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Main => Everything Else => Topic started by: Locke141 on February 05, 2015, 10:52:19 pm
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The big one has the water, honey, oranges, raisins, cinnamon, cloves, and bread yeast that will all become the mead (Honey wine). The tube from the top of the large bottle runs to the bottom of the small one, thats filled with water. This is an air lock to keep the air out and to let the CO2 escape that the yeast is making as it eats the sugar to produce the alcohol.
It's a 15L bottle (about 4 Gallons) with 4L of Honey (about one gallon). Being in Tanzania the honey was only 40,000 TZS or $21.93 USD.
It's bubbling so fast I can't count so it off to a good start.
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Sweet! Another brewer! I really need to get ---my bottom--- in gear and get some hooch going myself.
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This was super easy to set up. When I found out how cheep honey was here I just had to try.
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A good short mead is a thing of beauty. I'm not a booze drinker to be honest, but I loooooove the taste of a well brewed mead.
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What kind of alcohol percentage will this wield? This does look ---steaming pile of meadow muffin----simple though. :cheers:
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PBJ Inspired Mead - fail.
You're gonna need to hood that up, or down... a bit.
;)
Seriously though, I'm with opt, looks less complicated than I thought it would be.
I'm sure PBJ's method is fine but it has to look safe if my wife is going to try it.
When I read PBJ's mead post I went and looked up some recipes and found this (http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f80/joes-ancient-orange-mead-49106/). Then I found some cheep honey I had to give it a try. I think I have around $30 invested in this and if it works out Ill have 3.75 gallons of mead.
I did zest the oranges with a carrot peeler before adding it and the meet in. The white rind I peeled off and through away as it is apparently undesirable.
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What kind of alcohol percentage will this wield? This does look ---steaming pile of meadow muffin----simple though. :cheers:
:dunno I didn't take a gravity before fomentation started and bread yeast seams to have a large range in terms of when it will start to die out. The post on the recipe thread seem to indicate that about 12% alcohol is what you can expect.
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I've been wanting to brew mead for a couple years now. Next house, I want to get 10-20 gallons going. I love mead. :cheers:
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I've been wanting to brew mead for a couple years now. Next house, I want to get 10-20 gallons going. I love mead. :cheers:
This could not be easier to do. Hopefully it comes out ok. If so there is no reason not to start a batch.
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My reason for waiting is moving. I don't want to move carboys full of brewing mead. In time though, in time. :)
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My reason for waiting is moving. I don't want to move carboys full of brewing mead. In time though, in time. :)
True, your going to have your hands full enough moving the two headed beast. :cheers:
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My reason for waiting is moving. I don't want to move carboys full of brewing mead. In time though, in time. :)
True, your going to have your hands full enough moving the two headed beast. :cheers:
Don't remind me. The single worst thing to move that I own... It gets harder and harder to find help moving it, my friends are all catching on...
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You should invite them over for some mead, then ask after they get there :burgerking:
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I've made two batches of mead, which makes me an expert. The one that tasted better I went way over the top adding sugar and yeast to it at the beginning. Both of them benefited substantially from adding some agave syrup derived sweetener when it was time to serve them.
When my batches weren't keeping the balloons erect, I slapped on balloons that didn't have holes in them. That system seemed to work well enough. I do have another batch of prison wine that I got lazy with, suppose I need to run that through the coffee filter and see if it's quaffable...
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One week update.
When I came home today the seal on the air lock on the big bottle was broken, not badly. The pressure was a bit much for the epoxy I used. I made a new better top with the cap of a jug from our water dispenser. 10 seconds later it was bubbling like a champ. I think will be fine as the pressure was positive and I checked it last night.
The color has changed quite a bit from day one.
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One week update.
When I came home today the seal on the air lock was broken. The pressure was a bit much for epoxy I used. I made a new better top with the cap of a jug from our water dispenser. 10 second later it was bobbling like a champ. I think will be fine as the pressure was positive and I checked it last night.
The color has changed quit a bit from day one.
Are those rolling bubbles? Or chunks?
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If by rolling bubbles you mean a steady stream then yes.
I often do a post in a rush and have to go back to fix the spelling. I'll fix the above post a some point.
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One week update.
When I came home today the seal on the air lock was broken. The pressure was a bit much for epoxy I used. I made a new better top with the cap of a jug from our water dispenser. 10 second later it was bobbling like a champ. I think will be fine as the pressure was positive and I checked it last night.
The color has changed quit a bit from day one.
(http://i59.tinypic.com/2zjhs2s.png)
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I really think its going to be ok. It was fine last night and I tested the seal buy dripping wax, there were bubbles so I just replaced it. And to be clear the color has changed a lot from day one but it's not noticeable at all from yesterday.
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So I did a bit of research and figured I'd try this out as well.
Since I already brew my own beer and sake, and I already have all the gear, I threw a small 2 gallon (8 litre) batch together to do a test-run on a simple recipe: Honey, Water, Orange rinds and flesh (pericarp/white membranes removed), raisins, cinnamon sticks, cloves, nutmeg, Lalvin K1-V116 yeast.
My airlock bubbles every 7 secs consistently, but I won't see the colour change till I transfer it in the second fermentation.
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Well, well, well, look at Mr. Rich Boy and his adequate supplies trying to upstage my milk jugs and topo chico bottles.
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Well airlocks are pretty cheap, besides, the most expensive thing is the honey. Honey ain't cheap here in the great white north, which also why I opted for a small batch trial-run.
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That's allright, PBJ. You homemade hootch will cause rotgut waaaaaayyy sooner than these other pretenders will.
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I was pouring my latest batch of prison wine through some cloth on Sunday to filter out all the fruit and it occurs to me I still need to figure out a way to really clarify the stuff and sweeten it. Siphoning was a bit of a disaster.
:dunno
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Well, well, well, look at Mr. Rich Boy and his adequate supplies trying to upstage my milk jugs
Things told to Kanye West when he jumps on stage at a strip club?
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I was pouring my latest batch of prison wine through some cloth on Sunday to filter out all the fruit and it occurs to me I still need to figure out a way to really clarify the stuff and sweeten it. Siphoning was a bit of a disaster.
:dunno
Bentonite (aka fining agent) is your friend:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv3Mcq7SfA8 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv3Mcq7SfA8)
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Bentonite, aka drilling mud...
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I was pouring my latest batch of prison wine through some cloth on Sunday to filter out all the fruit and it occurs to me I still need to figure out a way to really clarify the stuff and sweeten it. Siphoning was a bit of a disaster.
:dunno
Bentonite (aka fining agent) is your friend:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv3Mcq7SfA8 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv3Mcq7SfA8)
Would this work?
http://www.amazon.com/Aztec-Secret-Indian-Healing-Cleansing/dp/B0014P8L9W/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1423681538&sr=8-4&keywords=calcium+bentonite (http://www.amazon.com/Aztec-Secret-Indian-Healing-Cleansing/dp/B0014P8L9W/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1423681538&sr=8-4&keywords=calcium+bentonite)
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Would this work?
http://www.amazon.com/Aztec-Secret-Indian-Healing-Cleansing/dp/B0014P8L9W/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1423681538&sr=8-4&keywords=calcium+bentonite (http://www.amazon.com/Aztec-Secret-Indian-Healing-Cleansing/dp/B0014P8L9W/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1423681538&sr=8-4&keywords=calcium+bentonite)
Errr, I would use this one:
http://www.amazon.com/Simi-Valley-Home-Brew-Bentonite/dp/B0064O9B7E/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1423684601&sr=8-2&keywords=bentonite+wine (http://www.amazon.com/Simi-Valley-Home-Brew-Bentonite/dp/B0064O9B7E/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1423684601&sr=8-2&keywords=bentonite+wine)
It's the same stuff you can get at wine-making supply shops (http://www.midwestsupplies.com/bentonite.html).
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Thanks,
Just ordered.
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Ok, 2.5 weeks later my first fermentation is slowing down to a bubble every 27-30 secs. I'm going to rack it tomorrow night.
It's smelling pretty awesome right now, has a nice alcoholic scent and doesn't appear "off" at all, so glad my thorough sanitizing worked out.
I plan on splitting this batch into two, one of them I'm turning into a Melomel (fruit added to the second fermentation), while the other one I'll add a bit more honey for some added sweetness and boosted alcohol content.
I seemed to have misplaced my hydrometer, so I hope I can find it before I rack tomorrow because I want to take a reading before doing so.
Also, I've found a Bee Farm not too far outside the city that has a good selection of honeys for cheaper than what the stores are selling. Here in BC Canada, Clover and Cranberry Honeys are in prominent production, so my next batch I'm planning on making my Mead more "locally" fuelled (except for the yeast), blending a mix of Clover and Cran Honeys from Chilliwack BC, and Glaciar water from Whistler Mountain. I've read good things about Cranberry Honey for meads, so this should produce some interesting flavour for my next batch.
I'll post some pics once it's racked into my glass carboys. :cheers:
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Now one of you needs to figure out how to make salted pork that doesn't have me glued to a toilet for 16 hours after I eat it.
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Nice,
I started mine on Feb 6. Over the week end bobbles have stopped. I'm going to migrate it over to a clean plastic water jug at some point but for now I am planing on leaving it as is. The recipe said it is fine to leave it for 6 week - 2 months.
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Now one of you needs to figure out how to make salted pork that doesn't have me glued to a toilet for 16 hours after I eat it.
I'm a vegetarian so that one way not to end up on the pot for 6 HR. :cheers:
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Now one of you needs to figure out how to make salted pork that doesn't have me glued to a toilet for 16 hours after I eat it.
What's so hard about making Salted Pork? It's salt + pork. :dunno
You are cooking it before you eat it right?
I racked my mead, and decided to just make two melomels. One with mango, the other with blackberries.
Murky, but it's tasting and smelling good, so we'll see how it clears up in a couple months.
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So, you don't cook salted pork, just FYI. But I was curious if that was the issue, so I tried both pan frying it and slicing up into pho. When you pan fry it, it tastes entirely too salty. It worked okay in pho but I was still purging. I have a feeling the issue is the salt content and I can't handle it. Other people have been fine with it.
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Ooohhhh, salted pork = pancetta. Durrrr....for some reason I thought you were talking about salted bacon, without the smoke flavour of traditional bacon.
Perhaps it is the salt content doing you wrong, because curing any meat doesn't look too hard to prepare. But you can eat Phở (which is loaded with salt/MSG), so perhaps it's the type of salt you're using?
You could try "alternative" salts and see how that does ya', I know a few people who cannot properly digest the processed table salts. There's a big trend in the food-nation for the use of pink Himalayan salt, and Hawaiian Sea Salt...could be worth a shot.
I personally really enjoy the Himalayan salt, we use it on everything now. But it's like Power Salt, so you don't need to use as much as you would with table salt.
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Nope, you can set your watch to the pho countdown, too. Once that bowl is finished I've got 20 minutes or the car ride home is going to get VERY interesting.
And it doesn't matter what you use - NOTHING gets a shart stain out of the upholstery. Los Robertos taco shop nailed my truck's bench seat once and it bothered me until the day I sold that thing.
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:lol I'm concerned about you, James.
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I've had someone take out an property damage claim against the company I work for, for ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- stain removal on his truck after eating at one of our restaurants. He got paid. I doubt it was our food though. He was probably a dude who ate homemade salted meats, moldy jerky, piles of doritos and washed it down with milk jug mead.
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Can't say I recall any hijinks with Doritos but I'll defer to your memory on that one.
I am kinda curious what actually got the stains out of his van. I tried everything. Thank god I was wearing black pants that day.
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Have you had your gall bladder out? My wife has had similar episodes, she always blames that.
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Can't say I recall any hijinks with Doritos but I'll defer to your memory on that one.
I am kinda curious what actually got the stains out of his van. I tried everything. Thank god I was wearing black pants that day.
I thought you had gotten a batch of free doritos from amazon, but I am probably mistaken. You only order food heavy enough to piss off the delivery guy. ;D
If I remember right, it ended up needing to be reupholstered. Not sure if it was that the professionals couldn't clean it, or just didn't want to clean it.
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Oh yeah, that was Pringles. They shipped me 8 cans of Pringles packaged in 6 different boxes. About 5 of those cans were chip dust, so Amazon just refunded the entire thing and jacked up the price of Pringles so high nobody in their right mind would order them again.
It's just really, really salty food, fried stuff, and dairy that puts me in the danger zone. Dairy's kind of a ---smurfette--- because restaurants sneak it into EVERYTHING but the rest of it is easily avoided if necessary. I generally keep Pepto handy, but my organs are all still intact (I think).
Anyway, that's enough butt stuff. More mead plz.
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Of course, stuff like this doesn't help either
(http://i.imgur.com/kJihTQ7l.jpg)
(Yes, that's bacon wrapped pizza with bacon on top)
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Of course, stuff like this doesn't help either
(http://i.imgur.com/kJihTQ7l.jpg)
(Yes, that's bacon wrapped pizza with bacon on top)
Nice! who makes that? someone at work was telling me about it but didn't know where to get it.
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Little Caesar's. I think it was a test market item until recently.
:cheers:
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Any updates from you guys? I'm going to bottle my batches this weekend since it's a long weekend for us.
Planning on letting it sit in the bottles for another few weeks before trying to drink it.
Right now it's coming along well. The blackberry one has become nice and clear! Looks very much like a Red wine. But the Mango one is looking more like a wheat beer, so I'm planning on throwing some bentonite in that one and seeing how it will clear up.
They both smell delicious, I really am looking forward to having these summer-time melomels ;)
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Nah, not really. All my stuff kinda tastes like it must be the alcohol backfill that manufacturers then dump a bunch of additives into to make taste better.
Surely you can get maple syrup nice and cheap up there. Ferment any of that?
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Intriguing. There's no reason not to try.
Maple Syrup is cheap'ish up here. Cheaper than Honey that's for sure. But at the moment I have a work-buddy who's mom is a Bee keeper, so I've been getting hooked up with local honey at a decent price.
For a Maple mead, would one go with all Syrup, or perhaps mix a bit of honey in it too to help with the fermentation?
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My mead came out drinkable but it has quite the strong taste of alcohol. I read it will mellow with time. If I mix it with sweeteners, soda water, of juice its prity good.
I did the bottling on my son's first birthday and ended up with about 13 bottles. I plan to give most as gifts but am thinking of keeping one for my sons 21st. I hope it mellows out by then.
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Yeah, I took out a small bottle of my prison wine last night and added some Equal and club soda and it was actually pretty good.
:cheers:
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Just opened up a bottle and gave it another try. It is much mellower then it was in April. It was not yet what I would call ready so I added some honey to that bottle and it was pretty good. I'll print some labels for the ones I gift with instructions to drink till Christmas or latter.
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This thread had me checking out ways to make different types of homemade hooch. I couldn't resist trying the easy way.
2 bottles of 100% juice (64 oz one apple one grape)
1/2 cup sugar each
1 packet of yeast, activated and split between the two.
I left them sit for two weeks, so far I've tried the apple one and it was pretty good, for fun I carbonated it and it is very similar to store-bought hard cider.
I'm less hopeful about the grape but I put it in the fridge for a bit and will let it sit longer.
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Thats great knave.
I opened up at a bottle for a fathers day pool party and its keeps getting better and better.
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Just yesterday I noticed a gallon milk jug sitting on my freezer with a deflated balloon. Can't even remember when I set that batch up or what the hell is even in it.
I'll try it tonight and see if I wake up tomorrow.
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Just yesterday I noticed a gallon milk jug sitting on my freezer with a deflated balloon. Can't even remember when I set that batch up or what the hell is even in it.
I'll try it tonight and see if I wake up tomorrow.
"Can I have your watch when you are dead?"
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Just yesterday I noticed a gallon milk jug sitting on my freezer with a deflated balloon. Can't even remember when I set that batch up or what the hell is even in it.
I'll try it tonight and see if I wake up tomorrow.
Ohm, When I said better with time I was referring to stuff after it was bottled. I would take a sniff and a sip before a proper drink. Good luck and let us know how it goes.
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Any updates from you guys? I'm going to bottle my batches this weekend since it's a long weekend for us.
Planning on letting it sit in the bottles for another few weeks before trying to drink it.
Right now it's coming along well. The blackberry one has become nice and clear! Looks very much like a Red wine. But the Mango one is looking more like a wheat beer, so I'm planning on throwing some bentonite in that one and seeing how it will clear up.
They both smell delicious, I really am looking forward to having these summer-time melomels ;)
So I didn't get to bottle my Mead a month ago like I said I would, ended up letting it sit for a bit longer, then bottled it this weekend.
Last Thursday I added Bentonite to the wine, to help with clearing it up.
Bentonite needs to be prepped before adding it to the wine, similar to how yeast is activated/re-hydrated (except using Hot water, instead of luke-warm). I vigourously mixed the Bentonite with water, trying to avoid any clumps, and put the resulting "Slurry" into a cool-dark place for 12 hours to sit. You can let the Slurry sit between 12-24 hours before adding it in, so that it fully absorbs the water and gets a nice positive charge action going to attract all the negatively charged particles in your wine.
After 12 hrs of sitting I slowly added the Slurry to my mead, mixing it carefully so that I didn't aerate the wine too much. It looked gross, but only after 2 hours of settling in the Mead, the Slurry started to separate and I got a nice division between the two.
Left it alone for 2 days, and the Slurry settled right down to the bottom of the carboys. Here's a couple pics of the bentonite separation right before bottling:
(http://i.imgur.com/p1ijVdH.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/XpTWjnt.jpg)
I ended up re-racking the wonderfully clear wine, and bottling it. In the process I ended up drinking a bit of both flavours. Both wines are dry, and has a very strong alcoholic taste. The Blackberry came out really nice, has a nice subtle flavour, while the other one didn't have much of a mango flavour at all. I perhaps should have added much more mango to the mix to get it to stand out, since mango has more of a lighter flavour to try to bring out.
(http://i.imgur.com/QMz8W8S.jpg)
I'm going to let these bottles sit for a little while to see how the flavours will develop, but all-in-all, my first batch of Mead/Melomel turned out pretty good. 2 gallons yielded 8 bottles. My next batch is going to be double that.
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Nice,
My batch has improved a lot with time.
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Nice,
My batch has improved a lot with time.
What kind of differences have you noticed with letting it age a bit? Sweetness changes? Did the alcoholic taste mellow out?
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Nice,
My batch has improved a lot with time.
What kind of differences have you noticed with letting it age a bit? Sweetness changes? Did the alcoholic taste mellow out?
With mine the taste of alcohol was very string at first. That was April 2 (my son first birthday), today it's a lot less over whelming and is injoyable with out added sweeteners. The meed blogs seem to indicate that with time they keep getting better and better. I going to have 2 or three bottles put aside for his 21st or wedding.
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(http://i.imgur.com/hEtcPqTl.jpg)
One year later, my "strawberry wine" is looking pretty clear.
Drinkable with some agave syrup added.
:cheers:
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(http://i.imgur.com/ApwNEWtl.jpg)
Well, this is either an awesome or stupid idea. Took all the semi spoiled fruit out of my freezer, poured boiling water over it, and blended it. Added the usual bakers yeast and dumped it into the finest empty 1.75L I had on hand.
30 minutes later, it had spewed out of the balloon pin holes all over my laundry room.
:o
Balloon replaced and it's sitting in a flower bed until this settles down.
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(http://i.imgur.com/Es9jgdb.jpg)
Foaming away like crazy this morning. I took it back inside.
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What fruits did you use? I'm assuming by the colour they're strawberries/raspberries?
I'm curious to what kind of poison this is going to yield. :laugh:
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Mango, two plums, half a pound of red seedless grapes, half a cup of brown sugar.
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This weekend I opened a bottle for labour day, from my first batch a year-and-a-half ago. It was the White that I made with the mangos, and after aging for over a year it was very aromatic, but light on the taste. It definitely mellowed out on the alcoholic "bite", but the sweetness didn't really change. In fact I think it lost sweetness. It might be due to the cheap honey I bought.
My next batch is going to use some wildflower honey from Abbotsford, BC Canada. A friend of mine's mom is a genetic engineer and has been experimenting with breeding genetically modified bees to boost their productivity. Super bees...or the start of the Killer Bee apocalypse?? I was able to get a bunch of "organic" honey on the cheap, and plan on using it for my next mead.
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My stuff never really had much flavor beyond "vaguely tastes like alcohol." I think most of what we attribute to the wine and mead experience are post fermentation additives...
Need to crack open the last of it or push it onto my friends after they've had a couple.... getting tired of looking at it.
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If it lost sweetness, then it gained in alcohol. That is how the yeast works, it east sugar and craps booze. Wonderful little microbe.
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My stuff never really had much flavor beyond "vaguely tastes like alcohol." I think most of what we attribute to the wine and mead experience are post fermentation additives...
Need to crack open the last of it or push it onto my friends after they've had a couple.... getting tired of looking at it.
Yeah I think this time around i'm going to experiment with the post additives, especially if I'm going to go with Mango again. That, and this time I'm going to use the less heavy yeast. My first batch I used the port-style yeast that made the mead really boozy (roughly 16% when I measured it).