The extra months its been in the bottle have mellowed it out even more, wife's comment was something along the lines of "this is freaking delicious"
I think I'm gonna bottle on Sunday... My next batch will be a "pure" I think. Just water, local honey, and yeast.
Yeast forms a must at the bottom, I dump it out when I'm done filling. There might be SOME yeast that gets in, but very little due to using a Better Bottle.
A neat little trick I learned is throwing some finely ground Irish Moss into the must. Irish Moss is a beer clarifier, and works great on mead as well. Helps get alot of the crud out in the first stages for brewing. Nice bottles, I only have standard 5 gallon carboys. Getting ready to brew some orange mead - use fresh squeezed orange juice instead of water, and orange blossom honey. Makes a wicked sweet sack.
0.994 seems to be my final specific gravity with this batch. Comes out VERY hot. Not great to drink warm, much better chilled.
Tried my hand at a honey mead recently for the first time, and just bottled it last night. Here's what I used: 5 lb honey 3 gal water 1 sliced orange ¾ cup of sliced grapes 2 tablespoon ground cinnamon 7” stem worth of rosemary leaves 3 sliced and peeled chunks of ginger root 1” long ¾ oz (21g) Fleischmann’s bread yeast Just did a small batch as a test. I should have used cinnamon sticks instead of ground but the taste will still be there. The bread yeast I read works fine although makes it a little sweeter. It'll be a many months before I see how it came out but feedback is welcome. Tasted fine being bottled although was surprised that the specific gravity measured no alcohol after more than two weeks in the carboy. It was still emitting gases though throughout that period and bubbles were still formed on the orange bits when it was finally bottled. Maybe it's a much slower fermenting process than beer brewing?
Although it'll be many months until I get to try the results I thought it would be fun to pop labels on the experiments as they come along. Thoughts? By the way I hate the new photobucket format. What a pain in the ass. I'm getting old and I don't like change.
Oh sorry, I didn't follow up with this. I only kept it in the carboy for two weeks before bottling. I'll take that advice and go a full month next round. Thanks!
Got a hydrometer question here that is completely puzzling me. I popped a mead bottle quite early for it's sitting period last night. It's gravity measured the same as regular water, so I figured it ended up being just about alcohol free. However it had good fizz and was super tasty so I had a few during and after our NGNG event. Four 22oz 'ers later, was knocked on my ass and had a blackout. Normally I get the same effect after about 18+ Coors Lights within the same period of time of about four hours as comparison. So... any input on what's going on here? Upon measuring I spun all the bubbles off so it sank appropriately. Just writing this I've had two 22's within 20min and feeling the effects I would normally feel after a dozen or so brews. But it's still reading 0% on the hydrometer. This is kind of directed at Dhim with his experience. Not sure how else to accurately measure what I've got here. Perplexing.
Let me get this straight, you have created a drink with no measurable alcohol, that tastes good, and knocks you out like some supercharged beer. I would call that winning at life, since the dawn of time generations of mankind have strived for what you have done. Congratulations, enjoy your nectar of the gods!! There might be an issue with the hydrometer, what model are you using?
You are misunderstanding the hydrometer. You have to compare your original gravity against your final gravity to get the alcohol content. The hydrometer isn't measuring alcohol. It is measuring the buoyancy of the wort/mead based on the solids present. At the beginning, it will be high to show how much fermentable sugars are present. As the yeast does its work eating the sugars, the gravity will go down as there are fewer solids present. The yeast is eating the solids (fermentable sugars) and pissing out alcohol and farting out Carbon Dioxide as waste products (which the hydrometer can not read). There are calculators available online if you have your original gravity and final gravity readings that will tell you the ABV. So, for example, if your original gravity was a 1.095 and your final gravity is a 1.000 (i.e. the same as water), you will have an ABV of 12.6% alcohol (pretty freaking stout).
Ah thanks Grim. Seems I've never read this right then. So without repeating the recipe to get that initial reading to compare, there's no way to tell what the ABV is now?
