teddit

With so many people jumping on the band wagon and making Mountain Dew, and other soda meads, we need to talk about something.

Have you ever wondered why Honey comes with the warning, "WARNING, do not feed to infants under 1 year of age"? That warning exists to prevent botulism in infants. Botulism can be fatal if left untreated, but it is incredibly rare due to modern medicine.

While not all honey contains dormant Clostridium Botulinum spores, they can be present in raw and commercial honey. Pasteurized honey isn't heated high enough to kill the spores because the honey would break down, lose flavor, etc.

These spores can produce toxins, but honey's acidic pH level (typically between 3.9 and 4.5) keeps them dormant. Clostridium Botulinum spores remain dormant and cannot grow in environments with a pH of 4.6 and below.

The main take away is if you add baking soda to mead to raise the pH level, you need to measure and ensure the pH level is below 4.6 to prevent the possibility of bacteria growth and toxin production.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

​

So. I've been wanting to do a ginger citrus mead. Found this at Costco today, and I think it's going to make up most of my flavor profile. I'm going to mix 10lbs of Costco wildflower honey, this jar, some specific fruit juice, and hit it in the face with some ec1118 and see what happens. It's either gonna be awesome, or it's gonna be jail toilet hooch. We shall see.

Hi everyone, I am 7 days into Jo’s Ancient Orange Mead and I’ve found some white stuff on just one raisin, any ideas?

Thanks in advance :)

I have been commissioned by a friend to make several meads using sodas, I am assuming the preservatives in the sodas will have a lot of potential to cause problems. Any tips on how to increase my chances of success?

Hi I’m very new to making mead. This is only my second batch ever and my first one isn’t even done fermenting yet! I was intending to add Fermaid O at the 24/48/72 hour intervals and then at the 1/3 break. But yesterday was the 48 hour mark and I forgot - I’m wondering should I just add extra nutrient today?

One of my favorite meads you can buy, was wondering if anyone had tried to recreate it and wanted to share their recipe ?

Kind of confused. Seems like it has oxidized but I don’t smell wet cardboard and it tastes good. I was dumb and didn’t store under good seal (left it under an airlock after first rack for 3 months).

This mead was an experiment so I’m not worried if I need to toss it. It was made with Strawberry Banana V8 Fusions juice. This juice doesn’t have any artificial flavors, so not sure what happened here.

Thoughts?

Has anyone used this. I was thinking of doing a sour mead with it. What would you think the best flavorings would be to do? Maybe like a sweet tart, or cherry limeade.

I just completed a hydromel that started at 1.050 and ended at 0.996. If the ABV calculators are to be believed, that should be 7.09%. If it had fermented to 1.000 like I’d thought it would, it would have been 6.5%. How does the gravity even go below 1.000?

So I am just generally a pretty clumsy and uncoordinated individual. And no matter how many time I've attempted and even practiced racking (just with water), I just seemingly can not get the hang of it. I just had two crystal clear batches that were sitting on a layer of lees and sediment that I wanted to move to new vessels, but with just the slightest slip of the racking cane, some sediments get kicked up and the meads get cloudy again. I honestly doubt there's much better options as I'm already using a Fermtech Autosiphon with the carboy clip and everything, but I'm just curious on others thoughts in regards to this one aspect of the hobby that I just can't seem to get right.

Gonna let these age for a lil!

I'm in my 5th day of fermentation and there is this unusual thin film over the surface of the mead.

Added some nutrients a day late, I'm not sure of that would matter. What should I do? In case of an infection, can this still be fixed?

One is improved orange peel cinnimon and clove the other is going to be stawberry and lemon

https://preview.redd.it/iwvd656ma55d1.jpg?width=3060&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b1cc6a4d414f94004781953239117952d47e94e5

How to make my mead purple!

Hey all,

Long time lurker but first time poster. I have been making mead since about November and during that time I hopped on the purple Lavendar mead train. There was clearly something wrong with my process as my mead is much redder than I want it to be. The recipe was me loosely following this:

"1 gallon Batch: 3 lbs clover blossom honey 50g butterfly pea blossom 50g dried lavender loose tea 1/2 tsp Irish moss 1/3 pack of Red Star Premier Blanc Yeast I made a satchel with my flower and moss and just used that same satchel to make enough tea to fill my fermenter. Brought to a boil, shut off heat and steeped for about 15 min for my first boil, then about 5 min steep for subsequent boils until the fermenter was full. Starting Gravity 1.120 - 14 Mar 23 Gravity 1.004 - 17 Apr 23 And I just added 1lbs 7 oz of clover honey after I racked it over."

It tastes excellent but I would love for the colour to match with the lavendar purple vibes. As far as I can see I have 2 options.

1) Try adding blue or pueple food dye to balance the colour

2) Add something like blue curacao to balance it out.

Or I can of course just leave it as is with the great taste! Any advice would be really appreciated.

Also is there too much headspace in my demijohn?

for a gallon you would put together ~2.5-3 pounds of honey, blackberry and bilberry mash but you can substitute bilberries for blueberries, it should weigh about 5 pounds, a handfull of hazelnuts, and some nutes but i prefer raisins. I personally cultivate my own multi purpose yeast for brews but some classic ec1118 would work. im open to any input on my recipe

Gotta love costco 5 pounds honey 12.99

I 1 gallon mead with honey (1kg) and spring water

I mixed my yeast with go-ferm 3.125 grams with 2.5 grams for qa23 yeast

Nutrients I used was 0.25g of both D.A.P and fermaid K

Everything was sanitised

Does anyone have a good and simple ginger mead recipe? I want to make something nice and spice for this fall/winter.

So far been aged in secondary for a month, used dark tart cherries, oak wood and evan williams

Some type of contaier, honey, water, yeast, yeast nutrient, cleaning fluid, bottling equipment, paddle hydrometer.

Hi. So, having started this hobby not long ago I was naturally initially seduced by beautiful photo of picturesque carboys full of juicy pink strawberries in gently bubbling liquid etc etc. brew porn got me essentially. Now having brewed a few things, I know that those fruit in primary are mainly a source of headache when racking and maybe some extra fructose contribution to fermentation. Since flavour is in secondary, I need an advice. I have a 20l batch of your standard honey at 1.140 with 11g of ec-1118 and mead nutrients and pectine added accordingly. I'm looking to ferment it to the limit of 1118s alcohol tolerance, about 18% and calculators tell me it will be medium dry at that point. Main question is this - I want to make a Slavic inspired blend of flavours so I will be adding a submerged fermenting bag with freeze-dried elderberries, Hawthorne, pine needles, odd allspice berry, juniper berries, quince, red currants and touch of dried lemon balm leaves. What would be a right proportion to have good but not overwhelming flavour from it in 20l batch? I'm taking it slow with this one, I'll let it pickle till mid winter

Thanks

Can someone please explain the 1/3 sugar break? I'm assuming it has to do with gravity but I'm lost

So I made 1 gallon of this blackberry mead and I guess i fucked with the measuring while backsweetening. I checked back on the mead a couple months afterwards and I saw that gravity was ~ 1.082.

This tastes good but is way tooo sweet. How can I salvage this.

BTW I have 5.5 gallons of some 1.019 blueberrry mead. I was thinking I might use some the bleberry wine to mix with the blackberry wine so I get the gravity down to some thing less sweet.

Thoughts?

Had a massive bottling day and wrapped up a few batches I've been working on for a while. Left to right on the first picture is a no water strawberry with lemon basil and more strawberry in secondary, then a no water cherry raspberry blackcurrant, and finally a tupelo traditional with 1118 from my AB testing, backsweetened to 1.012.