Recent content by HowlerMonkey

I bottled my JAOM on 4-20-2013. I drank what didn't fit into full bottles, so I finally got to taste this recipe and my first mead. More on that later. Here's my story. I bought these ingredients from the grocery store. I decided to make two batches with the same ingredients...

I have not tasted them yet, so I have no idea if there is a flavor difference. I will be bottling these two gallons this weekend, though, so I'll taste them then. I think there was an unexpected original gravity difference between the two, but it might have been a problem of the honey not...

Here's an update on my melomel. 2-17-2013 Made mash of 14 pounds of honey, 10 pounds of blueberries, and 2.5 gallons of water in a primary bucket. 2-18-2013 Pitched yeast. Measured OG at 1.120 (but I'm now suspicious that it might not have been mixed well, so that might be low)...

I pitched my first batch of this today. I'm following the recipe exactly: 5 gallons of TreeTop 100% apple juice, 2 pounds of corn sugar, and 1 packet of Montrachet yeast. I'm planning to bottle and carbonate it, which will be a first for me.

Thomas007, certainly everyone will have different tastes, and you may find that you just don't like mead. I'm not an expert, but from what I've been reading on the forums (the two sticky posts in the mead forum are quite good https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f30/ ), young JAOM may be a pretty poor...

I think someone linked this video in another thread, but I forgot exactly where I saw this. Here's a great video on a clever trick to get a cork out of a wine bottle when stuck inside. It looks like it would apply to just about anything that you could stick in a bottle to begin with...

Oh wow! Great reference! Thanks for the info. I have a friend who has opposite tastes in wine from me (I like dry reds and sweet whites, and she's opposite, though our tastes meet in the middle that is Argentine Malbec). It didn't occur to me that I could actually measure the SG of wines...

So I guess the key to avoid making it too sweet when step adding is to check the gravity readings at the beginning and ending of each racking period to see if there is still fermentation going on. If the fermentation stops, then just sample how sweet it is to know if I want to add any more...

I pitched the Lalvin D47 yeast today following the original directions, covered with muslin, and tied down the muslin to the fermentation bucket. I don't have a testing tube for my hydrometer (though I now understand why I would want one of those and a wine thief), so I just let the thing bob...

Today I started the mash for this melomel. Based on comments in this thread, I went with 14 pounds of honey and 10 pounds of blueberries. I'll take the specific gravity tomorrow, when I pitch the yeast. This will be my first brew. I'm excited!

Greetings! Today I started my very first brew, a blueberry melomel! I'm following a recipe on this site, and in general I found this site to be very helpful over the last couple of weeks as I learned about brewing. Cheers!