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i've been making mead a while, and even the cheap "Sam's club" blended honey can make decent mead. award winning? prolly not. but it WILL be mead and will have honey flavor and aromas in the finished product. so, whichever is easier for you to do, go for it.

no but i do listen to www.thebrewingnetwork.com podcast archives.

a fridge without a temp controller might work but its not going to be nearly as stable as you'd expect, and might not actually get warm enough.

I just did a pumpkin ale last weekend. the recipe i used did suggest doing spices (as a steeped 'tea') when you went to secondary. on the coffee, try to do a cold brewing of the coffee. it'll pull fewer volatile oils outta the coffee that could ruin head retention.

how much water are you using in the mash, water to grain ratio? you may need to adjust up or down...here's the basic thoughts behind it: a thicker mash (less water) means the enzymes stay in closer contact with the grains, and thus give better conversion... a thinner mash thins the enzymes...

before the valved wine thief came out, wine thieves were just a big turkey baster but no bulb on top. you just dipped it in, put yer thumb over the other end, and pulled out a sample. these obviously weren't quite as wide a diameter, and a hydro wouldn't fit inside the tube like fermtech's thief.

welcome to the site and hobby. Here's my response, which is actually a question, and in all honestly its a sure fire way to know if things are ok or not. How does it taste and smell? Nearly all problems with a wine, mead or beer are going to be easily detected either by looking at it...

or tannins. only other thought is fusel alcohols created by too high a ferment temperature which give the alcohol a hotness that might not be noticed on the tongue but could still warm the throat.

you DID add sulfites with the sorbate, yes? if not, add sulfites. you can't sorbate without sulfites or you risk a type of infection that'll leave a permanent 'geranium' smell in the wine.

barring using an auto-siphon (I own two!), just fill your racking hose with sanitizer (like Star-san), put one end in the wine bucket, then let the other end flow into a small jar until the sanitizer's gone and the tube is full of wine, then move the tube to your second vessel and let it flow...

stick with the recommended yeast for apfelwein or something close (I used a red star montrachet and it turned out great). apfelwein is a wine, not a hard cider, so give it the wine yeast and you'll be very happy. Just age it 6 months...it improves immensely.

I strayed from JAOM recipe, but I've also been making mead a while...it was the first thing I ever fermented in fact. the bread yeast is pretty low attentuation, so if you do swap it out, go for a similar alcohol tolerance. I make my MAOM clone using Wyeast sweet mead yeast, as it craps out at...

Yep, regular beer bottles won't hold champagne like carbonation. I sometimes buy fruit lambic beers and the bottles they come in are very thick, like a champagne bottle. The other thing about sparkling wine is the sediment. if you carbonate in the bottle, sediment will form. With commercial...

a thousand years ago, our ancestors sanitized nothing, and they still made drinkable beverages. Sanitizing reduces the risk of infection. a lack of sanitizing by no means guarantees an infection. my two cents: Star-san is my favorite no-rinse sanitizer. Its an acid sanitizer that works in 30...

Yes, if your refractometer has the right scale. ideally you want it in Brix, but there's ways to convert to brix if its not. also, you have to do a bunch of math, because the alcohol is going to give you a screwy reading. and i'm not 100% on this last bit, but I believe you need the...

we need details. original gravity, gravity at bottling. did you add sulfites? sorbate? if so, how much of each? Taste the wine in the carboy, does it taste sour, bitter or vinegar-like? You could have some infected bottles in the batch. FYI, it takes a while for bottles to explode. I've...

I have made an apfelwein using red star montrachet. turned out good. its not what the recipe called for but its the closest the LHBS had in-stock.

something by Redstone meadery. I can't get it here but that's the one people have told me is good. I've tried a couple local honey wines, and also Chaucer's Mead. Neither was a very good representation. You could always make 1 gallon of simple mead and just bottle it in a 1 gallon jug to age...

If anything I'd say you racked too early. 7 to 10 days in primary, when the gravity is down to about 1.010...is when I rack (per everythign I've read and been told this is when to do it) and then let it finish off in secondary.

beat me to it. i'll add that my first wine i didn't degas quite enough. none of my corks tried to push out, because it was fully fermented and I did sulfite & sorbate. in my case you can get rid of that CO2 'tickle on the tongue' by pouring into a carafe first. yours sounds like...