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One thing that occurred to me, when I rack onto the fresh 2lbs of berries, how long should I let them sit there in the carboy? When should I rack it again and just let mead sit and age?

Will be cracking open and sharing the last bottle of my 2.5 gallon batch today. After more research, it seems like I should've used about 1/3 more honey than I did (so at least six teaspoons of honey instead of four). The beer was good, the honey having left a very faint hint of it's original...

Just as an update, I put the bottle on it's side, poured Starsan over the printing and let it sit overnight. In the morning, it all scrubbed off clean using just a standard kitchen sponge scrubber.

I've got an empty Wild Turkey American Honey bottle that I want to use, but I want to get the labeling off. Unfortunately, it's printed directly on the glass and I'm not sure of the best way to do it. Would hitting it with some acetone or other handy household chemical dissolve the printing and...

I heated one cup of water and stirred the honey into that until dissolved. Poured that into the bottling bucket and then racked the beer on top of it. Gave it a little stir to make sure it was mixed, and then bottled.

Aha - this was a Mr. Beer kit, which says it'll give you drinkable beer in three weeks, start to finish (although that may be the truth if you actually follow the directions instead of fiddling around with things like I did :p ). I'll give them another three weeks of bottle conditioning and see...

I brewed a pale ale for my first ever brewing attempt. Everything seemed to be going well, I racked it to a secondary after the SG settled down (10 days), let it settle (1 week) and then bottled (10 days ago). I wanted to add a touch of honey to the flavor, so instead of priming sugar, I racked...

Well, as much as I hate to let it go, I've finally decided _against_ hanging a turbo-charged diesel engine under the air lock cap. As strange as it may sound, 'more power' is not always the answer... Yes, I've got my second batch of beer bubbling away right now. I actually have two kits...

From what I know of berry seeds, I would imagine that breaking them open could cause some undesired and/or bitter flavors. Of course I suppose the real test would be to see have the mead tasted another six months down the line. :D I've got some fresh berries in my freezer, and I'll make sure...

I've already acquired a couple of buckets to insist in my other endeavors, but I hate to waste a perfectly good tool when all it needs is just a little modification (and I have a Tim Taylor-esque drive to 'fix' things like that... :D )

I've decided that I really don't like the Mr. Beer's unregulated airlock. Aside from being a little bit jury rigged, would there be any problem with using a little silicone or the like to seal up the notches, then punch a hole in the lid, add a grommet, and use a regular air lock? I really...

Well, like I said in the OP and subsequent post (although I did ramble hem and hawe a bit) I'm going for a semi-sweet carbonated cider, back sweetened with concentrate and honey, pasteurized at the finish. I want to balance the concentrate and honey so that I get the sweet apple flavor with a...

I finally hit the end of the JAOM recipe thread and one of the posts mentioned vanilla beans too. One bean for two gallons seems like a safe starting point. Better too little than too much.

This will be my first attempt at making mead, and feeling unjustifiably ambitious I'm planning on making 2 gallons, blackberry vanilla. 6 lbs Wildflower honey 4 lbs blackberries (2 lbs go in the primary, rack onto 2 lbs and the vanilla beans for the secondary) Raisins Vanilla beans (the...

I tried one a couple of weeks ago - I enjoyed it at the time, but cannot currently remember anything in particular about the beer itself. So good, but not memorable.

Well, it tasted dry in comparison to the jug of fresh cider I sampled before hand as a comparison. :p Depending on where it is next week, I might let it sit two, see how low I can get the SG.

I just primed a 2 gallon batch with honey. If I did my calculations right, it was four tablespoons. I sterilized and heated a cup of water, mixed the honey into it one tbs at a time until dissolved, and then poured it into a bottling bucket and racked the beer in on top of it. We'll see how it...

Yes, I'd definitely be batch priming (got a bottling bucket for that, and the inevitable expansion to bigger fermentors :D) because the potential imprecision of bottle priming rankles my engineering soul. I'll check out that calculator, and the one I remember seeing mentioned a dozen or so pages...

I've got some very good honey that I'm trying to use in various applications - when bottling, does anyone have an idea what the conversion from the Mr. Beer recommended measure of priming sugar to honey be?

Just an update - noted that the bubbling in the airlock had significantly slowed, so I took a reading - SG is at 1.018. Sample still had a noteable cider flavor, but fairly dry, very nice tart finish. I'll give it another week before I test again, if the airlock activity has stopped.