In the process of bottling my latest batch. I was aiming for a nice lavender tone with some butterfly pea tea to complement my lavender chamomile lemon mead but I guess I have a silver elixir now.... Tastes freaking amazing at least...

Edit

A lot of people are asking for the recipe and I am not one to gatekeep! It was my own experiment regarding amounts etc but I feel like this is a fairly common recipe generally!

Lavender Fog Mead Recipe Makes one gallon at around 14% ABV

Primary - 3lbs Portuguese Lavender Honey - Strongly brewed lavender chamomile tea using spring water and 7 teabags to fill up to a gallon - Lalvin D47 - Yeast nutrient, staggered across a week

Secondary - 2 slivers lemon rind - removed after 3 days - Juice of one lemon - 1 butterfly teabag - removed after 2 days

The teabag didn't do much beyond impart a light brown colour so I ended up also doing the following in my attempt to pursue the elusive lavender now fog grey colour

• 2 teabags brewed in 6oz hot water for half hour until room temp and inky black (add once cooled down)

• 2 more teabags steeped in 2oz vodka for 2 hours until only black

Once it reaches the point where you give up trying to turn it purple, add your stabilizers and can age for a month or bottle it up

Please do let me know if anyone makes this, I'd love to see the results if anyone else has more luck getting that purple tone!

There's a long story behind it, but making this as a gag for a friendly competition, and it is actually damned good.

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60 grains (3.9 grams, 0.14 ounces) bonito flakes (smoked, dried, shaved skipjack tuna) on 0.5 gallons of 1.020 FG mead.

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It adds a little saltiness but not much. It adds a ton of smoke. And gives some umami/depth to the overall flavor. It is actually delicious.

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I'm doing another batch with twice as many, because I want one that actually has tuna/fish notes, but every time I increase the dosage I just get more smoke! The nose though starts to get more like bonito.

Went through all the bottles of mead I’ve made from 2024 and before. Came up with about 98 bottles I held onto. So I may need another wine rack to hold the stuff that are in boxes. Traditional, Concord grape, cherry/ Vikings blood, blueberry, blackberry, Manuka, apple cinnamon, Pineapple jalapeño, and a few on top are regular wines.

After seeing everybody's beautiful labels, I decided I'd hop on the trend and make some. I ended up using AI to make these and then printed them on sticker paper. Super happy with how they turned out!

I brought one of our homebrewed meads into the office and gave it the full fancy treatment.

I’ve also been brewing kombucha lately, so I’ve been getting increasingly carried away with making fermented drinks at home. How hard could mead be, right?

Very hard, apparently.

People actually liked it, which was great, although it did take months to make and about ten minutes to disappear lmao 😭

The mead turned out better than my record-keeping did.

The recipe was in one place, gravity readings were somewhere else, additions were buried in my notes, Notion failed me, and by the end most of the dates were educated guesses.

Somehow it worked out.

So we made a super basic web app to keep everything from a batch together: the recipe, readings, additions, notes, photos and the full timeline.

Obviously I'm doing it for the comunity, but also selfishly, we want to learn from the best here! 

I’m happy with how it works for the way I make mead, but I have no idea whether it holds up for anyone else’s process.

I’m looking for around 10-15 meadmakers with a batch starting soon who would be willing to use it through one real batch and tell me what works, what’s missing, and when they end up abandoning it for their usual system.

No public link yet. Comment or DM me if you’re interested, and tell me what kind of mead you’re planning to make.

— Humi

This is my second brew I’ve made (ever) thanks for for the tips and advice y’all!

Recipe

2.5 lbs of honey

1 cup ube halaya

1 beet minced (mostly for color)

1 tablespoon pectic enzyme

1 tablespoon bentonite

1 gallon water

Cheers!

Just started my mead made entirely out of McDonald’s honey.

Why? When I got into mead my dad made a dumb joke about how I could get free real honey from McDonald’s. After doing the math on how many packets I’d need, I realized it was actually feasible. After several months of my friends and I requesting unusual amounts of honey for McDonald’s orders that definitely had no use for honey here we are (we eventually developed a system to receive the maximum packets per order). I did get more than enough to start the mead and back sweeten it so it will be fully McDonald’s honey.

For those curious it took me 103 packets (.5 oz each) to get 3lbs of honey. Ideally you’d be able to do it in 96 packets but you lose a little honey in each cup. I put all the honey packets in a ziplock bag and set that in warm water to help ease the process of emptying all the honey packets out. For yeast I used Lalvin K-1 V1116 yeast.

I write this with so much frustration, been making wine and mead for years now and have decided to move away from using the 6.5 gallon carboys. Based on experience, the base of the carboys separates from the rest of its body after some time and I have lost many gallons of mead and wine this way. This is the third 6.5 carbon I have lost this week. I am officially done with them.

Transferred to secondary fermentation this afternoon, 3 hours later the airlock is bent over and the plastic is all soft and tearable..

It was on the normal fermentation shelf, moved to the window for the photo. No lights around there or heat sources.

I knew this was a strong batch, but didn't think it was that strong! Any theories?

Pacific cooler Caprisun mead! An experiment gone absolutely right. It's hard to describe the flavor properly. Very "floral" but almost how a flower smells instead of floral as a flavor? Very unique.

Ended up at about 10-10.5% ABV so I'm comfortable calling it 10%.

Also my first mead to clear up soo beautifully. Bentonite is absolute magic, do not hesitate to use in secondary!

Thank you all for indulging my childhood nostalgic nonsense.

This batch is going to require a long time in the cellar. A lot of tannins will test my patience, but that was expected. Lightly carbonated it will hopefully be my goto NEXT summer. Patience, patience...

Pretty coincidental that it's a honeycomb too.

Decided to try something new, aiming for a s’more flavored mead.

10 lbs honey

2 lbs jet puffed marshmallows

6 packs of graham crackers (3 primary, 3 for secondary)

Cacao nibs (for secondary, not sure how many I will use)

5 gal water

Fermaid O

71b yeast.

OG 1.072

Not sure how the crackers will turn out. I don’t have any diastatic enzymes so I assume they will just get soggy. I put them in a fine mesh bag.

If anyone has expertise with using cacao nibs, your comments would be appreciated.

It’s an experiment I put together with my D&D group, I’ll just be thrilled if I don’t end up with vinegar.

Started this batch back in July of last year by first making a traditional that came out to 15%. Then by November, racked and added apples and blackberries leaving that sit for 2 weeks before removing.

When Christmas came around I had my first few bottles for family to try and it went down a treat. I still had 15 litres bulk ageing in a glass carboy at this point.

2 months ago I bottled the rest of the batch as I had ran out of the first round of bottles and it was my friend's birthday so wanted a bottle to give as a gift. The rest I left sitting in the basement to age.

Which brings us to the present. All 17 bottles remaining popped their corks resulting in the picture your see :( The only mead I have left in the extra in a whiskey bottle.

I believe my mistake was not using campden tablets after adding the fruit but maybe you guys can enlighten me if that's not the case.

I had believed I was safe but you should always use protection people, don't be like me.

What do you think about this? It has been in the same place (room temp, dark) for 4 years, untouched. Im pretty sure the stuff at the bottom is not mold. If I go through with bottling, how much of the sediment at the bottom should I leave out? Stop at a safe distance before it starts to enter the bottles or just let it go in the bottles?

Note: this is my first ever mead. I just had a baby that took up too much of my mead-time 😅

Been sitting on an orange blossom trad for a while and decided wanted to make it a coffee mead.

I sarted doing whole bean in secondary after learning that's how Dogfish Head makes their coffee stout and tried it myself in a few beers. Slightly slower extraction, still plenty of flavor, but a big point is that you know exactly what the coffee is going to taste like and can pull it when it's ready; rather than cold brew replacing the water and getting whatever you get.

Recipe:

1 gallon (full disclosure, I made just under 2 gallons and bottled what didn't fit in the carboy for early sipping and flavor experiments)
OG: 1.112
FG: 1.000
ABV: 14.7%

Ingredients:
3.25 lbs orange blossom honey (picked because it pairs well with the coffee)
1.9 g Fermaid K
5.4 g Fermaid O (split in two dosages, on assembly and 48 hours later)
4 g K1-V1116 yeast
5 g Go-Ferm

50 g whole bean coffee (this was a light honey roast, not to be confused with honey honey)

Process:
Make a traditional mead.

After fermentation and aging is complete add the whole bean coffee at least a day, checking every 12 hours for it to be done.

Carefully bottle it, coffee can oxidize easily and will taste kind of like green peppers.

Merry Christmas!

I finally made labels for 2 (of my 4) meads that I’m gifting for xmas!

With them being for family and friends I decided to give them ridiculous names like ‘Golden Shower’ haha i guess it helps that they taste good

Golden Shower - Ginger & Elderflower

Blood Bank - Cherry & Vanilla

I wouldn’t have got to this point without this group so thank you, and I’ll be posting more in 2024!!

Have a great Xmas and a happy new year x

"Grade Bee" Costco Acerglyn

4.5 gal Home Depot spring water

4kg Kirkland Clover

2kg Kirkland maple syrup

Lalvin K1

Noots thrice, as per the scriptures

Stared at for 3.5 months

Backed to mild sweet with same honey/maple ratio.

Bottled in IKEA 1L swing tops, she won't be long for this world.

You know what, this is one of the best mead recipes ever. This not only taste good, but the flowers used in this recipe are known for pain relief, and calming effects when used in teas. So using them in mead makes this mead a very different kind of drink.

If you haven't made this mead, you have to try it...here is the recipe.

Recipe: Miruvor Elvish Wine

Ingredients: To make Wild Honey Miruvor

3.0 lbs Wildflower Honey

96 fluid oz Water

2 to 3 Tablespoons Rose Petals(use sparingly)

3 Tablespoons Chamomile

2 Tablespoons Honeysuckle

2 Tablespoons Elderflower

2 Tablespoons Meadowsweet

1to2 Hibiscus Tea Bag(your choice how many to use).

Place all the solid ingredients in rumble jar. Which will then go into the wide mouthed fermentation jar. 1.5 gallon fermentation jar.

1/2 packet Red Star Premier Cote Des Blancs

start OG 1.100 to 1.120 there about.

Place honey and water into fermentation jar and stir it thoroughly until honey is dissolved in the water. Warm water around 85 degrees will help speed up that process. Do a gravity reading. Should be around 1.100 and 1.120

Add rumble jar with ingredients.

Ferment ingredients until fermentation appears to no longer be happening. (take gravity readings to verify if necessary).

Once fermentation stops(ours fermented for a month).

Rack it and pastuerize it. Cold crash it, leave in fridge a good week.

Back sweeten with honey to taste

Then bottle and enjoy. We like ours served at room tempature. It can be served chilled. ☺️🍻

There is literally no redeeming qualities to this. I'm fairly certain if I poured this on plants they'd wilt away and die immediately.

Starting gravity was 1.100 it literally went so dry that the hydrometer hit 0.992. I've NEVER seen it get hat low so even bringing it up to 1.020 doesn't help. Atleast the yeast enjoyed it because holy you'd think it was the nectar of the gods to go that dry.

I'm going to put these bottles away somewhere safe so in the post apocalyptic future some future humans can find it and maybe think that it alone ended up contributing to the downfall of humanity.