Mead help

[Brewaholic]

Hi guys thinking about making some mead myself my mate has bees and will give me 25 kilos of honey i was thinking of using turbo yeast as for distilling washes it has nutrient in it and will brew up 2 around 16-20% then i will clear it and distill it into a honey vodka havnt done it before so any tips would be great!

[KEG]

honey vodka sounds AWESOME! keep us posted

[corks]

well paint me green and call me gumby...honey vodka, if only...

[dragonphoenix73]

Its been almost 3 weeks, and themead is still bubbling away happily. Took a reading today, will take another on monday.

I was thinking of throwing the spices in the primary, coz there doesn't appear to be an end to this stage of fermentation - but I dont want to fiddle with the wonderful process thus far. Based on what the reading is on Monday, I will decide what steps to take.

Personally, I'm happy for it to sit and do its thing for as long as it takes...

Does anyone know whether opening up the barrela nd throwing the spices in whilst still fermenting will do?

Tastes very strong - according to calculations, its only a little over 10% currently.

I also had an idea, but it needs further investigation: when it comes time to bottle, to bulk prime with some more honey - the idea is to sweeten and thicken it when it goes in the bottle (I'm not after carbonation, more of a wine...). Any thoughts on this?

[anthony]

I would leave adding the spices till you rack - that way you can rack into your sanitised spiced liquid. Also, adding the honey to the bottle would give you carbonation and a sparkling wine.

I am planning my second mead with 6 kgs of yellowbox honey and intending to do the primary ferment without spices and then rack onto spices and maybe lemon juice to provide a small amount of fermentable to purge the secondary of oxygen.

Anybody got a good recipe that's worked a treat?

I am thinking maybe a 20 cloves, half a dozen lemons juices and zested, and a couple of sticks of cinnamon. Boil these and throw them straight into the secondary and rack onto the lot.

[dragonphoenix73]

We opened up one of the bottle of Mead today.

For those who came in late.... this was brewed in April (4+ weeks), and then bottled in early May.

After 7 months, it has lost most of the turps flavour it had 3 months ago, and there is some very minor bubble action, which I'm putting towards the champagne yeast I used. I'm hoping this won't mean the remaining bottles will start exploding in the months ahead.

It definitely needs to go for the whole 12 months, as the vast improvement in the last 4 months has been outstanding.

Tastes not as sweet as I would like, smells sweet (like honey), and we actually put the rest of the bottle to keep cold as we believe it will be quite nice chilled on a hot day.

It feels like a very low-carbonated cider now (except with honey, not apple). Would like to try warmed up to see if you get a hint of the spices.

Starting to plan a small 5Lt batch of Braggot....