Recent content by SeanC138

I've made a lot of mead and even some of my first batches never smelled or tased like cat litter. Mead takes A LOT more patience and if you aren't patient, you can produce off flavors. Fermaid O (mentioned above by bernardsmith) will solve any yeast stress problems and it's cheap and organic...

First MxWhiskey, prayers and well wishes to your family. I know someone who went through something very similar and their child is in his 20's now and healthy/happy. Second, I've used EC-1118 and had it go well above 18% many times. As a famous YT personality says often "Yeast don't read"...

My experience with strawberries is if you let is site a long time, the flavor you're describing goes away. I've never mashed or blended them so not sure if that made a difference. Sounds like a delicious mead!

I'm using toasted staves of various degrees. Mainly medium toast. I also tried spiral staves (not sure if it matters), but I'll give your recipe a go and see how it turns out!

I've tried a few things. ABV of around 18 and using various staves from Barrel Char in a Jar. I've only left the staves in around 1 month at the most. I have tried shorter and longer times and it seems like the longer wait times produce some 'off' flavors. I have made mead and add whiskey...

I'm a big whiskey fan so this is intriguing. I've always wanted to make a mead that has that oak tinge to it but never found the right combo.

Hard to say really without a SG. If you can get your hands on a hydrometer you can test the mead after a few weeks and see if it hits 1.000. It will be very dry and if you like that, I'd let it sit a couple more weeks and test the gravity again and see if it's still 1.000. If it is, rack it...

I agree w/ everything above. Patience is the hard one for those of us that want to tinker. Early on I always wanted to be doing SOMETHING with them instead of let them sit. This is turn IMO exposed them to more oxygen and made them come out less than stellar. Be patient and enjoy!

I have 6 brews going right now. All meads of various flavors (strawberry, blackberry, fruit cake, orange, old fashioned, and chocolate/vanilla/cherry/black raspberry)!

Well I finished my batch of this and it came out amazing and probably the best mead I've ever made since I started tinkering with mead in 2020. I did add a bit more cacao nibs than your recipe, but overall I followed it. This opened me up to looking into these additives I've never used or knew...

That's very dry for a JOAM. I've never had one go dry before and it usually remains rather sweet. I'd rack it and taste and and determine what you want to do next (either leave it if you like the taste or stabilize and backsweeten to your liking.

Started this batch about 4 days ago. Using these additives, I'm noticing a more forceful fermentation and the smell coming off of this is amazing.

What are booster blank and opti-red? I haven't heard of these and Google isn't much help :)

This sounds delicious and I plan to give it a whirl. Thanks for sharing!

I bottled this one up last year and have shared it with many folks and it's one of the favorites I have made. Thanks again for sharing the recipe.