/diy/ - Do It Yourself

>>218807
According to wiki, a berry mead counts as a melomel. :)

>>217856
If you're going to troll, you can at least put some effort into it. Furthermore, if you actually read through the thread or cared to spend five minutes on Wikipedia to educate yourself on the subject, you'd already know that it's entirely safe. And finally, if you knew anything at all about the subject, you'd know that homebrewing is an excellent way for people to make their own custom brews and blends that are tailored to their own tastes. You can't find that in a store.

>>217714
Congrats! Just make sure you don't add too much, unless you're fond of bottle bombs. ;)

>>217686
That's how I brew. Small batches are a delight to work with. Who wants 25 bottles of a single kind of wine when you can have a whole lot of variety? Unless you plan on selling the stuff or giving most of it away or you've discovered the recipe for liquid orgasms, it seems kind of like a waste.

>>217211
It varies by state and by country, so god knows what it is in England. I'm going to go ahead and assume it's perfectly legal to brew more than you can possibly drink as long as you don't sell it, ship it, or otherwise make yourself interesting to the government.

>>216810
It takes a fairly massive amount of rose petals to produce a decent amount of oil. I would recommend rose water, which is a byproduct of the distillation process. It carries a lot of the rose flavor, and can be found online for relatively cheap.

>>216636
D'aww, and I love you, random Anon ^_^

>>216668
It's pretty easy. All you need is a lot of honey, clean water, and yeast, as well as a way to sterilize a large container of some sort.

It's completely safe. A small amount of methanol is produced, but in concentrations that are nowhere near harmful. If you were to distill the mead (which is something entirely different), you could potentially concentrate the methanol to dangerous levels.

Cost really depends on the price of honey. I can make two gallons for as low as $14, but some places charge a lot more. You'll need around 2 pounds per gallon to get a dry mead.

Booze brews and ages best when it's cold, but if it's not too hot, you can age it there. Just keep it out of direct sunlight and try to keep it as cool as possible.

>>216429
Wheeeee congrats! It's looking pretty good. :) Some people suggest you rack it every so often, but I don't think it's necessary. Mine went crystal clear at just over two months. I went straight to bottling and never had an issue.

Now, if you do want to add certain flavors that are strong/overpowering/etc and you want them to be more subtle, you can rack into secondary, add your flavors, and test it until you arrive at the desired flavor.

>>215205
Yep, it'll take between 1 and 3 months to ferment. That'll leave you plenty of time to age it. Longer is obviously better, but hell, a lot of meads come out tasting phenomenal right after fermentation stops, especially if you keep it relatively simple and don't throw in a ton of harsh flavors.

>>214426
Whatever happens, age it. If it's awful, let it mellow. If it's great, let it mellow. Age can turn the most disastrous clusterfucks into fine brews, provided they stay clear of bacterial infection and oxidation.

>>214414
It won't produce bad odors, but it will produce harsh, bitter flavors. These do mellow out over time, so either age it or cut out the flesh and use the zest. The white pith is what causes the bitterness.

The oranges may eventually sink, but your mead should be done fermenting before they do. You're good to go once it turns clear enough to read a newspaper through.

Congrats on making your first melomel!

>>214261
Please, at least make a batch of JAOM:
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f80/joes-ancient-orange-mead-49106/

Incredibly easy. All you need for equipment is a 1-gallon jug of some sort and a balloon. Throw everything together, shake the hell out of it, balloon over top, DON'T FUCKING TOUCH IT. Brewing is not a complicated hobby. After the mead turns clear, you can rack (siphon so as to not transfer the muck on the bottom of the jug) it into bottles (preferably glass), or if you're a true barbarian, slowly pour it into bottles. Try to avoid pausing the pour between bottles so as to avoid stirring up too much dead yeast. Age for as long as you like (6 months preferred but not required), and get drunk as shit off of cheap but tasty mead. It has the same %abv of most wines.

>>214171
Hmm? Restrictions? In America, I think the only restrictions are 1) no operating stills for the production of drinking alcohol, and 2) you can only produce 100 gallons of booze per year (in any form) per household if you're single, or 200 if you live with a long-term partner (otherwise you're classified as a microbrewery and you need a fuckton of permits).

>>214086
That's nice. I likey bread yeast, though :3

>>214058
Also awesome tripcode :3

>>214079
Plastic jug (get it from distilled water, not an old milk carton), fuckton of honey/apple cider and sugar, packet of bread yeast, handful of raisins (or microwave an extra packet of yeast), some cinnamon/nutmeg if you like, and possibly some cut-up fruit. Throw it all together, shake the everloving piss out of it, snap a balloon with a hole poked in it over the top, and throw it in a dark cupboard for about two months.

>>214058
"Alcohol syrup" was really my target. I'm a fan of really super sweet girly bitch drinks :3

I haven't tried a proper strain of yeast yet...just typical run-of-the-mill Red Star bread yeast. I let the mead age for at least 6 months before drinking it. Thus far, I made a hyper-sweet version of JAOM (called Sunmist Mead) and a lovely maple batch I'm calling Maple Candysnap.

Now I'm torn between strawberry and raspberry...

>>214040
I let them go until fermentation stopped, but I used bread flour so it crapped out at a relatively low abv of 13-14%, and also threw in a fuckton of honey and brown sugar. The yeast ate as much as they could, but it still left a ton of undigested sugars in solution. :D Overall, it took about 2 months for the mead to turn clear.

>>213969
This is my next batch. Thank you, kind sir, for calling this to my attention! Though, instead of burning the honey, I'm going to caramelize some brown sugar.

I also really want to do a raspberry melomel. I'm sorely tempted to make this first, just to finally get some tartness in my mead. Everything I've made thus far has been ungodly sweet.

Glass dildos. Be sure to use pyrex glass so they won't shatter.

>>208420
Holy shit I've been looking for something to smoke that would actually taste good and not rape my health or get me addicted to something. Thanks!

If you make it out of clay, it's possible you could mold it around a thick piece of piano wire so you don't have to hollow out the stem.

This is the most awesome thread I have ever seen.

You can always throw a few into a huge sack and whale on 'em with a sledgehammer until they've been reduced to breadcrumbs. Instant panko.

Gentlemen, I have discovered real-life Lembas bread. A single bite can sustain a fully-grown man for a day.

>>207068
http://wiki.homedistiller.org/Legality#United_States

"What all this basically comes down to is ... 1. Americans can own a still, but it must be no larger than 1 gallon, and may only be used for water purification or the extraction of essential oils from plants. 2.Dealers/manufacturers of stills in the United States must surrender any address or other info on any customer who buys a still to the BATF, when they request it.(no warrant is required.)

What this means is that anyone who buys a still in America can at any time expect a knock at the door and a man with a badge demanding to see what is being done with the still they bought."

In America, it is very much illegal to operate a still to produce drinking alcohol without the proper permits.