SkeletorMob
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- Apr 12, 2016
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So I have decide to start learning to brew mead. My mother had purchased me "how to make mead like a viking, Jereme Zimmerman" for Christmas and now I want to make it a hobby.
For the purposes of "starting from the bottom" and to learn traditional technique, I'm learning the wild ferment first. I made a starter with ginger sugar and water per book recipe and it turned out nice (I think lol) so then I went to mix 2 recipes 7 days later. When I mixed my recipes I wasn't thinking properly and mixed in a one gallon container, so when I added my honey I had to lose about a third of the gallon of water. I am now 8 days into an open ferment. The first 5 days were inactive and I got stuck with a cold weather spell, so my room hasn't been over 70 degrees this week. As of Sunday I started keeping the jars on a heat pad and have since noticed a little bubbling but still pretty stuck!
How can I help this? Patience and temp monitering? Or should I water it down? If I water down what may you think I should remove and add. I'm torn between splitting both in half or just siphoning out a mason jar or two and replacing it. One batch has 6 lbs of honey (dessert show mead) the other has 4 lbs of honey.
Surprisingly the batch with 6 gallons shows more signs of fermenting. Thanks for any help guys and gals!
For the purposes of "starting from the bottom" and to learn traditional technique, I'm learning the wild ferment first. I made a starter with ginger sugar and water per book recipe and it turned out nice (I think lol) so then I went to mix 2 recipes 7 days later. When I mixed my recipes I wasn't thinking properly and mixed in a one gallon container, so when I added my honey I had to lose about a third of the gallon of water. I am now 8 days into an open ferment. The first 5 days were inactive and I got stuck with a cold weather spell, so my room hasn't been over 70 degrees this week. As of Sunday I started keeping the jars on a heat pad and have since noticed a little bubbling but still pretty stuck!
How can I help this? Patience and temp monitering? Or should I water it down? If I water down what may you think I should remove and add. I'm torn between splitting both in half or just siphoning out a mason jar or two and replacing it. One batch has 6 lbs of honey (dessert show mead) the other has 4 lbs of honey.
Surprisingly the batch with 6 gallons shows more signs of fermenting. Thanks for any help guys and gals!