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On a semi-related note, for the sake of contrariness, I used a half and half mixture of local highbush cultivated and lowbush wild when I made up my field berry batch last month. Technically, I guess it has four types of berries in it, with the two blues, the straw and the rasps. If only I'd...

I'm a bit of a noob myself, but I was considering this as well. I was thinking of making a batch a little lighter on the honey, say enough for a OG of 1.040, and letting this go to full dryness, then stabilizing and backsweetening a bit. I'm not sure what this would do to final flavors, though.

With the internet being so global (I know that this is a primarily US forum) wouldn't it be ok to discuss distilling, at least in an academic sense?

Can you re-pitch yeast in the event that one F-s up the yeasts' day? :) Would this re-populate them quickly, in order to let them continue their work? Basically turning the secondary back in to a primary in the case of a premature evacuation.

Interesting. I'll keep you all posted on the final colour. :)

Really? In my experience, and maybe it's the local berries, but the blueberries we have around here tend to be large, but with a medium purple juice. The local strawberries are about the size of a walnut and have a juice so potent that lasts for days on skin, and you can just throw away any...

The local bulk store has them in two lengths. The ones you describe and ones about twice as long, but no one ever seems to buy the long ones.

Spoilsport ;)

For extracting flavors from nuts, I would try the vodka method on a small batch, at least. Crush up the pecans to give greater surface area. I have heard of folks extracting flavors from herbs (mint, etc) using the vodka method. It all depends on if the flavor compounds you want are alcohol...

Well, I was considering my next meading attempt (as you read, I was considering maple). I was just looking for lunch tomorrow in the basement freezer when I came across three ice-cream containers of last year's berry harvest (blue, rasp, and straw). There's probably about 1.5-2 pounds of each...

Local honey from the Bee Farm down the road (I just like saying "bee farm", it brings to mind images of a farmer milking bees) costs $26 (Canadian) for the 12 pound jar. This is the largest jar he has on his shelves, though if you can find him, he'll probably fill a larger bucket for you. I...

Thats interesting. I just pitched a mead about a week and a half ago and I was planning on adding another batch of honey to it at first racking to sweeten. I may fore go the honey and add a few cups of maple syrup instead. Or I may abandon this idea as the more I think of it the less I really...

What ratio of honey to maple did you use? Apparently there's a worldwide maple syrup shortage at the moment (likely due to the weirdly mild winters we're having in Canada this year), and the price of syrup is through the roof. I could probably wrangle a half and half mixture in order to start...

The last one I made was nearly 14%, using this recipe. I tried it a month or so after bottling and it tasted like a really harsh cider, almost beery, with little honey flavor. I've got 7 bottles of it left (out of nearly 5 dozen) and I'm going to try cracking one in the next day or so, and...

Fairly simple recipes, mostly. This is a good example: Flora's Drink Hideout: Maple Mead Pretty much maple syrup, water, yeast nutrient and yeast. I'm emailing local maple farms for bulk pricing at the moment. I love living in the Annapolis Valley, there's tons of fruit, vegetable, honey...

While not a honey mead, and perhaps thus not in the correct forum, I figured that I'd ask since I seem to have discovered a trove of collected meadologists here. I recently found myself thinking about making a mead, much like a standard sack mead, but with maple syrup as the sugar source...

I forgot to mention that I added nutrient both this time and last, as indicated by the directions on the packet. I knew that dextrose was completely fermentable, but I thought perhaps that it would push the abv up enough that it would stop naturally with a bit of honey left, rather than going...

Well, I just pitched for my second mead attempt last week. The first was done over a year ago, to rave reviews. It was a cyser mead with local ingredients. Raw apple blossom honey (12lb) from the local bee farm and unpasteurized, unflitered apple cider (4gal) from the local farm market...