Mead Help

[nu_brew]

Harvested honey today for the first time! Woo!

I washed all the gear down with clean cold water and realised I have a bucket of sweet water over 1.120 according to the refrac.

I put the bucket in the fridge because I don't have any yeast handy.

What to do? Any help appreciated?

Also any idea where to get some yeast in the inner west (Melb) tomorrow GnG is closed on Sunday?

Cheers Josh

 

[Mardoo]

There's a brew and wine shop in West Melbourne near Vic Market that I think is open Sunday. They would likely have some good dry yeasts. Can't remember the name.

 

[zooesk]

Supermarket bread yeast look up jao (jims ancient orange mead) or wait till you can get some good yeast ether way

 

[Airgead]

Wait till you get some proper yeast. No point wasting good home made honey on bread yeast that may or may not give a good result.

 

[boonchu]

ok for the basics get a good yeast liquid or dried, white labs / wyeast / lalvin is you want a sweet mead aim for a yeast with an alcohol tolerance of about 12 - 14% and if you prefer dry mead aim for a yeast with a 16 - 18% tolerance.
once the yeast is in cover it and give it a good stir every 12 hours or so for the first 5 - 7 days then get it into a fermenter with an air lock and let it go for a month or so

 

[Airgead]

Except for the stirring. Stir (or shake) to oxygenate at the beginning but once the yeast kicks off leave it the heck alone. Once its running you want as little o2 around as possible. Use a fermenter with an airlock from the start. Open ferments aren't good for mead.

I think Sandor Katz advocates stirring for a week but he drinks his young and still fermenting most of the time and at others he is aiming for a yeast and lacto ferment not yeast only. He's great at kraut and lacto ferments but I doubt I'd drink his homebrew.

And use some yeast nutrient...

 

[TimT]

Bit late now but I think the shop others are talking about in West Melbourne is Cellar Plus. It's in a side street that turns north off Victoria Street a block or so after the Vic Markets, can't remember the street name but I think you just have to look up the street and you'll see the 'Cellar Plus' sign.

On another note, welcome to the wonderful world of beekeeping! Hope you take good care of your ladies over winter! We make our mead in a similar way - just crush the honey out of the comb with a press (instead of spinning it out with a honey extractor), then wash the residual wax out with water. Give that water a night or so and the wax will just float up to the top ready to be filtered out. Result: a perfect mead 'must' and a bunch of wax you can render down for other stuff!

 

[nu_brew]

Thanks everyone for the help here.

Sorry for the late reply, the mead is still in the fermenter, I haven't got around to sampling it yet but I guess it will be fermented out.

@TimT: What do you do with your wax? I've got a lovely golden block of beeswax but not really sure what to do with it, candles?

 

[TimT]

We've made a few candles - the Baron had this idea a while ago for eggshell candles (something she found on Etsy) and so we made a few of those. The technique needs... refining. The main thing I like keeping the beeswax around for is my cheeses: once you've got a good block of clean wax, you just melt it, dunk the cheese in and out several times on all sides, so you've got a nice thick coating of wax all over, and there you go. Should dry almost instantly.

A cheese making site I frequent suggests you get best results from mixing in a spoon or so of some kind of fat - suet, shortening, etc - that doesn't either go completely solid or completely liquid at room temperature - to make a perfect cheese wax from the beeswax. (You do this because the beeswax on its own will sometimes crack when the cheeses expand (they can do this) and will tend to stick to the cheese).

 

[nu_brew]

Best I start making cheese then!