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Does yeast need potassium during growth, or during anaerobic fermentation, or both? Or worse, do they want it as soon as possible when pitched? I ask because the popular BOMM mead recipe suggests adding potassium carbonate at pitch to provide potassium and buffering, and I'm thinking about...

You want to cap it for just 30 minutes? There is no risk in that, outside the most active part of fermentation. For reference, when I bottle-conditioned some meads, I left them for a week before pasteurizing. (I've had bottles explode in the hot water bath, but not during the few days of capped...

You can use up the sulfites by adding oxygen. There are some suggestions here: https://www.winemakingtalk.com/threads/help-too-much-k-meta.37964/ In short, do the same sort of things you would do to aerate the must. After using up the sulfites, you can pitch more yeast. (If the sulfites are the...

You don't insist on food-grade buckets? I was in a similar situation, as my bucket doesn't seal unless it's wet. It was a few brews before I realized I could make it close. My bucket always had some positive pressure inside, since I could see the water levels in my S-airlock were not quite...

Also funny, that is the same price range as Chinese varietal honey from a farm ordered from someone that works for the farm, not some giant corporation. (I might pay a little less depending on the varietal, but the honey I buy has a higher water content.) I also consider "honey" and "single...

Warning: I'm going off on a tangent. You are right, except that alcohol and water don't add linearly when mixed. The density increases. (If you mix pure alcohol and water, you can also feel it get hot. If your finger is over the test tube, you can feel the suction as the volume contracts. It's...

I don't disagree, but we have no common point of reference. What's the point in talking about it? If I said my newest batch of mead was made with the cheap but decent honey from the PrizeMart around the corner that they import from Thailand (not the one they import from Australia), would you...

A quick video agreed with my intuition that everything has to be unscrewed when giving it a thorough cleaning. (That's a different fermenter, of course, but I think they'll all be the same in this respect.) And if you take it apart or clean the threads, you'll need to remove the tape then...

I thought the teflon toxicity concerns were due to very high temperatures that occur in frying pans. (And everything becomes nasty and toxic when it actually reaches 250-350°C, including food.) I thought teflon was the poster child for "nonreactive" at normal temperatures. But if you think...

Based on the reading I've done, the dump valve of a lot of conical fermenters may not be big enough to dump most fruit pieces, and I see in your signature that you seem to like melomels. You might want to take valve/fitting size into consideration as well. If you have substantial chunks of...

Hi, Melwyn. I can tell you're trying hard to do it the right way, and that is great. I cut a ton of corners when I started, and my mead didn't become good until I stopped. So I've been doing this several years, but only 1-2 years with regularity and less corner-cutting. My opinion is that...

It's important to note that if you want it sweet, you need to either use lactose/sucralose/etc. or pasteurize it before it explodes. And you must use eye protection and leather gloves, because it's likely a bottle or two will burst. If your must is sweet and the yeast isn't going any further...

Do they have a strong taste to you, and something that will come through in the end product? Can you tell me how you use them in addition to balancing sweetness?

A batch of mead was too sour, so my friend and I backsweetened it. When the sourness was reduced, it was too sweet. We added a tea made from meadowsweet (7 g boiled in 200 mL of water) and it nicely reduced the impact of the extra honey. We also made a similar tea from yarrow, but didn't end up...

I found a plastic square jug that's exactly the capacity and shape I want. My engineer friends tell me I can heat/stretch the flat bottom into a cone. I've seen videos that show people adding taps using bulkhead fittings. My question is, since the cone-bottom valve is supposed to dump yeast...

1 W is all you need for the potentiometer. Specifically can use a pot with a power rating equal to the fan's power rating. Multiply it by five or ten if you want to be positive it'll stay quite cool to the touch. And know that a potentiometer and simple PWM aren't the most sophisticated power...

So you're getting a new temperature controller? If you buy something like this, you don't need to do any wiring, as it is designed to switch mains voltage on and off...

That price is comparable or more expensive than 32 oz of IO Star (from a cheap online store), but the real advantage is that you don't need to invest in the next ten years of sanitizer. It's usually valuable to buy the size you need rather than the size the retailer wants to sell you. On the...

As the answerer, I'm impressed as well! But @DeanRIowa, in the spirit of correctness, I think the amount you cited is at the upper limit of "no rinse" (perhaps 28 ppm iodine if my mental math is at all trustworthy), so I wouldn't worry too much if the bottles are still wet. I've been rebutted...

The FDA wouldn't like it (they prefer 12.5-25 ppm on food surfaces), but besides that, just let it drain well. I read a study that said commercial iodophor is most effective when diluted 50-100x (resulting in 100-200 ppm iodine), so adding too much will only make it more effective up to that...