I dont mean to be so offtopic but does any of you know of a method to log back into an instagram account?? I somehow lost my password. I appreciate any help you can give me!
I do enjoy all the measurements and math that go into homebrewing, but like you i don't go to the far right of the decimal haha. Its fun to know what your making but that feels like work and im trying to have fun. Just made a 5 gallon batch of 7% hydromel today. I plan on seperating it into 1 gallon carboys; sorbating and backsweetening with different fruits for a month. Strawberry and blueberry are house favorites.
Hey Triple M! Just started two 1 gallon carboys of hydromel using this video as a guide 😀 Thanks for making this content! It really helped me get started with this hobby and I'm really enjoying it so far. I hope the hydromels will be good for the summer weeks here in Ireland...if we ever get them this year haha. Please keep it up 👍
Yeah definitely agree with the body lacking statement when I made a similar recipe. The acid blend seems good. I would add low amount of wine tannin to help fill it out a bit. Also I don't know how you feel about stabilizers but to get that honey taste, stabilizer the brew, back sweeten with honey and force carb. I don't even keg to force carb. I just use a special adapter for my small co2 tank and carb in 2 liter bottles.
Thanks for this simple recipe. It brought back memories of a cider my grandparents used to make called honeysuckle cider. I had forgotten about it until you mentioned the flowery taste. That's what I would get from her mix. Kinda fresh, not sweet but bright taste with no bite to it. She would serve a small glass before dinner as an appetizer. Happy holidays and looking forward to catching you in the new year 🥳👍❤️🙏
it's interesting you have differentiation between mead and hydromel. In France we don't have such with low/mid/high ABV. Interestingly the french wikipedia hydromel page states that hydromel (as in french) is between 10% and 18% ABV.
I’m excited to try a hydrogel cause I’ve only done high ABV mead which is amazing but I want some quick turn around mead I think I’ll hop as well why not thank you for your content
I just finished a dry mead and this video helped me save it. I ordered some acid blend and now understand why you generally add the black tea to your recipes. Thanks!
been watching your channel for the past few weeks, just getting into mead making myself. Nice to know you're in Oklahoma! There's another channel that does a lot of Mead and sounds like he's in Atoka. I'm an Okie too so was surprised to see that two of the youtube channels I've been consistently seeing are from here. Very nice!
@@ManMadeMead Haha yup that's the one! Since making this comment, I went down the rabbithole on both channels, saw you guys have done several collabs. Very cool! So is this just a popular hobby in this area? (I'm in Yukon). Or just a coincidence?
Quick question: You didn't use any stabilizers. Is this because you brought the brew to 1.0 FG therefore all sugars were used. Then only added enough sugar to lightly carbonate the bottle. Therefore, the risk of bottle bombs is minimal? What about possible contamination? I am looking to make dry meads and Kiljus for base to mix drinks with. The internet "pros" always seem to say to stabilize but stabilizing doesn't seem to be necessary for dry brews. Or in this case lightly sugar carbonated at the bottling step.
i usually bottle mine once it gets to like 1.020 so the residual sugars can carbonate it. carbonates in 3 days. definitely not the proper way to do it if you’re selling it lol but it’s just one less step 😭 anyways! i appreciate your videos. there aren’t many mead making youtubers out there!
Oh man! Be careful with that, you don’t want to go too crazy with the carbonation. If you’ve got it down to a science though, then you’re good. Thanks for watching my stuff!
@@ManMadeMead truee, i have had overly carbonated hydromels and i have to swirl it in the glass to release some of it 😅 it usually gets drank before it has too much time getting too carbonated in the fridge. still getting the science down.
From my beer brewing experience I prime with syrup (just add enough water to dissolve your priming sugar and heat it up) it dissolve really fast and you just have to mix it gently, no aeration issues ! I know that mead is a lot more stable in term of aeration and I don’t care like I do with beer, but I find this method Easter that way anyway! Cheers Léo
Great stuff! I'm trying to make a hydromel right now, but fermentation seem to have stuck. D-47 and a very cheap honey, and with fluctuating temperature (between 14-20c) seem to have been to much for the hydromel, so I tried fixing it with some leftover Voss Gjernes Kveik. We'll see if it makes something drinkable!
Do you think this would work with dry hopping or using hop-bittered (then cooled) water for the must - essentially treating it as a wort (without boiling the honey)?
Use hot water and soak it in PBW or Oxyclean for an hour, flip it over with the cleaner inside for another hour or so and then rinse it thoroughly. Should do the trick.
Go to amazon and buy tiny stainless steel bb’s. Then fill 1/3 of container with water/star san. Poor in the bb’s and shake in a rolling motion. Imagine your exercising with Richard Simmons for 5 minutes. Take a breath in celebration. Then put mesh bag over the end to catch bb’s. Rinse container and let dry.
number one thing about it is, after racking something DO NOT let the carboy dry, I made that mistake and it sucked! better you rinse right away with water a couple times then do above stuff.
Why not use lower abv resistance yeasts - Using it's limit to maintain a residual sweetness and therefore a stronger body presence as well as mouth feel. I really liked the acid blend touch for a quick fermentation and less complex honey wine, that builds up it's playfulness and may boost the flavor. Keep on brewing my friend!
Two problems with this. 1: There are no yeast that I know of that will reliably ferment under 10% ABV. 2: If you hit the tolerance of your yeast, then you can no longer bottle carbonate. The only way to do so would be to add a stronger yeast, but that would also eat an residual sugars, still leaving you with a dry mead. This is also very unsafe, as you would likely create bottle bombs.
@@1014p As soon as you dilute it, the yeast will reactivate and consume the sugars, as you've lowered the ABV. Aside from that, I would personally never dilute a mead with water, as you're just losing flavor. But I'm also the guy that will drink uncut whiskey at over 60% ABV. YMMV.
@@Vykk_Draygo well doing a 5% brew is the same as doing a 10% version. Difference is one is effectively concentrated. Diluting it down should have same or better flavor. Yes yeast could reactivate. If your doing something like this likely you would homogenize the brew to kill yeast.
It depends on what kind of sugar you are using as the priming sugar. Use this calculator to figure it out: www.northernbrewer.com/pages/priming-sugar-calculator?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiA7t6sBhAiEiwAsaieYofyQ62Bf9M2vAKHQyXB-BVb8wLVrpYGOnt-jMf-0MFebeHOi9e0FBoC7ecQAvD_BwE
How would you backsweeten (with honey) a hydromel without having the honey fermented and still add priming sugar and CO2. Because I want to try making a carbonated hydromel with some sweetness from the honey. Any suggestions? Thanks again!
Perhaps overprime the bottles with honey and then pasteurize after a few days once the bottles have sufficient carbonation pressure using a plastic bottle to gauge carbonation. When I say pasteurize I mean heat them to kill the yeast so sitting them in a bath of 40 degrees C water might work?
My hydromels have always tasted very...thin. Maybe that’s the nature of a hydromels, but I recall having store-bought hydromels that had more body and mouth feel. Any recommendations?
Backsweetening, acid adjustment, and tannin. Powdered wine tannins are the easiest way to adjust tannin in hydromels. As far as acids, you can get citric acid, malic acid, and tartaric acid in bulk. There are also blends available. Carbonation helps with mouthfeel as well.
I always make hydromels with a bit of brewed black tea or a tisane made with bitter herbs (a tiny bit of wormwood, angelica, gentian and/or cinchona bark). Technically this makes it a metheglin but I rarely go heavy enough with the herbs to take it into metheglin territory, IMO; I'm simply using them for a bit of tannin. Personally, with meads, I don't mess with acid blends or commercial acids all that often (though I do keep citric acid and malic acid in the house for use in cocktail experiments). I find a 1/2oz of freshly squeezed lemon juice (per gallon) added in primary does wonders for a hydromel. For me it's that simple. I agree with other commenters about carbonation; I find it's a must for a hydromel. I like session meads that drink like beers. I never backsweeten/add sulfites or sorbates. But I'll often use a smidgen of molasses in the brew. Molasses is not fully fermentable and will leave just a tiiiiiny bit of residual sugar as well as help with mouthfeel. I usually produce them in a pet nat style by taking frequent gravity readings and bottling between 1.002 and 1.005. The pet nat style of carbonation is faaaar superior to me when compared to priming bottles with dextrose or sucrose. I let the mead go dry in the bottle. Obviously, I wouldn't try this technique without an accurate hydrometer and bottles I knew were structurally sound.
With many meads do you find you add acid blend for mouthfeel? I find compared to apple cider meads lack tannin and acid. Some hydromels just lack that mouthfeel.
I honestly don't use it much. I haven't done a side by side test of a mead with and without it, so it's hard to say if it really does that much. I might do that in the future!
Is it ok to start brewing in a container sanitized with starsan when it isnt dry? Won't that kill your yeast or give an off taste? I always makes sure my equipment is completely dry after sanitizing, is that a mistake?
@@ManMadeMead well that will speed things up, I just stare at my brew buckets longingly as they dry because I have all the ingredients for the next batch.
Hey man, heard about the ice storm, hope you came out of it alright, what with the power loss and all that. Experience any trouble with your fermentations?
Hi! As I told you before I made my batch but I have a problem. It's fermenting the same as the beginning. I started it on march 7 and, up today, it did not even slow down a little bit. Any idea of what's going on in there? I don't have to tell how much I apreciate your help, videos and tips. Thanks a lot and keep it up!!!!
You shouldn’t need a special hydrometer reading. Most hydrometers stop at 1.160 (which would be over a 20% mead). It sounds like you need to use less sugar in your starting brew!
@@ManMadeMead thanks. How long can I leave a mead at it's final gravity before all the yeast die? e.g. if I measure 1.010, wait a week and measure 1.010 again, I know it's done fermenting but would the yeast have died during that week? meaning that adding sugar for carbonation wouldnt work? Or are yeast pretty hardy and can wait that long without sugar?
Hey there new subscriber here, just got alot of my mead making items in from the mail, I have binged all of your videos but I am still undecided on what two things to make first I have 2 one gallon carboys. Help!
Hey! I would definitely make a traditional mead and the maybe a melomel (fruit mead). Traditional recipe: 3/4 gallon of water, 3 pounds of honey and some wine yeast (I like the Lalvin QA23 alot). The fruit mead can be any fruit you want. You will make a traditional mead for that one and then add a couple pounds of your fruit to the mead after it has finished it’s main fermentation!
@@ManMadeMead thanks alot! Traditional it is! I bought some d47 and ec118 based on some of your other videos will they work well for a traditional mead? Also what is your opinion of jaom?
Wait...3/4 pound, or 1.3 pounds. I usually just listen to your videos while I'm doing other things, but happened to be watching this one. It would be really helpful if the words and the text matched.
Just 1.3 pounds for 8 gallons? Damn, that's really less. I was trying out Groennfell's recipe - they use about a pound (or pound and half) per gallon - and finished with a 7% abv. Are you sure of using just 1.3 pounds?
@@TheMukster sure, but as I said before, the name here, in Brazil, is hidromel for all the beverages made from honey. "mead" has no other translation unfortunately. Try using Google Translator, you will see.
That makes sense, because hydromel just means water honey. The only reason modern meadmakers use that word is to differentiate it from wine strength meads, so it's a more "watery mead". The word "mead" in English is derived from the word for honey in proto-Indo European, just as "mel" is.
3300 water on 590 honey, if you belong to the 99% of the world who uses real measurements. Or 5 and a half Liters of water on 1 Liter of Honey, which is a lot, considering most people here on RU-vid say 3 Liters or 4 Liters of Water per 1 Honey
@@felixinkorea7164 Technically "hydromel" is an old term for mead in general, but these days its english use generally refers to a mead of less than 8-9% ABV. So if you were to enter a competition with your meads, those would be entered as hydromels