Hi there, I remembered I'd subscribed to this forum more than 10 years ago, now I'm back as I was fishing for recipes to try.
I'm from Greece and have been brewing mead for 10 years, primarily Bochet after watching the classic Crazy Mead Company video, but also traditional meads, and JAOM. I guess things have moved on a bit but I haven't. Now I got a couple of 12L buckets on order to do some cherry+vanilla melomels. Would also like to try a wheat braggot one of these days.
Over here we have primarily thyme honey - which is excellent quality but quite strong/heavy-tasting for mead compared with more neutral sweet honey like Acacia - some pine and spruce honey which I don't like to use in my meads as I find it leaves a bitter aftertaste, and they're all quite expensive. I do my Bochets with cheap "all-flower" honey, which is blended and pretty thin-tasting but I don't care much as it all airs out with caramelizing it.
I'm fairly poor when it comes to equipment, started with four 5L carboys and 4 airlocks and now I have three after one slipped from my hands and smashed years ago, I've also never bought sanitizer since my first time buying stuff, but I'm a biochemist by training and never had a mead go sour on me after counting at least 30 fermentations under my belt. Also use only bread yeast from the supermarket and a squeeze of orange, and slices of pear in primary in all my meads pretty much as I am never organised enough to get nutrient, they all get to 9-10% which is just fine for me! Oh, I've also made a lot of lemon + ginger mead, carbonated after primary in plastic water bottles (because I'm cheap, disorganised, and not keen on having loads of stuff lying around needing washing and storing).
Happy to be here again!
I'm from Greece and have been brewing mead for 10 years, primarily Bochet after watching the classic Crazy Mead Company video, but also traditional meads, and JAOM. I guess things have moved on a bit but I haven't. Now I got a couple of 12L buckets on order to do some cherry+vanilla melomels. Would also like to try a wheat braggot one of these days.
Over here we have primarily thyme honey - which is excellent quality but quite strong/heavy-tasting for mead compared with more neutral sweet honey like Acacia - some pine and spruce honey which I don't like to use in my meads as I find it leaves a bitter aftertaste, and they're all quite expensive. I do my Bochets with cheap "all-flower" honey, which is blended and pretty thin-tasting but I don't care much as it all airs out with caramelizing it.
I'm fairly poor when it comes to equipment, started with four 5L carboys and 4 airlocks and now I have three after one slipped from my hands and smashed years ago, I've also never bought sanitizer since my first time buying stuff, but I'm a biochemist by training and never had a mead go sour on me after counting at least 30 fermentations under my belt. Also use only bread yeast from the supermarket and a squeeze of orange, and slices of pear in primary in all my meads pretty much as I am never organised enough to get nutrient, they all get to 9-10% which is just fine for me! Oh, I've also made a lot of lemon + ginger mead, carbonated after primary in plastic water bottles (because I'm cheap, disorganised, and not keen on having loads of stuff lying around needing washing and storing).
Happy to be here again!
