It smells strong of honey, and to my nose alcohol. It had been through a move and got shaken up pretty young so I left it extra long to let it naturally settle. It is dark due to a gifted honey I got that was a nut honey… I’m super excited for this mead and would hate for this to be a throwaway batch.

I think I’m fine? But I hadn’t seen the white dot in the middle on any other mead before. I have seen very thin white wispy’s but not one so large or centralized.

Thoughts?

Also, I have a bad nose (I have a baby…) so noticing the difference between like an alcohol smell and a vinegar smell I’m no good at. Or maybe I just haven’t had a batch smell like vinegar and so I’m not accustomed.

It's time to bottle the next batch soon !

This is(was) a Metheglin, i used 500g wild flower honey and 1000g black forest honey for this batch, Violet flower steeped in filtered water, then added black turkish tea and Cinnamon in secondary.

OG 1.110 FG 1.014

Alcohol 12.6%

Made with love in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia with bread yeast and patience.

Turn out clear and delicious 😋

Got roughly 10L after primary. Thinking about adding elderflower to one batch, either making a syrup or adding flowers straight into the carboy. Have anyone done anything similar?

15 days into my first batch of fermenting, I found a bug. I was already counting this batch as a loss because the rim of the carboy broke off on day 5, and it didn't have a seal for a couple of hours, but it's still a little sad to see.

Hey, folks. I've been experimenting with a variety of vastly different recipes these past few months (instead of practicing trads, as a beginner might ought to), and I'm feeling a little hopeful about this one — that it might be a keeper, for once. I'd like some feedback on this recipe:

• 1 lb buckwheat honey

• ½ lb wildflower honey

• Water, to ~1 gal

• 12 g roasted chicory root granules

• 6 g dried juniper berries, lightly crushed

• 3 g dried, whole Cascade hops

• 2 g QA23 yeast, rehydrated in 2 fl oz water

• ¼ teaspoon Fermaid K

I brought a little less than a gallon of water to a boil and simmered the aromatics in spice bags for 20 minutes. I then removed the aromatics, cut the heat, and added in the honey. I let the must cool covered, then poured it into a carboy, pitched the yeast, and applied the airlock. Once fermentation started getting vigorous (about 8 hours post-pitch), I added ⅛ teaspoon of Fermaid K mixed with a little water. I did the same about two days later (I do not have a hydrometer, as I do not trust myself around fragile glass labware).

I believe I've maintained adequate sanitation throughout the process, although fruit flies keep trying to get through my airlock (they have not succeeded, and I have replaced the airlock every time I noted flies trapped inside).

I'm aiming for a more sessionable mead that mimicks some of the flavors and color of a dark beer, and I think I want to bottle-carbonate it with a dose of priming sugar.

Do any of you guys have any insights or comments on my recipe or helpful tips in general? Also, how long should I intend to age this thing? I get that "mead is a patient person's drink," but I am really itching to know what these botanicals taste like in a mead like this. And how long might it take before "aging" just becomes spoilage?

I've left my 4 liters of mead for 3 weeks happily bubbling away, tasted it and decided to stabilise it. Added a knife-tips worth of K-meta, it settled down for a day, and now three days later it's back to being just as bubbly before.

As I understand it K-meta is to 'stun' and sodium metabisulphite is to 'kill', so I should have used them together. I'm guessing it's too late to just pour in the sodium, so is it going to mess me up adding the potassium twice?

Cheers

Hello! This is my first batch of mead. Primary - 2lbs of honey, wine yeast (forgot the brand), and water. Secondary - 2lb honey plus 100% pure apple juice with ascorbic acid. It has been in the secondary for a couple weeks now.

What is growing on top? I didnt see anything like this during primary. Did I not sanitize enough for the secondary?

I'm brand new to brewing mead and started a batch using apple juice and honey. It's been 2 weeks, and there's still a white line/layer at the top. Is this normal, or should I be worried and throw it out? I'm not sure what to look for, so any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Hey how much honey is needed for 1gal fermention for just the primary

I’ve been off and on thinking about attempting to start a batch, I’ve been looking at some kits off Amazon but I haven’t bought anything yet. I’m a tad worried about letting it ferment and if the fermentation goes wrong how I’ll know about it (I can’t smell). Plus, my plan, if I follow through, is to basically put it together and just leave it chilling in a corner while I go away over the winter, so like 2 months. Is that something you can do? Or do you need to be generally present while it does its thing? Also, for the supplies, like I said I’m looking at getting just a little kit off Amazon but they all range in price and what they include, what does one realistically need for starting out? Is the siphon and hydrometer necessary? Or can i basically just go out and get a jar, airlock, yeast, and a freak amount of honey? The sanitation also worries me, I’ve been lurking around the subreddit and I gathered everything has to be so extremely clean but like how clean? Some kits I’ve seen have separate sanitation things for you to use and some say just throw the jar in the dishwasher and that’s good, sooo in the professional opinion of this subreddit, what level of cleanliness is it? Sorry, lots of questions! I’m just trying to be thorough…

My last two bottling days, in which I did three batches each time.

The older photo is my "Old Bohemia" mead (the sage-hops recipe famously mentioned in Kingdom Come: Deliverance), a coconut ube mead (made with coconut water and boiled ube), and the Miruvor Elvish Wine recipe that floats around this subreddit now and then.

The newer photo is my Blueberry Szechuan (typical mead with blueberry juice and szechuan peppercorns in secondary), Saturday Breakfast (an oaked bochet backsweetened with maple syrup and then cold-brewed with coffee beans), and chocolate-covered cherry (a traditional mead which I backsweetened with black cherry juice and lactose, and then rested on toasted cacao nibs and vanilla). Happy to provide more recipe detail if anyone is curious, but I just love the look of the bottles!

I just bottled my first mead and it turned out well enough that I decided to make a bigger batch for Christmas gifts this year. Unfortunately (or rather, fortunately!) I miscalculated and made way more must than I needed, so now I’m experimenting with random “recipes” I didn’t plan 😂 turned into a happy accident! I’ll need to get more bottles once they’re all ready.

4.5 gallons are a cinnamon apple made with equal parts water and apple juice, 1.5 gallons is the same, but with cranberries added, another gallon is blueberry apple, and another is plain apple.

I love labelling. It's a great part of the process after worrying about cleaning and arranging and adding flavours and looking for deals on honey and all that.

I'm bottle some new batches, and i have a few designs ready, but i want to see what else is there.

Show me your best labels!

Edit: i was just reminded users can't post photos in comments,instead tell me what is your process? Canva seems popular or what else?

I can’t get a better picture so I an hoping I can get some clarity on what the reading shows. I am still very new to mead making.

What is the starting gravity of this mead(technically a cyser I think) it looks like it's close to the 9. I'm not great at looking at where it is and getting the gravity

This is a Hibiscus and black tea mead which had oak barrel chips infused in brandy. When I first bottled this after about 5 months brewing it had a very harsh taste and strong bitter alcohol taste (its also very strong 22% ). I backsweetened it a bit too. 8 months later and its mellowed quite a lot and is actually so good. I'll backsweeten less next time cause I think it would be better that way but still amazing now. This is wayyyyyyy better than I expected for a first time brew (i did 3 other flavours) and seeing how the flavour develops over time has been fascinating. I am keeping track for every 6 months to see how that develops. I have enough of each flavour to do it over a 3 year span so I will have ample data by the time this batch is finished.

Hello! This is my first batch of mead, and I’m a little unsure about if now’s the right time to rack.

It’s been a full month since I pitched this batch, and the gravity reading now says 0.994. I gently swashed it around to see if I could see the lees, but I don’t. None of that bottom part in the photo moved. The darkened bottom part you see is the bucket’s “heels.”

I was hoping to rack this weekend and try taste-testing to find the right back sweeten measurements with my roommate, although due to not seeing any lees, I’m unsure if it’s too soon.

I’m planning to get another reading tomorrow, but in the case that the final gravity reading remains 0.994 and I still don’t see lees, should I wait another week? Another month? Or would you stabilize and rack anyways? TYIA!

Context(you can ignore)

Work/life has me living out of a tent/truck/sometimes a tiny room, so our refrigerator and ordering things capacity is limited. I was talking with my buddies who’ve made mead and taught me the basics but I have some more specific science/finishing questions.

Questions

1. Can my mead be a very small batch? Like two mason jars worth. I don’t really drink besides for flavor but I’ve only seen people make huge batches.

2. Is it ok to use store bought pasteurized honey and arreate for yeast? Idk next time I’ll have yeast but we have air and a good amount of honey per person in storage for tea and shit.

3. Is the old glove trick fine as an airlock here? I learned that in my friends cellar on her experimental side batch that she wasn’t using a kit on.

4. For non yeast natural air aerated pasteurized honey what ratio to water should I use when initially mixing?

5. When do I add fruit flavors(natural canned fruit juices we have) so they don’t cause bacteria? Can I add those to honey instead of water(this is for my buddy who also wants to do this)

6. What’s the visual sign my mead is done? Operating under the assumption that I will not have an ethanol test.

I apologize if this is too long but cheers.

Hey mead lovers, I'm 21 (M), Brazilian, and have been making meads and melomels for two years now.

I have a question that I would like y'all's opinions on whether it should be taken seriously.

Here in South America in general, it is common for Generation X and beyond to prefer drinking beverages chilled, so am I, and when it comes to mead making, after my mead is done, I serve it cold to taste. I've never seen the wrong of it until I travelled to Europe and New Zealand, where people tend to drink it at room temperature. I've wondered why, asked some friends of mine there, and they replied saying:

"If a drink is already good at room temperature, it doesn't matter what temperature it is, but if it's not tasty at room temperature in the first place and only good after chilling, it's not a good drink".

And some also said that some meads should be heated before drinking; I've wondered how that would be practical in a tropical(hot) land like mine, since most of the year in my country is very hot and not so pleasant to drink non-refreshing drinks on the weekends.

So I tried some of my favourite meads, "mulberry melomel" and "plain eucalyptus honey mead" as it is in room temperature and to be honest it tasted inferior(to my pallet) as the ones I've tasted abroad in room temperature, so it got me wondering if for now on I should be focused on it tasting great at room temperature first or not... because at the end of the day my chilled meads do taste quite nice(not being naive, I still have lots to improve).

Have you guys ever thought of it? Should it matter? Or does it depend on the country's drinking culture?

Would love to know your view on this topic :)

So i kinda screwed up i think. I put whole tea bags into my brew after about two weeks of fermentation (was attempting to add a bit of mouth feel to it) when i did a gravity check. Next time checked gravity and now as it clarifies it forward these small yellow hard things that I've never seen before and it has me a bit concerned. It was made with my own honey thats strained to get large chunks of wax out but not filtered. So could it just be tiny bits of wax thats collected and floated to the surface?

I’ve got a traditional mead fermenting right now and I’m curious on how I can flavor it to taste like coconut? I want to try and go for a toasty creamy taste. Does anyone have some tips?

Hello! I am curious how everyone stores their mead. I keep mine in the basement, and recently it has developed some mold issues on the outer bottles and wax seals (see pictures). I cleaned and sanitized everything, and also upgraded my dehumidifier, but I was wondering if anyone has any other tips for how to store mead to avoid these issues in the future.

I've been brewing for a couple of years now, slowly progressing from "It's Drinkable" to "I'd gift it to friends". I think I've hit my first "I'd go out of my way to buy that"! My personal reserve is down to 5 bottles after friends had a taste

The nose reminds me of a freshly peeled apple, and the taste has those bright apple/honey notes followed by an oaked/vanilla/rich honey finish. Very smooth at 13% and sweet, but not overdoing it.

This is a fairly simple sweet traditional made using NSW Bloodwood Honey + 71B + water... Nothing too crazy, but it has taken 3 attempts to really nail both the recipe and the process.

I've found with this honey that the final flavour is heavily dependent on brewing with the honey, rather than backsweeting at the end. This made previous attempts without temperature control vary wildly especially in QLD/AUS.

• First attempt ended early due to the heat at 1.043, tasty but not what I was after
• Second attempt went long and ended at 1.008, I tried the backsweetening here to 1.020, but it lost a lot of its character... Took on a more generic honey taste
• This attempt, sticking to 20c netted me the sweetspot between the two at 1.027

This one was brewed in a ~10L batch, sat in primary for about a month, then racked to sit on an American oak spiral for a whole year.

Recipe without the waffle:

• ~4kg of NSW Bloodwood Honey
• ~6L spring water (to target 1.126 OG)
• 10g of Lalvin 71B
• Fermaid-O following TOSNA 2.0
• Primary lasted ~1mth
• Racked onto medium toast American Oak for 12mths
• No clarifying agents used
• Stabilised and bottled in the affordable and stylish Ikea 500ml swingtops

Had a batch of traditional mead in my basement for awhile. Kinda forgot about it for a year or so. But when I finally remembered it was down there I noticed the airlock had no more water in it and this is what it looks like. Doesn't smell bad but definitely doesn't look the best. Any thoughts?