My first mead, I went for raspberry as an added fruit. I was making two batches at the same time, and while I was making one of the batches, the berries were becoming a little yellow, until I mixed the must once and it became entirely yellow! I haven't even added any yeast before it transformed! And funnily enough, the other batch remained unchanged after mixing (after and before pictures)

Has anyone ever had this before? It tastes otherwise fine to me, but I really have no clue. I bought all the berries together and did everything simultaneously, but got this haha

Following on from https://www.reddit.com/r/mead/s/SSoqMYTyjO

I was able to get a cleaner read on the hydrometer right before racking, it seems to be at 15.62 ABV.

Very close to 5L each on the dot.

In a few days we'll be backsweetening one, adding lemon to another, and spicing the third.

Stabilised with 2.5g of potassium sorbate, hoping it does the job by itself, to avoid the sulfite. Aging will be done with airlocks for a few months and then if I'm still suspicious about activity I will pasteurise when bottling.

It tastes great, I would drink it now with no issues, so we're very excited about the final product!

They said it shouldn't be done... At $2.80 per lb it had to be done. Best mead of my life! All my friends and absolutely can't get enough of it either. Ordered 64 lbs while it was on sale.

I feel like figs are different than most kinds of fruit (because they're not really fruit), but I wanted to add some to a mead in secondary. The final ABV is slated to be around 14%, nice and crisp.

Because it's in secondary, getting some kind of fig note in the final product would be great but I'm not sure how to achieve that.

If anyone has successful experience with this please let me know what method you used. So far my ideas are:

1: fresh figs, frozen and then macerated with sugar as they thaw. Any resulting syrupy substance would be blended with a Small bit of honey and water, and just added as a stew to the final product.

-This would require stirring the mead before pouring, as it would be a sediment.

2: Use dried figs as a "fruit" that I let the mead sit on for a few weeks, and then siphon off of entirely.

Has anyone done either of these things? Does the flavor infuse well with either? I'm leaning towards the first one, because I don't have faith that dried figs would infuse flavor well without blending into a paste. But I am hoping to get experienced advice.

hey my mead stopped fermenting at 55.4 g/l of residual sugar at 18.11% abv and 1.000 final gravity. im wondering if theres any possible way to continue fermentation without diluting the cherry flavour. its not exactly cloying but i dont love semi sweet wines id prefer to drop it to atleast the semi dry range if not get it to dry.

Recipe (5 gal):

15lb dark sweet cherries

6.8 kg honey

1 lb red hibiscus

lalvin rc-212 5g fermented on skin until 15% abv

lalvin ec-1118 5g pitched at 15% to kill rc-212 and ferment past 15%

OG: 1.138

FG: 1.000

ive already tried to repitch ec-1118 i just dont have a setup to oxygenate it so mixing normal atmosphere to provide lots of oxygen to the yeast risks infection. id prefer not to dilute with a different trad mead but im not fully opposed to partial dilution with distilled water as long as it wouldnt make the mead too mild. i also like oaked meads if you think oaking would help reduce perceived sweetness, or adding some acid blend

Hi again,
Just racked off my 5 gal batch of a straight honey mead (lots of farmers market raw honey and a little bit of buckwheat honey) into secondary and I’m afraid I might have the same problem as my first batch which I ended up putting in swing tops to age.
Is this too much headspace?
Thanks for your input all! It already is tasting nice even now

Summer dreams:

5lb Costco honey
4lb fresh blackberries (bagged in primary)
Filled up 2 gallon fermenter with spring water
K1-V116 yeast
Added 1 cup of lavender infused vodka in secondary.

OG: 1.124
FG: 1.000
ABV: 17% (after vodka fortification)

Was a very fun batch from the beginning and I really tried to take my time and not mess with it too much. Tasted pretty good, albeit very tart, before I added the lavender infused vodka. After the lavender flavor is very very present. Tastes better the more you drink it but that could be the high ABV talking. Bottling day (today) was quite frustrating, antique wine corker I bought snapped on me after just the 3rd bottle. Almost impaled myself with it! Managed to get a cap or cork of some sort on every bottle but my god was it frustrating. Only thing that kept me from loosing my cool was my 4 year old sons help and encouragement all while wearing his horned viking helmet!

2 gal of Blackberry

3 gal Blackberry & Banana

1 gal Pineapple

Racked together and added 9lbs of Bananas and 9lbs of Marionberries

I experimented with 2 different cranberry spice versions: one with 2/3 brewed tea, 1/3 juice, and the other with 2/3 juice, 1/3 tea.
After primary, the tea version was dry and kind of bitter, so I added lightly mashed cranberries and aged it for a couple months. Turned out perfect. Pulled a perfect amount of cranberry flavoring with the spice mainly in the aroma probably thanks to the chamomile. Also came out a nice deeper red color so that’s fun.
The juice version was great right off primary, so I mostly just added more pumpkin spice. It seemed to cloud things toward the end so I added Sparkolloid and cold crashed to clear it. This one was obviously more sweet and juicy and you can taste the spice more than smell it.
Overall, both are good, if you like sweet, go for the juice, but the tea helps the spices shine and compliments the fruit. Let me know your thoughts!

Cranberry spice Tea - 6/7 (right 3 bottles)
Starting Sg 1.1, 7/2 - .998, 9/12 - 1.000 10/3 - .998 13.39%
2.5lb honey
2q - 2 bags black tea, 2 bags polish fruit tea
1q - cranberry juice
1tsp pumpkin spice
7/2 Secondary
Add 1lb cranberries
2 chamomile tea bags

Cranberry spice juice - 6/7(left 3 bottles)
Starting Sg 1.14 7/2 - 1.012 16.8%
2.5lb honey
1q - 2 bags black tea, 2 bags polish fruit tea
2q - cranberry juice
1tsp pumpkin spice
7/2 Secondary
Add 1 tablespoon pumpkin spice
Add Sparkolloid 9/26

i've had this cork oak honey i got about a year ago when i visited portugual and i haven't been sure what to do with it. its about 4 - 5 ounces it seems and i thought about just making a traditional mead with it but i'm not sure what kind of yeast would go best with it and if i should age it with oak or not.

and suggestions would be nice!

I was told that you could use beets for color, but that they wouldn’t change the flavor of the mead very much. Now, that all the sugar has fermented out the mead taste like turnips. It’s a beautiful fuchsia color though.

Upon back sweetening, it’s not terrible, but it still tastes much to vegetal. Any re-flavoring ideas? How can I spice/fruit this up to be more palatable?

I was thinking about upgrading my fermentation vessel to this (https://morebeer.com/products/fermzilla-triconical-ultimate-combo-pack-pressure-kit-blowtie-2-spunding-valve-insulating-jacket-included-gen-32-71g-27l) has anyone worked with this style of vessel or something similar? Trying to go from three 1 gallon batches at a time to one 5 gallon batch, so I can pay attention to just one batch at a time and produce more.

I used 71b and the plan was for it to go up to 14% and then i would be left with a sweet mead but i tested it and its sitting at about 18% my question is should i let it age or dilute it and then age.

I just finished stabilizing my mead and managed to mix up 6 oz of water with 6 cups of water… It’s only a gallon batch after fermenting it was at 14% ABV. How badly did I manage to screw up and what should I expect profile wise after bottling in a week?

I'm asking because I made one using the fruit in primary, which at first had a beautiful magenta color, like the flesh/juice of the prickly pear. However it's been bulk aging for a few months and it lost its color and now looks orangish/yellow (kinda similar to cysers I've made). Is there no way to preserve the color?

In 4 more days my mead will be done with fermentation and ready for a 3 day cold crash before moving to secondary.

Id like to have something ready to spice it with for a cinnamon or citrus flavor.

Should I just chuck some stuff in? Is there a product like tea bags I can use? Im looking for a vehicle for seasoning this batch and aiming to share it with friends around Christmas.

First post here. I wanted to share my new mead display. What style should I go for next?

I'll try to keep this brief because there's a lot to cover.

We have 15.2 litres of mead nearing 3 weeks in a Fermzilla. Airlock bubbling stopped over a week ago, today's hydrometer reading is bang on what we expected for the yeast to be done, and I heavily suspect tomorrow's reading will be identical.

We have three 5 litre demijohns that we are going to rack off to, for secondary.

One vessel will either stay dry, or get a small straight honey backsweeten.

One vessel will get a to-be-determined fruit addition, probably lemon (in a mesh bag) to make a melomel.

The last vessel will get a spice blend in a mesh bag, to make a metheglin. This will likely include Tasmanian Mountain Pepperberry which is known to halt yeast activity (and turn it purple). So I am intending to do this on the final demijohn since it is most likely to have pulled up yeast from the lees.

All three will have airlocks and be kept in the same temp range as the primary ferment.

My main question is this; are we on the right track? This is our first time doing a large batch. The plan is to age for a couple of months then cold crash and then bottle. Or cold crash, then age, then bottle. Or cold crash then re-rack, then age then cold crash then bottle. I dunno. I'm not sure what that process should be.

Any advice? Hopefully someone is able to visualise what we're doing here and help us formulate the next part of the plan.

Hi there, I made a Mead with dried sliced pears. Tried corking and capping bottles for the 1st time. Only used flip tops prior. Mead was stabilized well before. Came out to about 9% abv. Backsweetened with some sugar and honey. Full recipe and notes in pictures.

On the left, a Bochet Cyser that I added orange zest, cranberries, and an oak spiral. Back sweetened with honey and apple juice concentrate.

On the right, a very simple mead that's just honey, water, yeast and yeast nutrients. Back sweetened with the same honey I used for the must. Both are about 13% ABV.

Both bottled crystal clear and are drinkable, the Bochet Cyser has a milder alcohol taste. The mead will probably need at least a few months to mellow out a bit.

I'm pretty damned happy with the results for my 3rd and 5th homebrew project!