trees of 3 different types), Guavas, Passion Fruit, Star fruit, Jacot (hog plun, red mombin ;not so sure how you guys call it), Lemon, 3 Coconuts. Some wild and tasty fruits (like wild berries ) and others I cant recall the names now. And they might give some good melomel

So I'm going to order some stuff from eBay next month since here everything is pricy as hell, almost 10 U$ for one single Lalvin D-47, 13U$ 1 S type Airlock .

Some of the fruits are really acid and I fear they might kill the yeast or make it very slow to start, so I would love some suggestion of what to buy for this or even other stuff for mead making I might need.

Ty in advance and sorry for my poor English =x

The only real danger fruit in terms of using too much to quickly that I see is the lemons. With all those varieties of fruits, I would be using those instead of shipped in juices. I think most mead makers would rather be using their own homegrown fruits if they could.

Here is a nice thread about airlock substitutes. http://www.brewplus.com/forum/threads/substitute-for-airlock.2876/

As far as the yeast, you ay be able to push your local store bread yeast to 12% abv, as 10 bucks for a yeast pack is fully ridiculous.

Yeah, if you have to spend that for yeast, you need to start planning ahead so you can harvest yeast, or possibly just start new batches on the lees of your last...unfortunately with higher alcohol brews you can get some mutation when you try to re-use yeast. While you don't usually need to do starters with dry yeast, if it's coming at a premium, you might want to consider making a propogation; ie, make a 2 liter low gravity starter, use half of that slurry for your mead, then save the other half to make a new starter, ad infinitum...or for at least 5-6 generations...

You can always get things started then add the fruit late in primary, which is what I prefer anyway...keeps some of the fruit aroma/flavor in the mead better than if you add it right from the start...

I'd be interested to see what the shipping cost is, I wouldn't mind sending you a few packs of yeast...they only cost me about 50 cents.

Inner10 said:

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a few packs of yeast...they only cost me about 50 cents.

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Well here, the Lalvin packs are between £1 and £1.30, so not badly priced, but when I was checking the other week, even bulk purchases from Morewine would have averaged 13p per gramme, including the shipping costs

So it would likely be cheaper to mail order it. Unless of course, the authorities have punitive import duty charges etc........

@MarshmallowBlue got some ideas from looking at the fermenting photos in this forum (A friend is using the latex glove method and Is really nice and cheap). Using a tube with a cola bottle full of water; used candle wax to seal around =x . Working as a charm.


@biochemedic thank you for the tips, will try making the starter splitting and making at least 2 different gallons each time I brew to save a little ^^

Sampled yesterday my JAOM (was curious) and wow! Really strong ( will be aging it for at least 7 months )

Next month my coconuts will be good, pineapple with coconut coming soon.

Inner10 said:

I'd be interested to see what the shipping cost is, I wouldn't mind sending you a few packs of yeast...they only cost me about 50 cents.

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Not used at importing (so I don't know all the shipping methods ). While checking here the lowest shipping which I found was "USPS First Class Mail Intl / First Class Package Intl Service " was sitting between 7-9U$

I could pay for the shipping and yeast, just finding some one to buy it and send to me would be great already ( if I recall there was a way to transfer easily here with West Union )

Under 50U$ (including shipping) there's no taxing.

jhoson said:

@biochemedic thank you for the tips, will try making the starter splitting and making at least 2 different gallons each time I brew to save a little ^^

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No problem...check out this link to Brulosopher's technique for harvesting from a starter. I had wanted to post it when I replied before, but was rushing to get off to work and didn't have time to look it up then!