So, I've only brewed a few batches of mead before, mostly following the JAO recipe (minus the orange for reasons that still escape me, but it still turned out pretty decent).... This year, I got a ton and a half of apples and a 6-gallon carboy! So, the plan is to make an apple cider tea kinda flavored mead (cyser, I guess it's called?).
First, I would like to primary ferment in a carboy, since it's clear and will allow me to see exactly where my brewing cakes end up (a friend who did a few batches of beer played hell with keeping the gunk out), and avoid them with the transfer hose when it goes into the secondary fermenter... Also, I did my very first modified JAO in the plastic water jug, but the second batch I did in an empty glass gallon wine jug and found that it had a "cleaner" (for lack of a better term) taste..... Is there any particular reason brewers tend to use plastic buckets for their primary and then a carboy for secondary, besides the cost of 6-gallon glass containers (and of course the clean-up)?
Second, I've got a very makeshift recipe in my head, but always welcome other input! I plan to use about 10-20 apples (they're small apples) depending on how "full" it looks, some (I think I got 6 or 8 tea bags' worth) apple cider tea, 5lbs raw honey, maybe a bit of white sugar, depending on the flavor of the precursor... Any other fruits I should be looking into? Was thinking maybe a few cherries or white grapes for a bit of a palate tickle?
Finally, computing bottles for the end product is a bit confusing... I plan to bottle into 12oz beer bottles, but exactly how many oz does a 12oz bottle hold, if one leaves an inch, give or take, in the neck? Is it 12oz to "full", or 12oz to the cap? Further, from 6gal, approximately how much is waste? By the raw numbers, in a perfect world, I'm looking at 64 bottles per 6gal, but thanks to the laws of physics, it's going to compute differently.... I guess what I really need is, is the waste from 6gal going to equal the inch in the neck of 64x 12oz bottles, give or take?
Thanks!
First, I would like to primary ferment in a carboy, since it's clear and will allow me to see exactly where my brewing cakes end up (a friend who did a few batches of beer played hell with keeping the gunk out), and avoid them with the transfer hose when it goes into the secondary fermenter... Also, I did my very first modified JAO in the plastic water jug, but the second batch I did in an empty glass gallon wine jug and found that it had a "cleaner" (for lack of a better term) taste..... Is there any particular reason brewers tend to use plastic buckets for their primary and then a carboy for secondary, besides the cost of 6-gallon glass containers (and of course the clean-up)?
Second, I've got a very makeshift recipe in my head, but always welcome other input! I plan to use about 10-20 apples (they're small apples) depending on how "full" it looks, some (I think I got 6 or 8 tea bags' worth) apple cider tea, 5lbs raw honey, maybe a bit of white sugar, depending on the flavor of the precursor... Any other fruits I should be looking into? Was thinking maybe a few cherries or white grapes for a bit of a palate tickle?
Finally, computing bottles for the end product is a bit confusing... I plan to bottle into 12oz beer bottles, but exactly how many oz does a 12oz bottle hold, if one leaves an inch, give or take, in the neck? Is it 12oz to "full", or 12oz to the cap? Further, from 6gal, approximately how much is waste? By the raw numbers, in a perfect world, I'm looking at 64 bottles per 6gal, but thanks to the laws of physics, it's going to compute differently.... I guess what I really need is, is the waste from 6gal going to equal the inch in the neck of 64x 12oz bottles, give or take?
Thanks!