brewing

That is so cool! Is it super sweet?

At 20% abv the yeast can no longer survive and continue fermentation. Most mead yeast is for 12%-18% abv results. A Sweet Mead is in the 11%-15% range. Pay attention to your yeast strain selection, use a yeast starter so your initial cell count is high, and use temperature control in your fermentation chamber to keep it at the cold end of that strain's recommended temps.

You also need to cold crash to clarify it. That means take it down to 34F for a day. That will cause the yeast to settle. Now take your siphon and rack the mead from the primary fermenter to a clean and sanitized glass carboy without sucking up the yeast off the bottom. Slap an airlock on the secondary and put it up for months.

Have another batch of mead ready rack that directly over your large "yeast cake" at the bottom of your primary fermenter and let the cycle of life continue.

Lalvin 1118. 20% is too hot and kinda gross, it should be finishing out at 18% max so if you have more alcohol being generated than that you may have an infection and need to go through a decontamination process. Boiling water, then powdered brewery wash, then rinse with starsan. Keep more starsan pre-mixed in a spray bottle and mist the sides of your fermenter before anything goes in it. That's the part I don't enjoy about brewing. It's 90% cleaning and sterilization and 10% everything else.

I'm finishing up my garage to get back to brewing and building planes. Out with the stainless milk fridge and in with a couple chest freezers, one to hold 6 drinking corney kegs and one to ferment a pair of 5 gallon buckets at a time.

I use stainless, glass fermenters but also plastic buckets for convenience. I regularly dispose of fermentation buckets after some uses. They're cheap and when if you scuff them while cleaning it creates surface area for bacteria to live in and increases your chance for infection in subsequent batches.

No you want healthy yeast, nutrients are fine. That's why I use starters or on liquid yeasts use 2 or 3 WLP tubes so they're healthy and have a high cell count. Yeast are eating sugar and peeing alcohol, then drown to death in the alcohol. What's your OG when you start? 1.133 should finish out at 18%. If you push higher to 1.150 the yeast can go past the 18% sometimes but you get off-flavors and unbalanced mead.

You can use potassium sorbate to halt fermentation at the 18% mark then if that's too dry for you, backsweeten it a little.

Join your local club too, and submit some samples to competitions. The judge feedback and club advice will take something that scores 25 of 50 and get you into the 40s and winning medals.

If you're going to do it, do it right

That sounds interesting.

I was saying I wanted to try mead at the shop and one of the guys said he'd bring some in. Said his buddy made it and it's been in his fridge for awhile. Well that should have been my first clue. Cause that shit was nasty, borderline wretched. I made the wife and a couple friends try it.

One said that they imagined that's what fermented rat piss would taste like.

My buddy made a super dry Grappa. It reminded me of that whiskey Elfie likes... super burny.

Sorry, that's my only experience with homebrew. Well, that and dandelion wine, and chokecherry wine, and a nice liqoure that Mom makes for Christmas.

But other than that, I got nothing.

Buddy just gave us some apple pie, technically not really homebrew I guess. But he calls his apple crack, that shit is so perfect it is way dangerous. Zero alcohol taste to it despite being made with 220 proof.

Quote from redwing7

Buddy just gave us some apple pie, technically not really homebrew I guess. But he calls his apple crack, that shit is so perfect it is way dangerous. Zero alcohol taste to it despite being made with 220 proof.

Not to throw water on the booze but you cant have 220 proof,even the US proof system wouldnt go as high as 220.200 would be pure alcohol which is all but impossible to obtain because of it's hygroscopic effect. Most alcohols are rated as high as 99% but once you open the container that percentage can and will change. Usually even the 99% stuff wont measure out at that number and are around 97 to 98% because they absorb water from the air.

I use ethanol all the time,I buy it by the gallon and have to use it up after it's opened within a day or 2 or the water content will ruin my experiments.

Spitbull is correct. If you're drinking Apple Pie and you can't taste alcohol, it's been cut. In the liquor store look at the "White Whiskey" jars. The white is 100 proof and they cut the fruit flavored jars to 40-60 proof, some down at 20-30, and charge the same $$. Just buy the white whiskey and blend it yourself into 2 jars with fruit, fruit syrup, and water to top up.

Distilling is really easy, just throw out the ethanol that comes out at the start of the run or you're drinking poison.

Also "rat piss mead" is probably infected. Unsanitary practices are unfortunately common in homebrewing. I had to judge a beer in a competition that on opening exploded on myself and the other judge. It had multiple infections and smelled like baby shit. I'm still mad about it and have judged a competition since.

Quote from wrag

gettin the mix pretty cold makes the yeast n such drop to the bottom...

and I leave the bottom settlement...

greatly improves the flavor!

This is called Cold Crashing btw. Getting to near freezing to force the protein to drop to the bottom, then siphon off the delicious, clear whatever-you-are-making.

When you are brewing beer, the cool down part after the boil is critical. You want to cool as fast as possible and the cooling performance declines as the temperature delta between hot & cold get close together. What the guy who taught me to brew showed me how to do was "Cold Crash in the Kettle". Instead of taking it down to ground water temp, the water in the cooling loop is pre-chilled as it goes in and we aim for 36 degrees. Fast cooling should give you condensation build up on the kettle when it's working right. The resulting wort that goes into the fermenter is crystal clear.

Then you have to wait until it gets back to your ideal fermentation temp before pitching your yeast.

... I started brewing again recently. I do enjoy this hobby, probably more than build-fly-crash-repeat.