Hello
I recently restarted beer brewing after a pause of some years. I like to drink and brew bitter, so I restarted from there. This in the picture is the second brew in my “second era”, an e+g beer brewed in a 10 l fermenter (I don’t want to manage bigger volumes).
Recipe is: 1 kg dry light malt extract; 50 g crystal dark (ebc about 270); 20 g Challenger for 40 min; 15 g Challenger for 2 min; 10 g Challenger in dry hopping; Mangrove Jack’s M36 yeast. ABV 4.2%, IBU about 34.
I should change the 50 g crystal dark for, let’s say, 60 g crystal medium. I’ll think about it. In order to spend less I used a dual purpose hop. Maybe in the future I’ll use some Target for the bittering, but for now I’m quite happy. I use a single fermenter, so the result is a bit opaque. I don’t care so much about that, other than try to cool down the beer for a night before bottling.
Also I would like to resume my production of porter and maybe try some barley wine. Since a friend beekeeper gave me some honey, I would like to try mead making, but I know precisely nothing about that.
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Delicious looking! Welcome back. I wonder what dark circumstances might cause a pause in the first place, but let’s not go there :E
Other than finesse from literature, meadmaking is very simple - start with something like 300g honey diluted to 1L with clean water, try not to heat at any stage (I tried centrifuging frames - works, obviously - and I tried just dumping honeycomb wax and all into water - this is yet simpler and you get amazing propolis flavor in mead), pitch wine/mead yeast (for example those from store.zymologia.fi, that’s my store, very much affiliated, but it’s what I use), lock and leave for about a year, longer is better.
try not to heat at any stage
I was just thinking of heating a bit the jar in order to get as much honey as I can fluidifying it. So I better don’t do it? I’ll stick to room temperature.
It dissolves in cold (tested with 14C) water, just takes a bit more time.
Thank you
Ken Schrams book the complete mead maker is good.
Ok thanks
It’s “compleat”! Totally best book on topic.
Never noticed that before. Why did he spell it that way? I haven’t made mead but I bought his book read a bit of it, seemed good. Still have a stash of honey ready to give it a go.
When it comes to mead, questions like “why” are outside of scope! Magic is magic.
That it is, ours is not to wonder why.
