Blackrock612
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- Joined
- Dec 6, 2020
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- 19
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Well, after weeks of reading this and that, I finally put it all together. Thanks to some helpful suggestions from members on this forum, I used "BatchBuildr - MeadMakr" and TOSNA 2.0 as references, along with the book from Piatz. BatchBuildr made me realize that I didn't have as much honey as I thought. So did my scale. The "12 lb" bottle I purchased from a local honey farm added exactly 10.25 lbs of honey to my fermenter. Batchbuildr told me that instead of my 5 gallons I was anticipating, 3 gallons was correct for the amount of honey I had which is fine I suppose. The Brix of the must was 30 which was a little on the high side I thought? Maybe not... Hopefully the yeast will be up to the task, I'm hoping to get semi-sweet and not sweet as a result. I used 10g of Lalvin 71B Narbonne yeast which supposedly have an etoh tolerance of 14% or so. For water, I used room temp tap with one crushed Campden tablet mixed in 5 gallons of water which I let sit for about 20 minutes or so. I had been thinking about boiling it or running it through my charcoal filter, but the Piatz book says the sulfer gets rid of the chlorine/chloramine efficiently, so we'll see. I did use 10g of goferm to rehydrate the yeast. At the last minute, I almost just rehydrated the yeast by themselves in water, but I had the goferm so I used it anyway. Now, I'm planning on using my big spoon to stir twice a day to degas. The Batchbuildr app says to stir two times a day for a week, which seems kind of long to me... I would expect a few days, sure, but a week? If the fermentation is really bubbling at a week, I don't know that I should be stirring it? Thoughts on this? I'm also going to do Fermaid O additions at 24, 48, and 72 hours, plus a final addition at 1/3 sugar consumed (so 20 Brix) or no later than 7 days from pitching of yeast. I read that stirring the must and then mixing the fermaid into a cup of the must before making the additions was the way to go. Overall, I've learned quite a bit about mead-making over the last few weeks thanks to this forum mostly. I used to brew a lot of all-grain homebrew a long time ago. This is the first thing I've made in a long time and it was a pleasant experience. I definitely like not having all the brew equipment to clean up at the end! Please chime in with any suggestions, I'm always looking for ways to improve as I know next to nothing about making mead. Thanks very much!
