Alright, so I'm gathering together everything I think I need to make my first mead and melomel. The only problem I have is that where I live there are no LHBS (at all). I can only order my supplies online and it takes as long as a week for them to arrive. As you can imagine, it's a major PITA if I forget something small that might derail my brew. So, what do I absolutely need to make everything go smoothly? I've already got fermentors, airlocks, etc (basically everything related to brewing beer)... but aside from that I'm at a bit of a loss at what I need. Please help!
A bit difficult really.........
All you really need is a fermenter, airlock and ingredients......
A stirring paddle ? not really. a kitchen spoon is fine as long as you can sanitise it.
Sanitiser ? If you have a hand spray bottle and campden tablets, then you can just use 5 crushed campden tablets and a teaspoon of citric acid (or the juice of half a lemon) mixed up in a pint of water. That goes in the spray and just wash and rinse everything, then spray it with the home made sanitiser. 3 or 4 minutes contact time and then just shake off any excess liquid.
See what I mean ? Hard to do really......
Ok, a melomel. Got the honey, water and fruit ?
Unless you know what kind of mel' you're making, are you gonna use whole fruit ? or juice ?
Whole fruit is fine, you can just freeze it then thaw it, you don't need to process it any more than that.
Just that you may need an appropriate sized bucket to ferment in, rather than a carboy for primary. Fruit based mixes are well known for eruptions in the early stages of ferment and are easier to manage in buckets.
Have you got nutrient and energiser ?
Etc etc........
If you're gonna be doing a whole fruit mix, maybe some sort of straining bag to keep the fruit together and make it easier to remove the fruit debris after the ferment.
Or maybe you need to work out whether you're gonna put the fruit all in primary or some in primary then the rest in secondary etc etc etc......
