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you've already got plenty of sugar in there although I guess with the sorbitol it's not as high as with cider. Whether it restarts depends on yeast, not on whether you add sugar. And without knowing what micro-organisms are present or could end up in it later, and things like pH, it is difficult...

Done.

not sure what you mean by smooth. Is it more the absence of a feeling? i.e. low acidity (not sharp) and low tannin (not astringent) and not-high alcohol (not warming), combined with the presence of residual sugar giving a fuller mouthfeel...?

Am current AHA Cidermaker of the Year, so I've competed a bit. Yesterday I finished writing content for BJCP Cider Exam Study Guide. Lots of editing to do, but it is part of a long effort towards educating people about evaluating cider. So for those who have had a less than ideal experience...

While some strains can and will create hydrogen sulfide from sulfur dioxide, it would be misleading at best and more accurately outright incorrect to state that without sulfite yeast will not produce sulfide. The tendency to make sulfide from sulfite is considered fairly rare. Making sulfide due...

so I once took a rubber stopper, stuck it in a tupperware of water, closed it up, and the next day tasted the water. It was completely awful. So that particular brand of stopper was definitely not inert. So if it happened to me I'd rack to another vessel. YMMV.

There's, what, less than an ounce of liquid in a S-shaped airlock? 20 mL or so? And it appears your airlock liquid was less than 1% sulfur dioxide solution. There will not be enough Na in that tiny amount of liquid added to 5 gallons to be a concern. It's less than pretty much any sulfite...

DV10 mostly for me, HST for Ice Cider. I occasionally will make a fruit cider with 3711. Most beer yeasts aren't clean enough for me; I just find them "yeasty"...but I've been fooled by a couple other peoples' Cal Ale efforts. I've used the majority of what he recommends. I sometimes feel...

this won't help if a Papa Murphy's employee (assuming they used the same shipping location as previous years) says something about alcohol to a FedEx driver as would appear to be the case here.

I haven't looked at the gotmead calculator, but perhaps you didn't adjust the volume for the blueberries? Even though your final volume of finished mead doesn't really change with the added berries, we have to treat it as an added volume in this calculation. Treat those berries like an...

think about whether the math makes sense though - you had 1.105 and added a bunch of water (and sugar)-filled blueberries. Blueberry juice gravity is a lot lower than 1.105, right? So is there any way that your blueberries INCREASED your gravity? Right, they'd actually lower it. So your...

There is no easy test for hobbyists to measure tannin, unfortunately. Nobody's going to do a Folin-Ciocalteu Colorimetric reaction on a few cups of crab juice. If I were you I'd just plan on using a small % of the juice. I like 10%, and with some only moderately tannic varieties have gone to...

a sacc yeast unable to consume 20% of the sugar from apple juice just defies belief with me, and when such basic information seemed wrong it really made me not want to use it. I've been very happy with my results (largely DV10, with HST for Ice Cider) so I haven't been interested but if the...

well, yeah, I'm not denying that part. But this is about alcohol. :D

If the shelves full of alcohol in my basement collapsed upon me, sure. Otherwise I'm sure it'll be something else that gets me.

Ron I'm figure there's got to be a judge with a decent palate and scoresheet skills in Decatur or Springfield but if not, anything you want to send to me in KS will get a full and honest scoresheet from a Grandmaster. The offer's always open to those without access to judges. hope you get your...

maple syrup specific gravity is, what, 1.35-6, somewhere around there? That's almost twice as far as I've concentrated juice, sorry. I'm not even sure what the freeze point of something that's 65-70% sugar would be. Could the average freezer even handle it? - I've got no idea; let us know.

Noticeable raisin flavor makes for a nice New England Cider if there is still cider/apple character. I make a pretty decent version with raisin, date, brown sugar, honey, and sometimes molasses or maple syrup. as for your gravity, let's see...you've got 3 cups out of 1 gallon, or nearly 19%...

two months ago I was lamenting to Stan Hieronymus that so many blindly follow experiment results without testing or experiencing them themselves. I believe it was after another "Belgian Beer: You're probably doing it wrong" article came out, and was also a conversation about the widely varying...

I don't mind the experiments or (mostly) the way they are presented. There has been some exasperating lumping together of, say, provisional judges with highly experienced and skilled beer palates, but that's a topic for another time. What makes me roll my eyes is when they make a conclusion and...