Recent content by Zymomancer

This is nuruk, you can use it to make makgeolli. The procedure is pretty similar to yeast ball rice wine, but you will need to add your own yeast (so the label is incredibly misleading). On the plus side, it will probably finish much quicker, the usual recipe finishes in a week but it might take...

I thought I'd have my first try at capturing some wild yeast, just for fun, and it seemed like one of the most reliable methods is to get it from fruit skin (see: http://bootlegbiology.com/diy/capturing-yeast/). I came across an apple tree in a park and took some apples (either very young ones...

It's Groennfell Meadery, I only know this because I've seen some of his videos and I'm very curious how he can get low-ABV, dry, unsweetened meads that the general public actually wants to buy (namely this one: http://www.groennfell.com/mannaz.html). I made a 6% dry mead once and the flavour was...

My first (and so far only) batch I followed the basic instructions and ended up with something that tasted like sweet liquid yogurt, so that's not really out of the ordinary. I let the bottles sit for a week or two so the white "crud" would settle out and it ended up tasting significantly less...

There is technically such a thing as too much yeast but I wouldn't really worry about it. Go ahead and throw another pack in. Cinnamon is commonly used in ciders and meads and shouldn't cause any problems. Palm sugar is probably pure sucrose, thus 100% fermentable and I don't see how that...

Suddenly I'm curious about this topic... how much malt did you use and what was the OG? Did you actually use x4 the amount of malt you would use in a standard mash?

I use swing-top bottles, mainly 750mL ones but I have a few smaller ones, too, when the last bit of a batch isn't quite big enough. I prefer having a high liquid-to-glass ratio so I spend less time cleaning and so there's just less stuff to handle at every step of the process. Storage is also a...

There was an xBeeriment about this: http://brulosophy.com/2015/04/20/yeast-pitch-rate-single-vial-vs-yeast-starter-exbeeriment-results/ Conclusions (for the particular beer and conditions they were making it in): - No discernible effect on the end product, including identical FGs - A starter...

Pretty good timing... I am just about to bottle a batch of blackberry-sage cider. - I never use campden tablets, but if you're worried about the wild yeast or other potential bugs on the blackberry skins, go ahead and use them. - Pectic enzyme has purely cosmetic function: it will make the...

I can also confirm this works very well. I keep the folded-over pack in a ziploc bag with all the air pushed out. The week-long expiration date seems completely bogus in practice.

(holy crap a mugwort metheglin sounds pretty interesting!) +1 gal spruce metheglin +1 gal blackberry buckwheat melomel +1 gal lavender mead 368 gallons total

I like experimenting with making wine out of various fruits and berries, and like the fact that I can make things you would never see in the store: for example mulberries are not cultivated at a large scale, so you could never find mulberry wine on the store shelves. It also helps that I can...

I'm really happy I found this thread after a few months of mostly ignoring the forums. The most gruit-related stuff I've done is "dry hop" some yarrow, wild bergamot, and sage in a cider, it was not the best pairing but certainly unique. I picked some more herbs and dried them (yarrow, mugwort)...

Wow, thanks for posting this, for some reason I never thought of doing it all in a bag. Straining everything is indeed pretty annoying and messy. I think when I make this again I'll do the secondary fermentation as well.

A few months ago I actually stopped by Bull City Ciderworks and had a wet-hopped cider alongside a dry-hopped one. I really preferred the dry-hop, as suggested in this thread it added a lot of aroma and flavour without any bitterness. The wet-hopped version added some bitterness (as you'd...