(Part 2) Best products from r/mead

Your recipe sounds like it'll turn out well if all goes according to plan! You may want to add some sweetness back if it ferments dry, but you've got several weeks to figure that out and read the Wiki to get all caught up on the method and terminology to things like back sweetening and nutrient addition schedules. I admire that you're being industrious with your fermentation equipment, I wasn't brave enough to start fermenting with whatever I had on hand with my first batch.

If you think you'll stick with it, here's the equipment I used for my first batch. I highly recommend looking into it if you think you'll do another batch! (I apologize if you aren't in the US, Amazon is my go-to)

• Hydrometer - $15.99 | You'll definitely want one of these first! It'll help you figure out when fermentation is done, plus it's nice to know your ABV when your friends or family ask "How strong is this?" (if you like to share)
  
• One Gallon Glass Carboy with Airlock, Drilled Stopper, Polyseal Lid - $14.81 | A glass carboy could last you forever! These have done very well for me, and the included airlock will give you a great setup for less than $15. The screw-on cap is just an added bonus, I use mine when I cold-crash.
  
• Star San 16 oz - $16 | This seems like the go-to sanitizer for the sub, and I use it as well. If you think you'll do several batches, I recommend going with the 32 oz size instead! It's much cheaper per ounce.
  
• Campden Tablets aka K-Meta (Potassium Metabisulfite) - $6.08 | This will help you preserve and stabilize your mead before you bottle. Some people don't, but it's highly recommended!
  
• Auto Siphon - $13.99 | This makes racking to secondary and bottling much easier! When it comes time to bottling, it's also really nice to have a Bottling Wand - $5.86
  
  All-in-all, this is just about my current setup excluding yeast, yeast nutrients, and extra carboys and airlocks. The list above comes out to about $127.45 USD before tax, which really isn't too bad considering one gallon should yield just shy of 5 standard wine bottles! Most commercial meads I've seen ranges from $15-$25 with some exceptions (There's a winery near me called Oliver Winery that makes a mead called Camelot Mead that sells for about $8 per bottle. Very good for such a cheap mead, you can probably find it at Total Wine & More if you have one nearby).
  
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  Sorry for such a long comment! Best of luck in your mead-making adventure!
  
  Edit: If you have a local homebrew store, I would opt for that rather than Amazon. Prices may not be as cheap but you won't have to wait for shipping, you'll be able to support a local business, and employees at homebrew stores are usually really helpful and they can recommend recipes and give you pointers. Nothing beats face-to-face interaction!

It takes quite a bit of effort to oxidize mead while racking. Just to give you an idea, we "rack" our meads with a large pump at the rate of several tens of gallons per minute (and at this point in time there is also a fair amount of off-gassing of dissolved CO2). I recommend you invest in a sterile siphon starter. You should try and plan on having enough mead going into secondary to fill whatever secondary/tertiary vessel you have well into the shoulder/neck (to minimize oxidation at the mead/air interface). If you don't quite have enough mead, you can add sanitized glass marbles or you can 'jacket' the mead with a layer of CO2 if you have a tank (if you've force carbonated a beer before, or something). Another (cheaper) option is to buy a can of wine preserver, which is a mixture of argon, CO2, nitrogen, etc (non-oxygen gases). The can is very light, and most people think the can is empty when they buy it - it is not. It comes with a WD-40-style straw and instructions for how to use it - but you could use it to jacket a carboy just like a user of a CO2 tank.

Cherries can be really delightful in a mead. I recommend using dark, tart/sour cherries (e.g. Balaton cherries, Montmorency, any nice morello-type cherry you can get your hands on). These can be pitted or unpitted, or you can use pitted cherries with some number of pits added back to the fermentation (use sparingly). Most people will recommend freezing the fruit for a week or so and thawing, although if you can purchase pitted, IQF/frozen fruit that can be nice, also. Ground shipping would be cheaper if the temperature is below freezing where you are this time of year. I recommend using a muslin bag or other fruit-containment device in your primary bucket - this will make racking easier and "cap management" a little nicer, also. If you use a copius amount of cherries in primary, then you can also expect that it will be eminently drinkable in 3-4 months time (with the proper yeast selection, of course, e.g. 71B-1122 or another low-nitrogen requirement yeast) but one which will also age extremely well - the fermentation will be extremely healthy because the yeast will scavenge cell-wall materials from the fruit's own cells, and the fruit also adds nutrients and a buffer against rapid changes in pH. Ferment at the bottom of the temperature range for this yeast.. In terms of honey and amounts, you can learn the various mead calculators on the sidebar, but in the end you will need to suss out how much residual sweetness you need to balance the tartness from the cherries, and also for your personal taste in residual sweetness. This can also change depending on the alcohol balance, determined by the yeast strain you select.

Star san is awesome.

Giving fresh, clean water to your cats is vitally important before you make mead with them. This way they are tender and hydrated, and I find the honey and cat flavors are well integrated and age well. If you are really serious about making a cat mead, see if you can find free-range cats from a local farm. I find the alley cats and other urban felines give the mead too many barnyard-esque, horse-blankety, and even phenolic off-flavors.

Don't buy a kit! They sell you all kinds of shit you won't use when there are better options for similar money.

Get a brewing bucket as if you don't have a bottler then this will make your life so much better.

Get 2 carboys (glass is best but better bottles will work too). Check Craigslist for these...you can get some awesome deals.

Get 1 Refractomoeter instead of a hydrometer because they use WAY less of your must to calculate and they aren't mega fragile like hydrometers are.

You will want an auto siphon

You will want a carboy brush that fits on a cordless drill because cleaning a carboy without one fucking sucks (and for 18 bucks this is a no brainer).

You will need sanitizer. I personally like Iodophor because it's super cheap, it doesn't really foam up and it lasts forever. I bought one of THESE bottles like 2 years ago and it is about half full even though I brew between 50-100 gallons a year.

I always advocate people start with beer bottles rather than wine bottles. The reason for this has less to do with the bottles and more to do with equipment. The Ferrari Bottle Capper is 14 dollars while a good floor corker for wine bottles will set you back 60 bucks. In addition, it's cheaper to bottle in 20 ounce beer bottles with caps rather than in wine bottles with good corks. Use of a double lever corker for wine bottles should be considered a war crime...seriously...unless you're a masochist who loves dumping wine everywhere and having to clean it afterwards...then just avoid them...they are absolutely awful.

If you go the wine bottle route then NEVER use agglomerated or colmated corks (the ones made from tiny pieces of cork glued together) as they fall apart and will leave chunks in your bottles. In addition they don't age well, so you are much more likely to lose your brew to spoilage. I like synthetic Nomacorc but you can also buy very good quality solid natural corks as well.

Good oxygen absorbing bottle caps on the other hand are mega cheap. Again...this isn't about one being better than the other, so you can use either one.

For wine bottles, I REALLY like the ones with screw tops because they make it nice and easy to cap your bottles once opened. But for all of your bottles buy these locally...shipping will double or triple the cost of these vs buying locally. I get them for 15 bucks a case a few miles from my house...they're almost 30 a case on Amazon or close to that from Midwest or from Ohio (shipping is like 11-15 dollars a case.)

For beer bottles...I prefer clear, but they'll be tough to find locally so I often end up with brown ones. Again...buy these locally not online due to shipping costs. Your local brewing supply stores buy these pallets at a time so even Amazon can't compete with the lack of shipping costs.

TLDR: The "Full kit" looks like it has the basics. As others have said, you might want a food-grade plastic bucket for primary fermentation, and you'll need bottles/containers to store the end product in.

If it were a "complete" kit I'd probably put one together which included One step sanitizer to sanitize equipment,a plastic fermentation bucket, and an auto-syphon to make racking (i.e., transferring the liquid from container to container) easier.

If it's something you're interested in pursuing further, there's plenty more you could consider picking up. A bottle filler for the auto syphon, a filtration kit to help clarify wine/mead, fining products, you might want to look into picking up more things like yeast energizer and yeast nutrient (which it sounds like this kit comes with some) and sulfate/sorbate (to stabilize the mead before back-sweetening) etc.

There are lots of recipes and lots of help available, so read up and feel free to ask questions and have a lot of fun experimenting and trying new things :)

To piggy back on u/stormbeforedawn's comment.

This is the equipment I used that I've had good luck with so far. It's what he recommended, I'm just providing links to the specific product I used.

• 2 gal primary bucket
  
  
• 1 gal secondary glass
  
  
• Autosiphon
  
  
• racking cane
  
  
• Hydrometer
  
  
• Starsan
  
  
• GoFerm
  
  
• I used Fermaid O, not Fermaid K, because I was following a specific nutrient regimen. It's called TONSA 2.0. Popular, but apparently not cost efficient with larger batches. People better at this than I can answer nutrient schedule questions.
  
  
• Bubbler/Airlock.
  
  
• Bottles and cap method are your preferance. You can get bottles of tons of shapes, colors and styles. Corked, capped, swingtop, etc. Just make sure the bottles are food-safe and not decorative hobby/thrift store stuff. If you use corks, same rule, don't use decorative stuff. You'll want #8 agglomerated cork and a hand corker tool to put the corks on. #9 corks work too, but you'll need heavy tools (like a floor corker) to do that..

I think that's pretty sound advice, I almost bought that book but I instead bought the big book of mead recipes which is great, but not big on the actual process of making mead. The other book I had was pretty basic and out of date.

I need to learn more about yeast nutrients definitely and probably a lot of other things too.

I bought this one, yeah. :D

Works a charm. I plan on doing a good bit of experimenting with meads a corker that cheap that works that well is definitely a good investment in my book!

Background

Based upon my initial question: Is it wine or meed?, I am working on my first Mead/Pyment. I've taken the original recipe I cobbled together from a variety of sources.

Is it mead? Well yes. According to the calculators in the sidebar concord juice is about 8.89% sugar. Honey is roughly 80%. I'm no math wiz, but I fussed with both Google and Wolframalpha and 8.89% of two gallons is roughly 45 Tablespoons or 0.23 pounds of sugars, 1 Gallon of Honey is roughly equivalent to 204 tablespoons of sugars or 7.9 pounds of sugars. yes I know Different types of sugars, etc. etc. But the mixture here is getting much more than 51% of the sugars from honey, so: 'tis a Wine -> Mead -> Melomel -> Pyment.


The following is an expansion of The GotMead format for recipes.

1. Ingredients
   
   • Star-San - not technically an ingredient, but it's for sterilization. I think of it as an anti-ingredient keeping the bad bugs out. (Sprayer use= 1/4 tsp to 650ml water & 60 second exposure)
     
   • 1.5 Gallons of boiled tap water (more or less to make things work out.) NOTE: I have well water, not city water - so no chlorine & plenty of minerals.
     
   • ~2 Gallons of homemade concord grape juice. (SG 1.060)
     Last year I pressed about about six gallons of grape juice from concords of my own. I was going to make jelly in the winter and froze it in the deep freeze.
     
   • 10lbs (now 15lbs) of Pure N Simple Honey.
     
   • ~3 tsp Fermax from Amazon.
     
   • Red Star Premier Blanc [Amazon] (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00434CB74)
     
     
2. Equipment
   
   • Large Stainless stock pot (for initial boil)
     
   • 5 Gallon food grade bucket & Lid sterilized.
     
   • 4 Gallon Sams club water bottle playing the role of carboy.
     
   • Hydrometer
     
   • Transfer hose
     
   • Water lock/ Bubbler
     
     
3. Preparation
   
   • Thaw the grape juice overnight in the fridge in a large container in case of leakage.
     
   • Sterilization/pasteurization.
     Thinking through the volume of Honey (~1 gallon) and aiming for a 4 gallon carboy; bring 1.5 gallon of water to a boil. Turn off heat, add the grape juice in order to pasteurize the juice without setting the pectin, stir in about 10-12 pounds of honey. (remove any scum that forms)
     
   • Sanitize the bucket and lid, and stirring spoon.
     
   • Stir vigorously as you add the ingredients.
     
   • add to the bucket, check the temperature and the SG - calculate remaining honey or water and add as needed. Stir till mixed, or your arm falls off - whichever comes first.
     
   • Check the temperature until it is at least down to about 80 degrees then add the yeast we're off to primary fermentation.
     
     
4. Primary fermentation.
   
   • 5 gallon sterilized bucket & lid with airlock.
     
   • Actual Original Specific Gravity (OG): 1.130 (I thought it was 1.122 but the must was still quite warm.)
     
   • I will plan on testing as fermentation tapers off and make a decision then on adding additional honey and warm water (carefully of course) in order to restart fermentation. (adjust to desired SG as needed).
     
   • Once fermentation has stopped transfer it to the secondary.
     
     
5. Secondary.
   
   • 4 gallon sams club water jug (plastic) with airlock.
     
   • Saved my honey jugs just in case I had any left over that wouldn't fit in the carboy.
     
   • Time. Lots of time.
     
     Notes:
     
     9/13/16 Initial. Retested SG, it was at 1.130.
     
     9/15/16 Sterilized a large spoon and vigerously stirred to aerate. SG at 1.074, fermentation is fast and furious.
     
     9/16/16 Aerated/degassed. 3tsp fermax. SG 1.050
     
     9/16/16 Aerated/degassed. SG 1.026
     
     9/21/16 Racking Day. SG 0.998 (ABV 18%?). Upon racking there was not quite enough in the carboy. After staring at it for twenty minutes I decided to gamble and added one gallon of water, and 5LBS of honey to bring it up to just below the base of the neck. Retesting the SG was 1.030. It is currently sitting inside a 5 gallon bucket in my bathroom, I'll transfer it to the closet as soon as I'm reasonably certain it won't go Mt. St. Helens on my wardrobe.
     
     

Sounds like a good read. Definitely interested in picking this up sometime.

On a side note, not sure if you did it intentionally but, putting keywords in URLs back to Amazon usually sends up a red flag to Amazon that you're trying to artificially boost your search rankings. Thought I'd point it out since it's your dad's book - you should edit your link in your post to remove the extra stuff.

On the flip-side, I love my hand corker. Here’s a link. It’s a little more expensive than other hand corkers I’ve seen but a lot less expensive than a floor corker. All I do is spray the corks with a little starsan just before corking so they slide in easier and they go in without the dents. It’s adjustable also.

I don’t doubt a floor corker is better but if you don’t have space/can’t afford/don’t want to pay that much for the floor corker, this is a good option.

Thank you! I’ve already got 2 more batches (Blackberry/Cherry/Cranberry and Juniper/Peppermint) sitting in post-fermentation, both had SNA of just Fermaid-K (have since purchased DAP and Fermaid-O for the future), and with better aeration as well. The wiki and posts here have been incredibly helpful/insightful.

As for corking, I’m using a double lever hand corker (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01NCYZA9O/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_6.nPCb36S4SRB). My grandmother insisted she had a floor corker from my grandfather, but it ended up being a antique table-mount crown capper (still very cool, and as you can see from the photo I still used it). So I purchased #9 corks expecting floor corker. I imagined the problem was just the hand corker wasn’t designed to handle the larger corks, but do you think it could be something else?

Thanks for the response,

I will pick up some Star San for the next batch.

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For your measuring question. Do you mean when adding the Water/Honey? I used a scale. Similarly TBSP/TSP for adding nutrient. Or where you refering to the hydrometer? This is the one I bought https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01CITP03W/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

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I think I maybe should have waited longer to start the secondary fermentation based on the other comment.

I also plan on getting a yeast energizer for the next batch as well.

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https://www.amazon.com/Drunken-Botanist-Amy-Stewart/dp/1616200464/

Assuming you mean that one. I have it, and it's more about the plants that are used to make cocktails. There's a small bit of information I found useful in terms of spices/herbs, but I would definitely recommend other books. I'll update this when I get home and have access to my bookshelf.

If you have issues getting the seeds out, I picked these up a while ago. It goes inline with your siphon hose and I got the smaller mesh to get out things like pulp or seeds. Works great.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XR6M3GB/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01JWO5RK2/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I use this bad boy. Works really well. Big enough opening to make cleaning pretty easy. And uses a standard bung.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B011VDMYAI/

If you really need to clear it, KCSuperKleer is magic and works in 72hrs. It is made of Kieselsol and Chitosan.

Ksorbate is a stabilizing agent. It prevents yeast from budding and reproducing; it doesnt kill anything, it just effectively neuters yeast. Using it while there is still a heavy bioload of yeast still in suspension wont stop an active fermentation.

https://www.amazon.com/Double-Lever-Hand-Corker-Synthetic/dp/B01NCYZA9O/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1536467232&sr=8-1-spons&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=hand+corker&psc=1

Definitely not. This is the corker I use, its very small, less than 20 bucks and it worls great.

https://www.amazon.com/LD-Carlson-MR4PL1C-Bottle-Filler/dp/B008S0KMRK/ref=asc_df_B008S0KMRK/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=241898984112&hvpos=1o3&hvnetw=g&hvrand=10055276179527350321&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9012096&hvtargid=pla-582360282374&psc=1

Looks like that. Make sure you get the correct size to fit your siphon hose.

You have one of these?

https://www.amazon.com/Fermtech-5478-6H-Auto-Siphon-Tubing-Clamp/dp/B00SDLLZDY/ref=sr_1_2?crid=3FSQTFCNKS7D6&keywords=auto+siphon&qid=1569088031&s=gateway&sprefix=auto+si%2Caps%2C170&sr=8-2

Best to start the siphon in a pot of clean water to get it going, clamp off the hose and then transfer the cane into the mead to begin siphoning it out. If you hold it as you're doing it, you can prevent any of the sediment at the bottom from getting in. Just stop it before it gets there.

+1! Absolutely love my Portuguese floor corker!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0007PTG1C/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_othsyb7K6EBCJ

I use this style: https://smile.amazon.com/Ferrari-8R-KUTK-YL7E-Double-Lever-Corker/dp/B000FQBBK2/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1469729139&sr=8-4&keywords=corker (though there are better corkers)

You can see the nuts near the top I was talking about, they allow for adjustment. I usually back them off whenever I'm using a new cork or bottle type, and just keep adjusting it forward while hitting the same cork in the same bottle until I like the result. Then just go hit the rest as normal.

I've not personally read this book, but I've heard that others here have enjoyed it and I believe it covers how to use naturally occurring yeast:

https://www.amazon.com/Make-Mead-Like-Viking-Wild-Fermented/dp/1603585982

I do have a few indents in some of them, but really it's just good photography (left that to the wife). The corker is this one: https://smile.amazon.com/Ferrari-8R-KUTK-YL7E-Double-Lever-Corker/dp/B000FQBBK2?sa-no-redirect=1

This guy is what we have. It works like a charm and doesn't take much muscle to operate.

Like fan said, grab yourself one of these to add to the hose:

https://www.amazon.com/LD-Carlson-MR4PL1C-Bottle-Filler/dp/B008S0KMRK/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=bottling+wand&qid=1566505469&s=gateway&sr=8-2

I bought a basic Fermtech 5478-6H Auto-Siphon Mini with 6 Feet of Tubing and Clamp https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00SDLLZDY/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_f1EuDb9WJSGFD

Siphon. Had another sterilized carboy and transferred it. Then added my new spices and fruits.

You're always gonna need two containers in my opion. This is my second time and my first was a fucking failure. So I've done more studying. And what's best for at least 1gl brews. It's more investment. But worth it

I learned a lot from the book "Make mead like a viking".

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Make-Mead-Like-Viking-Wild-Fermented/dp/1603585982

Apparently it is a Big Mouth Bubbler
Make sure to get the ported variety.

I've done it with good effect with 5 small batches, and only one went bad. Here's my method for making Wild Fermented Dandelion Wine.

It can definitely be a gamble, and if you are seeking consistency between batches and a known finish, it isn't the way to go. I'm a bit more of a mad scientist than most brewers I know!

Most of my methods align with those expressed in Make Mead Like a Viking by Jereme Zimmerman.

>prevent the co2 from escaping properly and it can build u

Non issue with 2 little apples


>How do I tell when my mead is done fermenting?

Hydrometer.

https://www.amazon.com/Brewers-Elite-Hydrometer-Kombucha-Hardcase/dp/B01CITP03W/

https://www.amazon.com/Home-Brew-Ohio-Bottle-Portuguese/dp/B0007PTG1C

this will change your bottling game for not that much

Fermtech 5478-6H Auto-Siphon Mini... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00SDLLZDY?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

This one comes with tubing and a clip to adjust the siphon depth.

My first 4 batches ended up the same for secondary, i purchased this, and filled in.

https://www.amazon.com/Private-Preserve-Wine-Preservation-Spray/dp/B0000DCS18

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