The Brewers' Guild

[rovingjack]

I've got my demijohns, stoppers, airlocks, hydrometer, graduated cylinder, honey, cinnamon stix, cloves and allspice berries. Also some star-san. I'll pick up a plastic tub for sanitization, funnel, and pitcher at work monday. I'll also order an Auto Siphon for racking. I was hoping to get a case of voss glass liter water bottles that I could use the water from, and then rack into them when primary ferment is done. I can't seem to find them anymore. There are still a couple places I could check.

Also vanilla beans are expensive. I here that for a 'USA' Gallon that a half vanilla been in secondary will probably be plenty for the mead. I find myself wondering about vanilla simple syrups, but that feels like cheating. I think I'll see if I can get the vanilla beans cheaper, and use 1/3 to a half of a bean when I rack it and add the maple syrup and then give it a little time before cold crashing it. I might just  get a smaller stopper and put an airlock in a smaller bottle and let it finish out the ferment with the maple and vanilla before racking and letting it age a for 6 to 12 months.

the second one I'm debating if I want to give the spices to in primary or after it's finished fermenting.

oh and I'm using fliechmans bread yeast, because I've seen some folks who ran side by side brewings of meads and said they were so similar that if you served them two glasses one after the other they wouldn't be able to tell they were different, but what differences they did find when side by side said that the fliechmans kept the other aspects of the flavor more full and richer in the final product.

I figure I can use it for making breads too lol.

[rovingjack]

two gallons of mead bubbling away. It actually seems to have formed a krausen. I will say that due to my limited space a resources, I just mixed 6 pounds of honey (one pound was raw honey) in the demi-john filling the rest with water before putting a stopper in and shaking it until no honey remained on the glass walls and bottom. then I poured half of that into the other demi-john, until the levels were about even. Topped them back up with more water. took the specific gravity (1.094, and 1.082 respectively) and then dry pitched fliechmans bread yeast in (two teaspoons each, yeast like that has a fair amount of 'yest hull' in it thus working as a nutrient to living yeast). Shook the begeezus out of them and put the bubbler/airlocks on.

the starting specific gravities suggest the lower value one may have an ABV in the 11% range, while the other may be between 12 and 13% but those measures are no certain thing. I'll let them go a couple weeks, and see if they finish off the fermentation before I add the flavors (mulling spices in one and vanilla in the other). I way wait to back sweeten one with maple syrup so that I can cold crash it to prevent fermentation of some of it.

My understanding of the spcific gravities I have here suggests that these will both go pretty dry and have room for secondary fermentation if anything is added after the ferment has stopped. so I may split the vanilla batch up and do a maple back sweetened cold crashed bottle, and a smaller maple secondary ferment  and let that go for a while before racking and aging to see the difference (Likely higher ABV, less dry and more sweet with more vanilla and maple tones lasting in it).

I may also see if I can put a small bottle of each in a hot bath to both pasturize them and see if it's possible to make a alcohol free bottle or two for my friend who quit drinking years ago. the alcohol should boil off above 185F leaving all the rest of the flavors intact, though the heating may change a few of the flavors slightly, and I have no idea what alcohol free meads would taste like.

[rovingjack]

bubbling away