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One of my wild yeasts I've decided to throw out (fun while it lasted but I just didn't have anything I wanted to add it to). The other, a lovely wild yeast which introduced itself to some of my beer wort via a small moth, is still in my fridge. It was rather lethargic last time I tried to do a...

Here in Oz you can probably do yeast starters all year round. So long as daytime temps run above 10 degrees C and below 40 degrees C I'd say there'll always be a few yeasts flying around.

Once I had the yeast start up I'd give it a feed pretty much straightaway. Encourage the cells to multiply and grow! Keep a close eye on 'em too. You want to find out more about the yeast. What sort of esters does it have? Three or so days in, once it's fermented the starter out, what does...

Do you do anything to encourage the wild yeast? My understanding is you'd have to get past several lines of defence that stop the honey from fermenting naturally - ie, you've got to dilute the honey so the yeast can move about freely, and you may have to do something about the enzymes and...

Such a neglected style. Hopefully homebrewers can help it revive!

I've got a strong sack mead brewing away at the moment - one and a half weeks and still going strong. I thought maybe of ageing that over a couple of raw almonds when primary ferment is done to get a kind of almond essence along with the beautiful mead smells when it's aged. But at the moment...

Gotmead.com is a good resource and has an excellent and helpful forum. If you hit me up on facebook (I'm in the Timothy Train in Melbourne) I'd be happy to direct your way to the mead forums there too.

Welcome! There's a few of us - mead makers and beekeepers - on board here :) Very interested in hearing more about the wild yeast one. How long did it take for the yeast to really start fermenting appreciably? Any noticeable sours/vinegar tastes/signs of lacto-bacilli adding something to the mix?

Burping is an important part of the gustatory experience!

Yeah - sweetness is hardly the only desirable aspect to a mead. It's important to get honey characteristics but sweetness is only one part to this. My smoothest mead, weirdly enough, was probably from a wild yeast I collected when a moth flew into some wort I had lying around(!) But, last...

They were trialling a Flowhive near here recently, I think at the Collingwood Children's Farm. The bees mostly didn't bother with it. Probably because they didn't like the plastic, though the Queen excluder may have been annoying to them too.

It's not just about tolerance, though, is it? We've all read the brewing books - *most* yeasts will conk out at around 12-14%. I don't think mead is a very well understood style, which could partly explain the reactions to 'bread yeast mead'. I can't claim to have a rich understanding of the...

I hear really weird stories about people requeening their hive because it's too aggressive, and the mood of the hive changing *even before* any of the babies the queen lays have had a chance to grow up. Of course beekeepers then go on with their explanations, "oh, there's a pheromone change and...

What about a muesli beer? That would seem to be pretty close to the original grain.

I too wish to find this 71B. A few brewers here and there in Aus might have it but I don't think it's sold commercially.

I think the traditional idea was definitely to do a high alcohol brew like a barleywine, to be aged and opened on their 18th birthday. An interesting and fairly simple alternative is a high alcohol mead. These really change and improve dramatically with time, so on their 18th birthday you can...

Yeah, we first got started in bees by doing a hive split ourselves. We'd never done any beekeeping before that.... so thank heavens it worked! Best way to get started is to go on a swarm list, I reckon. That way you get to collect a swarm of bees primed and ready to start a new hive - and you...

Was looking at a supplier in Parkdale, found plans for a hive, any reason for the bright colours? Nope not as far as I know. And if I buy a Queen do I get the swarm with her? Queens are typically bought as replacements for established hives. At any rate you'll need to buy the whole hive -...

There are various types of hive, bog standard - the bee boxes you see everywhere one on top of another - are usually Langstroeth hives. Then there are the Kenyans - kind of a long box on stilts that tapers from the broad top down to a narrow bottom, so the frames in it are shaped like a...

Morning sun, shade in the afternoon. Especially in Australia where the summer sun is the worst.