Noob Mead Makers Wanted - Apply Within

[Airgead]

Good catch, no 2 symbol so its unknown for now. Will have to fire off a email to the reseller. They can be lined with food grade plastic, but it is going to be less hassle to find a 2 stamped container. If seeking liners then water tank liners are available in polyethelene.

Neither is any of the plastic items from the LHBS for that matter, the wort stirrer spoon is marked Made in Australia, but that is it. Only the 30L fermenter is HDPE "2" symbol stamped.

Not that HDPE is the only food grade plastic of course. PET and a few others are as well but as they are generally more expensive (non porous, non leaching etc) they only get used for food grade applications. I'm pretty sure those storage containers are made out of pretty cheap plastic. OK for storing grain but I'd hate to think what they would leach into a liquid stored in them. You'd also have to be careful adding anything hot to them as I doubt they are heat stable either.

Bunnings have some pretty big water containers that would do the job. I use their 25l as fermenters but they make 30+l ones as well. I think I've seen up to 60l if you want something with lots of head space.

Cheers
Dave

 

[pdilley]

Those bunnings fermenters I walked my bunnings twice looking for them, even the pool section. I'd be looking for something in the 45+ liter range and most of the posts only mentioned 20 liters brig available (red lids). Which aisle or section had the larger capacity containers.

I've checked the container mfg as a backup, they have square buckets up to 113 liters although square to pack on palletes better, all food grade.

I'm striclty a no-boil guy when it comes to honey musts so heat is not an issue. No boil on the apfelwein must either. Heating is so far only related to beer worts.

 

[hairofthedog]

Hi all ive just put down a small brew of mead have a look at the recipe & tell me what you think oviously hoey inspired

3.5 lts water
1.5 kgs orange blossom honey
5 gms coriander seed boiled for 5 min
2 cumquates boiled for 5 min
5 gms halletua aroma 7%aa boiled 15 min
0.5 wirlfloc boiled for 5 min

 

[Bribie G]

SWMBO's art group have been using one of those cubes for years to mix up punch (alco) for art gallery exhibition openings .. they are great because they can use it to store catering stuff between exhibitions. They clean up perfectly sweet and nobody has karked it on the punch yet so I would give them the food grade tick IMHO.

As I mentioned to Pete in a PM, I'm going to get one and convert it into a two level Yorkshire Square to ferment Yorkshire Bitters and Milds using 1469 in its native environment during the cooler months coming up and quite confident that it will do the job.

 

[pdilley]

Well I am inside bunnings localy right now.

No containers in garden section.

Bmw 25liters are hidden in this stores outdoor section right with the outdoor gravel and garden rocks -- where else!

The food and even fish plastic buckets made in Thailand, New Zealand, China they all have 'NO' markings at all on the plastic. Only the USA manufactured containers have the 2 stamp and their food containers have the 5 stamp instead with PP as the plastic -- same marking and abbr. On the small plastic rubbish bins mind you

Rain water tank section has 120l bin marked for outdoor use only.

Only other options are 200l and 600l rain tanks -- that's a lot of mead!

Out of fan controllers here -- perhaps a tradey got em all or just lazy restock staff.

Didn't buy anything . Took photos though of tags.

 

[mash head]

Ive just started reading this thread very interesting. Since I have done some bee keeping and my inlaws own a honey based tourist shop (where we have mead which is made on contact by Maxwells which I dont particularly like but it sells well ) I feel I have 2 cents to add. I know that beer brewers avoid eucaliptus honey because of the tannins so for beer a clover, canola, maccadamia ect honey would be best but mead is obviously different. Honey deffinately can be a vector for dissease with many bans on the spread of honey for just this reason.( eg you can not take honey to WA or bring it here to Kangaroo Island because our bees are dissease free) so basically I am saying that some sort of pasturisation is a must. I hope this helps and no offence at bagging maxwells I just prefer BEER. Cheers Greg

 

[pdilley]

Roving reporter now in supermarket, all juice containers marked 1 PETE

Water tops out at 15 liter containers


Spent my money on coffee and milk on sale 15 a kilo if buy two Harris coffee bags, milk marked 2 on bottom

Interesting day of plastic though at this rate I go back to my overseas glass only mentality and get a wide mouthed olive demi: glass won't stain or scratch as easily, treated right lasts a lifetime.

Ps made it home to find all my HK orders of digital scales and refractometer both arrived today! I'm now in business jus need to get DAP, Fermaid K, Goferm and a wide mouthed 50+ liter primary and it's high volume mead city in no time 2-3 month cycles from begnning to end. Still plan to age some 6m, 1y and more to experiment with aging improvement.

 

[pdilley]

Hi all ive just put down a small brew of mead have a look at the recipe & tell me what you think oviously hoey inspired

3.5 lts water
1.5 kgs orange blossom honey
5 gms coriander seed boiled for 5 min
2 cumquates boiled for 5 min
5 gms halletua aroma 7%aa boiled 15 min
0.5 wirlfloc boiled for 5 min

Sounds like you are going to be dialed in for an Ale tasting mead. If you don't get enough ale taste brew the next batch as a braggot with malt xtract added as well. Sounds yum, but I've not done ale/hop styles yet to know the taste well.

 

[pdilley]

Ive just started reading this thread very interesting...

Welcome aboard greg! Honey also has natural antibacterial and antiviral properties so I am reasonably confident the WA ban is not wanting any honey born bee-to-bee diseases to be potentially passed along. WA has very strict any food quarantines in place. In the middle of nowhere halfway out of Alice Springs you'll meet a guy out in the middle of nowhere all stationed up at the side of the road ready to pinch all your fruit and any other WA quarantine items

Most of the current mead books have gone off the boil for a little play at pun. TMCC and the commercial meadery in the JAMIL/Brew Brothers radio interviews are now all no boil must methods.

Eucalyptus honeys get a bad rap from some from imparting a medicinal taste to meads however that said out here at the massive honey farm and packing plant one of the honey guys makes his meads exclusively from Iron Bark honey.

Lighter honeys have less nutrients than darker honeys so if you want a dry, no taste champagne style mead to do sparkling then I'd start with a lighter honey. If you want any honey flavors or aromas then darker honeys (and no boil is important for residual aromas and flavours).

Stressed yeasts put of SO2 (elephant farts) and stuck fermentations. This is because the must is not amended for proper growth and metabolism of the yeast cells (no amendment methods and little amendment methods.) This is why you have 6 month to a year to get an "old school" mead fermented and then years in the bottle aging to get a mead at its peak. Ken's method is a touch controversial but the basis is all amendments are to create a "perfect" environment for the yeasts optimum growth as their metabolism can peak at as the #1 priority, and the rest is secondary. A healthy must will ferment out in the same time as beer and slightly longer to bulk age before consumption. 1-2 weeks primary fermentation, 2-3 months aging before consumption. Once I start myself I'll have first hand experience, but the idea is by a year aging you'll have meads peaked in their prime.

By the way, Wirlfloc (sp?) and irish mosh in general is out according to Ken, heated bentonite clay will clear a mead must in a day or so.

Now only waiting on TCMM book to arrive and I'm set. Still gives me time to build my home made magnetic stir plate for yeast farming


Cheers,
Brewer Pete

Refractometer Kit, looks like soft carrying case, 11 pipettes, manual, adjustment screwdriver for calibrating the unit the first time then automatic temperature compensation after that by the unit. $26 for the whole set.



Really cheesy modeling shot, but camera focused below on the manual booklet :S



3KG digital kitchen scale, 1KG portable digital scale, misc iPhone junk so I can mount it on dash of car and do GPS turn by turn maps and alarms of fixed cameras in Australia while driving Power cord and more headphones and a DVI to HDMI adapter [don't have HDMI tv yet but what the hell it was a $1.60 gold plated! and an Australian 12v power supply for $4.40 (we are talking $2 or less for each, $6 for the car windshield adapter, $10 and $16 for the scales and shipping is free/included from Hong Kong to Australia)

 

[mash head]

Welcome aboard greg! Honey also has natural antibacterial and antiviral properties so I am reasonably confident the WA ban is not wanting any honey born bee-to-bee diseases to be potentially passed along. WA has very strict any food quarantines in place. In the middle of nowhere halfway out of Alice Springs you'll meet a guy out in the middle of nowhere all stationed up at the side of the road ready to pinch all your fruit and any other WA quarantine items

Most of the current mead books have gone off the boil for a little play at pun. TMCC and the commercial meadery in the JAMIL/Brew Brothers radio interviews are now all no boil must methods.

Eucalyptus honeys get a bad rap from some from imparting a medicinal taste to meads however that said out here at the massive honey farm and packing plant one of the honey guys makes his meads exclusively from Iron Bark honey.

Lighter honeys have less nutrients than darker honeys so if you want a dry, no taste champagne style mead to do sparkling then I'd start with a lighter honey. If you want any honey flavors or aromas then darker honeys (and no boil is important for residual aromas and flavours).

Stressed yeasts put of SO2 (elephant farts) and stuck fermentations. This is because the must is not amended for proper growth and metabolism of the yeast cells (no amendment methods and little amendment methods.) This is why you have 6 month to a year to get an "old school" mead fermented and then years in the bottle aging to get a mead at its peak. Ken's method is a touch controversial but the basis is all amendments are to create a "perfect" environment for the yeasts optimum growth as their metabolism can peak at as the #1 priority, and the rest is secondary. A healthy must will ferment out in the same time as beer and slightly longer to bulk age before consumption. 1-2 weeks primary fermentation, 2-3 months aging before consumption. Once I start myself I'll have first hand experience, but the idea is by a year aging you'll have meads peaked in their prime.

By the way, Wirlfloc (sp?) and irish mosh in general is out according to Ken, heated bentonite clay will clear a mead must in a day or so.

Now only waiting on TCMM book to arrive and I'm set. Still gives me time to build my home made magnetic stir plate for yeast farming


Cheers,
Brewer Pete

Refractometer Kit, looks like soft carrying case, 11 pipettes, manual, adjustment screwdriver for calibrating the unit the first time then automatic temperature compensation after that by the unit. $26 for the whole set.
View attachment 25806


Really cheesy modeling shot, but camera focused below on the manual booklet :S
View attachment 25808


3KG digital kitchen scale, 1KG portable digital scale, misc iPhone junk so I can mount it on dash of car and do GPS turn by turn maps and alarms of fixed cameras in Australia while driving Power cord and more headphones and a DVI to HDMI adapter [don't have HDMI tv yet but what the hell it was a $1.60 gold plated! and an Australian 12v power supply for $4.40 (we are talking $2 or less for each, $6 for the car windshield adapter, $10 and $16 for the scales and shipping is free/included from Hong Kong to Australia)
View attachment 25807

Yes mate thats the reason for the quarantine but my point was that if some microbes can survive in honey otther unwanted nastys could. I have heard new born babies cant consume honey because it can contain bottulism bacteria (piss poor spelling I know) so my point still remains ignore pastureisation at your
perril cheers greg

 

[pdilley]

Just added to the bunnings fermenter thread but for any with lingering plastic doubts: As your plastic bottles sit, there may be some migration of chemicals from the plastic into the water, but FDA spokesman Mike Herndon says the levels are well within the margin of safety. You may have heard about health problems caused by plastic leaching into water from bottles. However, that applies to containers that have a high percentage of polycarbonate (like many of the hard bottles people buy at camping stores to use over and over).

Plastics continually off-gas over their life and get more and more brittle with age. Same with things you store inside bottles, chemicals do leech into the liquids but the government (well the US in this case) wants you all to know they consider it safe to drink it

For what its worth Bunnings has small rubbish bins, round, green with lid and Stamped "2" HDPE plastic. I am sure napi san will take the new plastic smell away. And then brew in it? I am sure it was $19 or less.

Then again, there's always my original brewing adage and desire, all glass last your lifetime, heat my sand and spank me silly!

 

[pdilley]

Yes mate thats the reason for the quarantine but my point was that if some microbes can survive in honey otther unwanted nastys could. I have heard new born babies cant consume honey because it can contain bottulism bacteria (piss poor spelling I know) so my point still remains ignore pastureisation at your
perril cheers greg

You know women pay good money for that to be injected into them!

But I'm not worried about my honey. Any processing done by the packer is done, and it will be used up before most honeys get distributed to retail and rotated onto the store shelf for consumption. I've eaten it on 3 continents and on a semi-daily basis over my lifetime. I'll get food poisoning from an Australian chicken egg and do first! -- I have to rank the Australian Egg industry as one of the worst for quality control and selling old eggs as fresh eggs that I've come across. They don't even stamp each individual egg with the date! I've had more bad eggs here in my short time back than in Europe and USA combined over the past 26 years.

Point taken though, cheers.

 

[pdilley]

just got batteries sorted. according to wikipedia Australian $2 coin is 6.60 grams

Weighed the coin on the scales and got 6.6g as the answer on the small scale. The $1 is 9g which is a good test for the 3kg scale as it increments in 1g. With both of these I should be set for macro and micro measurements.

 

[mash head]

You know women pay good money for that to be injected into them!

But I'm not worried about my honey. Any processing done by the packer is done, and it will be used up before most honeys get distributed to retail and rotated onto the store shelf for consumption. I've eaten it on 3 continents and on a semi-daily basis over my lifetime. I'll get food poisoning from an Australian chicken egg and do first! -- I have to rank the Australian Egg industry as one of the worst for quality control and selling old eggs as fresh eggs that I've come across. They don't even stamp each individual egg with the date! I've had more bad eggs here in my short time back than in Europe and USA combined over the past 26 years.

Point taken though, cheers.

Hows that pirate song go ? Something about very bad eggs. I am not suggesting that any good quallity Australian honey poses any health risk to the mature digestive system in fact there is very good evidence to the contrary just that there is risk in spoiling a brew how ever minimalistic it is still a risk. One think I have noticed reading this web site is that there are not too many rules in brewing that cant be broken while still achieving fair results. Cheers Greg

 

[Airgead]

Well I am inside bunnings localy right now.

You've got one of them fancy iphone things don't you...

Roving reporter now in supermarket, all juice containers marked 1 PETE

Yep.. definitely an iphone...

 

[Bribie G]

You've got one of them fancy iphone things don't you...




Yep.. definitely an iphone...

And a typing speed of 180 wpm Pete could come and work at our place any day but would have to wear fishnets and sit on the boss's knee

EDIT: on topic I'm going to crack an early bottle of my Braggott at beer o'clock (around six o'clock Mexican time) and I'll post a report one way or the other.
if nothing else it will get me rat-arsed being:

a 2 L PET
contains six jars of ALDI honey oops forgot that 500g aint 500 ml :mellow:

 

[pdilley]

Hows that pirate song go ? Something about very bad eggs. I am not suggesting that any good quallity Australian honey poses any health risk to the mature digestive system in fact there is very good evidence to the contrary just that there is risk in spoiling a brew how ever minimalistic it is still a risk. One think I have noticed reading this web site is that there are not too many rules in brewing that cant be broken while still achieving fair results. Cheers Greg

I was going to get the radical brewing book. It goes into all sorts of creative ingredients that go into beer, even black peppercorns!

Wines seem very limiting in that styles are well defined and there is not much movement room for experimenting with ingredients as much as beer. Beer is well defined in styles and many paths exist to get to the end result so that its almost like following a recipe book than very creative. Radical Brewing and Designer Beer may help out. Meads seem like the doors have been flung wide open for experimentation. Most people poo poo them because of the time involved and not much effort or time seems to be spent in the commercial sectors in the Western world. Its a home brewer only area and lots of experimentation with ingredients (chilli meads, chocolate meads, etc.). Seems like some fun can be had while learning and writing the maps for others to follow down your path later.

Pioneering spirit almost.

Lavender Mead! so long as it don't taste like soap

 

[pdilley]

And a typing speed of 180 wpm Pete could come and work at our place any day but would have to wear fishnets and sit on the boss's knee

:icon_offtopic:
who says I don't have the fishnets on already

got an iPhone yeah, only bloody annoying thing is it auto-correcting words just after you click submit you re-read and find out your phone made you out to sound like a complete looney or already up to bottle 9 in a swill fest session.

Already have brew calc on there, just need to load the software that lets me turn off the auto corrections and I'll be set.

 

[Bribie G]

OK first braggott tasting



2 kg Maris Otter
80g Dark Crystal

mashed 68 degrees 60 min

60 min boil

30g Newport hops 60 mins
plus cinnamon quill, 10 cloves, 10 cardmom pods, finger of sliced ginger


3kg ALDI honey (6 jars0

US 05 fermented at 20 degrees

***********************

Nice colour, head retention and lacing
A distinct cider nose
Tastes very much like a ginger beer with low ginger, honey twang, on swirling it in the mouth the cloves really hit you. quite dry, long long bitter finish. Despite the hops this is definitely in the cider stable.

It's clean and refreshing ... sort of like beer from another dimension ... at this stage it's an acquired taste for sure, but let's see what it's like after another few weeks.

 

[pdilley]

Nothing 3-6 months won't improve upon

Looks like a foam antelope frolicking in the setting sun on the sahara from that photo.

I'll try a braggiy one day I'm sure but I've quite a few mead recipe desires going through my head competing for the first few batches.

Smelled my JAOs recently and I think I've decided to tell SWMBO I'm moving my kit into the closet with the JAOs it smells so good!