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Hi Sunshine78, and welcome. I wonder if you have already acted on your first thoughts. If so, how did this mead turn out? I would take a different approach. Rather than jumping in head-first adding a multitude of flavors - where I come from, they call that tossing in the kitchen sink - I...

Always want to get the temperature of the must (in this case the hop tea) down to fermentation temperature before I pitch the yeast, but a higher temperature is always good for diluting the honey - and I tend to use a blender to aerate and thoroughly mix the honey with the water, fruit juice or...

I am going to give your tea method a try. For how long do you brew the hops - 10 minutes? Less? I don't need any bitterness as I ferment my honey brut dry and so any bitterness would be unbalanced in the mead.

In the US, lining politicians' pockets with money is called "lobbying", in the rest of the world, that's called bribery. It's about time, we called lobbying what it really is. To lobby, is to explain and argue with the goal of convincing others of your argument. To bribe is simply to stuff...

This is my understanding, too - that methanol IN FACT is more likely to be collected in the tails, which is why I collect neither heads nor tails and because my wash is invariably from whey I ferment as a waste product from my cheese-making, I am not looking for more than 1 pint from every...

Prescribed amounts which ought to be about 22-30 g of sugar per gallon, depending on how much sparkle you want. The most important thing, is that you must use bottles designed to withstand the pressure of the gas that will build up. Champagne bottles are excellent, as are beer bottles or...

In order to "prime" any wine , including cider or mead - or even beer, you MUST have some viable yeast in solution. If you stabilize chemically or choose to pasteurize, you will kill the yeast. Adding sugar after killing the yeast (or more simply, inhibiting the ability of the yeast to ferment...

So very strongly agree with your point that it's the fear of a loss in revenue and not health that prevents the government from legalizing home distillation. But the irony is that data suggest that legalizing distilling with the same restrictions as home brewing and wine making would in fact...

But to be very accurate, distillation does not in fact PRODUCE a single molecule of methanol. It simply CONCENTRATES any methanol already in wine that is produced through fermentation. If you pour a gallon of 12% ABV wine into a still and heat the still to remove the water, you will have at BEST...

I also use that or another very similar calculator, but these calculators always assume the dilutant is water, and my question was about honey, which is about 17% water, so while adding increases the volume, the actual increase in liquid is about 1/6 of the total volume of honey. But my question...

Ha Ha. I like it, but as a recently retired sociologist I am unlikely to have any recurring nightmares over any chemistry faculty questions and as someone who simply makes wines, mead, and liqueurs for my own satisfaction, if I label a bottle 30% ABV and technically, it should be closer to 29%...

Thanks Mac_1103, My ethanol is only 69% pure, and so sadly (or not) I am not likely to witness this "delta V " phenomenon - :)

There could be microscopic amounts of methanol in any wine made from fruit. I believe the methanol is a product of the stems and skins of the fruit and not so much the fruit itself, but the amount is something like 50 - 100 mg of methanol in every liter. That suggests that you may need to drink...

Many thanks. Broken Crow. That's very helpful, So, I now know how much water to add to bring this liqueur down to about 35% ABV

How do you calculate the change in proof or ABV of a spirit if you add say, honey and not water? Can I simply use an alcohol dilution calculator and treat the volume of honey as if it were water or does the mass of the honey make the calculations more complex? Thanks.

But don't you get a real loss of aromatics and flavor if you pack the hops tightly? I want the yeast to help force the mead or cider to touch every micron of hop surface

Fillable tea bags? Never thought of that, Maylar. I had tried to use a nut bag and that was neither easy to fill , nor easy to remove. But I will look into fillable tea bags.

Hi Robin, I am also currently dry hopping for 3 days using 1 oz of hops but I have a question. I have been experimenting with small batches and if I use a glass carboy it is a pain and a half to bag the hop pellets and be able to remove them from the fermenter. However, if I simply add the hops...

Apologies: I don't want to sound harsh but have you checked the spec sheets for your choice of EC 1118? Lallemand , the lab that cultures this yeast, states that it's tolerance for alcohol does not exceed 18%. Sure, it MAY be able to survive a little higher under optimal conditions, but looks...

I live in upstate NY and am not at all familiar with what is sold in AZ , but you might check out frozen concentrates as certainly here, they are typically preservative-free, but Motts is a national brand of filtered apple juice and the last time I looked it had no sorbates or sulfates Here...