Recent content by skadalajara

My advice: give it a try and let us know how it went. :)

Different batches will have different concentrations of different microbes. Temperature, type of tea/sugar, water quality and even where you're located will all affect what goes on in your brew. If it's not hairy, fuzzy, furry, blue, green, black or full of maggots, and it's not emitting a foul...

Rule #1: don't panic. Worst case I can think of is you have a sweet tea with a hint of acid bite to it. Or a pasteurized batch of kt that wasn't quite done yet. May want to invest in a thermostat for your heater.

"Kirsch" is simply the German word for cherry. I learned the brandy as "Kirschwasser". Literally "cherry water". The family I stayed with in Saarbrücken would have a glass at dinner every night.

The bacteria are primarily aerobic. If you ferment with an airlock, they will be somewhat suppressed and the yeast will dominate. I have a batch going right now w/out an airlock, as I want it to be vinegar. It went alcoholic first, with a light tartness, but now it's getting more vinegary. It'll...

Did you write the berry jam recipe on instructibles.com?

If it's a digital scale, you should be able to recalibrate it. It should have come with instructions.

A larger volume will take a bit longer just because the colony has to propagate more to ferment it.

Cool, thanks. Gonna try this.

No experience personally, but there is an automated/electronic brewing forum in the beer section on this site. Have a look there, I'm sure someone has made/used what you're talking about. Also, instructibles.com has lots of neat diy projects using Raspberry Pi.

Ooh! SWMBO and I are big fans of mango. I want to get a mango melomel going. Did you use whole fruit, juice or canned?

All I can say is, if you had any idea how many bugs you eat on a daily basis, you'd get over that pretty quick. Insects that live on 1 particular plant tend to taste like that plant, so you'd never even know you were eating them.

Sounds like a beer brewer. Conventional wisdom is, if you're reusing a yeast cake, to start with a lighter beer and make the next one darker or maltier. Maybe in the mead world, start with a hydromel, make a show mead next, and finish with a bochet? :)

What kind of honey did you use? I know you've been brewing for a while, so this is just a check-the-basics question; are you sure it's not vinegar you taste?

Make sure it's a stainless steel Schrader valve with a Vito gasjet, or you might get unwanted flavor added. Go to your local tire shop and take a big whiff.