I read several recipes and talked with people at my local brew shop and thought I had a pretty good idea of how to make my first batch of mead but after I've already got it going I'm now over thinking and wondering if I did it wrong. Currently I'm making 1 gallon and have mixed 3 pounds of honey with the water to make up a gallon as I want it on the sweeter side. I was instructed to …
I am relatively new to the world of personal home brewing. I have always gravitated towards mead and my next venture ought to be distilling some. I've read through lots of articles and threads on the topic and to no end have I found something agreed upon on the issue. Every other spirit has its own category based on its original ingredient, the process, or a slice of historical origin. Why on earth has distilled honey ferment not have a …
fermenting a bochet, I dropped a bluetooth hydrometer in the must and started with a gravity reading of 1.128. Pitched lalvin EC-1118, and over a day the gravity has gone up to 1.144. I've heard that if your yeast is active enough, it can physically push your hydrometer up, and throw your reading off. However, would that not mean that I should have some visible airlock activity? I'm also quite sure my airlock is working properly - the fermenter is …
I’ve made ginger beer a few times. I usually make it with just fresh ginger and raw honey. Usually the I get well less than 2% ABV. This last week though I used a different honey, sourced from a farm, it was really raw and had a distinctly wild honey smell. After making the cordial and allowing to cool I mixed with water in my brewing vesseI and used 12g ~ 0.42 oz of bakers yeast, I made roughly 6GAL …
How prominent might I expect the flavors of honey to be, if used as a priming element for beer? I am thinking about it in terms of an all-grain pale ale variation, perhaps with honey or biscuit malt for the flavoring element, instead of crystal... And let's also presume some quality honey, not the supermarket mass-produced stuff.
I created a lemon/ginger/carrot mead and started with SG 1.120. I used a mead calculator (https://gotmead.com/blog/the-mead-calculator/) to factor in the sugars in the carrot. However, the fermentation got stuck and the SG was 1.002 — completely dry. I expected the yeast to eat the shredded carrot, but alas, yeast are not piranhas; they have no teeth. I added one pound of honey (and 1/2 tbsp. Fermax and 1 tbsp. calcium carbonate) and stirred. It is bubbling once again but how …
I have made one Brewferm beer before (the Grand Cru which turned out very well) and in an attempt to run before I could walk, when I came to make the other one I had (the Abdijbier) I thought it would be nice to replicate a buckwheat honey beer I had in Poland, so decided to exchange some of the sugar added at the fermentation stage for buckwheat honey. I replaced about 1/3 - 1/4 of the sugar with honey …
I am making Honey Mead for the first time soon, I will try making 2 1 gallon jugs. I have everything I need (Jugs, siphon, DAP, red star wine yeast, honey, sanitizer, carboy), but I want to make a sweet mead with about 15% ABV when fermentation is done. My yeast will survive up to 18% and I don't want to add chemicals to get them to stop at 13-15%. But I also want the mead to stay sweet afterwards. …
I may be able to source enough raw honey to make a batch of mead from it. Are there any special concerns that I need to be aware of? If I don't boil it, should I use campden tablets to control any wild yeast and/or bacteria?
Is it possible to get a useful starting gravity reading when not everything is dissolved or suspended, but you know it ultimately will be? Some context: In my pre-hydrometer days, I made a few cysers / honey ciders that really only amounted to apple juice, honey, and yeast. I never was able to get the honey to fully dissolve, it just went straight to the bottom and sat there, silently mocking me. After initially being concerned, I RDWHAHB'd, figuring the …
I have a mead in secondary right now. It's been there for about three weeks. It spent two weeks in primary. I was given the impression from my source material (The Compleat Meadmaker by Ken Schramm) and limited experience that it would clarify in about a month. It's my first 5 gal batch and I wasn't planning to age it for months on end in the carboy, simply bottle it when it cleared because I want to make a sparkling …
This is rather my first time doing a mead. It has been a month since i put it up for fermentation. Its been locked in a relatively stable temperature and totally dark enviroment. Today, after a full month, I opened it up to check on it and the fermenting has stopped. I have dead yeast at the bottom of the containter, and the mead is clear. But, the part that is troubling me is that along the neck i have …
I'm trying to figure out the best way to go about adding more honey to my honey ale. I recently purchased the White House Honey Ale kit from Northern Brewer and I'm seeing several reviews saying the honey flavor doesn't come through very well. It's a 1 gallon brew kit and has no secondary fermentation. When/how would I go about adding more honey without the concern of the yeast just turning it into alchohol and leaving behind none of the …
I made a honey ale recently which resulted in a beer with a rather bitter/sour(?) taste instead of the honey finish I was hoping for. Since I added the honey just before the yeast I was wondering if it could be that all the sugar in the honey actually got processed by the yeast leaving only the other parts in the beer thus resulting in the described flavour or at least for the "sour" part. Since I never made this …
I have this great mulberry syrup I found. I want to prime with it, and I forget how to figure this out with an unknown sugar source. I see that John Palmer's "How to Brew" references measuring the gravity of honey (a variable ingredient) to figure out priming rates in How to Brew, but he mentions you could dilute it and measure it with your hydrometer. So, say you have some awesome backyard beekeeper's honey or other lovely sticky stuff …
So I went to my local homebrew store to purchase a an "Aussie honey lager" extract kit but they were out of stock. The friendly man behind the counter helped me to re-create this kit by checking their files for what came in this kit. This is what I got: "Beermakers" lager extract kit 1.7kg tin "Beer kit converter" pack for making lagers, consisting of a 1kg bag of powder (a mix of maltose, dextrose, maltodextrin, malted barley) and a …
I have a dunkel recipe and I wanted to know if I could simply add honey to the wort making process to add flavor and raise the OG. I am not planning to take anything out as substitution. Are there any problems I could face with this? Will the yeast be fine?
I'm using 16oz amber e-z cap bottles (swing tops). I've read that they'll self-vent before exploding, but I've heard other accounts of them actually exploding. I'm storing them like this and it's been a week since bottling. I've been meaning to vent them a few days ago but forgot and tonight when I went to vent them I barely touched the swing top mechanism and it blew off (very loud, like warm champagne) and started gushing. I pressed the top …
A bit of background: This is my second beer batch. My first beer batch turned out well as an Irish Stout, using the Midwest Brewing kit and recipie I just started a White House Honey Ale I'm currently brewing a White House Honey Ale using this kit. I started this brew a week ago, 4/21, and opened it up for the first time today. I used dry yeast per the recipe. I have the following observations and questions: There is …