Usually not worth it; you’ll need to gently distill (in proper glass, this is important) the beer like it is done for ABV measurement and measure density of leftovers. Or do quantitative chromatography. You’ve got to know hands-on chemistry real well for this. Let me know if you need the procedure.
Only once I’ve got yeast staggered by lemon juice addition, and that happened in secondary fermentation. If there is enough sugar (and, if I recall correctlt, there was added sugar in these ferments), they’ll keep going. Acidity that slows them down for real is much higher, like what acetobacteria do. Yeast still thrives in bread starters and combucha, and those are sour!
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Was it pulpy? Particles tend to stabilize liquid interfaces.
Then it’s effectively braggot. Embrace the froth, you are cookin!
Yeast does this if they are in really sweet spot for sugar, nitrogen, microelements, temperature, and pH. Almost always happens in braggot (once shot into ceiling with lock, was quite a mess), also if you add yeast fertilizer. I think I saw this reported reproducively for slightly over 23C lager yeast. And, well, insufficient headspace might be a problem. Don’t worry, at least yet.
Are you boiling them? Why?
Then it’ll totally ferment like crazy, I did this with honey and quartered oranges.
So are you adding sugar this time or not?
Indeed, I had a stall once in a melomel with just a few lemons in secondary. Not a big deal since it was secondary, and residual sweetness counterbalanced the tartness nicely. Got really quickly really clean though.
I would say using just the skins for flavor is much more feasible. Also I quarter citrus, slicing them like this is just asking for lots of mush at cost of laborous slicing.
Ciders and cysers are perfect drinks for Gravmas celebration! Although myself I’m planning citrus melomel for the evening, brings up childhood memories. Tried to share photos of 3x decoction weisen from the eve, but lost fight to foam miserably, for it was not the first bottle for the evening.
My wife said that Christmas specials should be made on Christmas for the next one. Sounds legit. I think that’d be my plan for now.
U-tube is just a glorified pendulum. But using this classical U shape for liquids is worth it. Pendulums is how you measure mass if gravity is too low.
I know some people inverted U-tube and immersed piezo fork into liquid. Then they struggled with reflections and setting feedback right or making sweep practical enough. And then there is electrical connections going into the probe through liquid surface, which is another concern. Still, in batch process (and all brewing is batch process) immersible probe should be much faster and washable than flow-through, I guess.
Oh, got carried away and missed another question. I’m actually throwing all good quality stuff in melomels, there are no favorites really. Other than Vaccinium uliginosum (English words for berries are terribly misleading, used interchangeably for pretty much all berries of same color - so these are usually called “blueberries”, but that’s not what is called “blueberries” in USA, for example) berries that result in something that shames wine made of grapes - so much cheaper, literally grows in most unfarmable places, melomel tastes similarly but better, and no pretense about “grape locality” and “northern slope” - just good stuff, every time.
Cranberries and lingonberries are kind of staple berries here, rowan is less known but also abundant and tastes great. Other hidden treasures I’ve found include hawthorn, ribes, and (very unexpectedly) hippophae. Now it’s time for imported citrus fruits (skins are best part for melomel) but I’m all out of started base mead (and almost out of space).
I used to buy directly from beekeepers (never from stores, that junk is just spoiled in most cases). Only from people you get to know personally, beekeepers are the most hardcore underground people around for some reason. They usually sell honey in meadmaking quantities much below retail. Just talk to people around, it’s abundant all over the world. And the result is totally worth it.
I’ve been doing this for over 10 years now I think; had to move out of USA at some point and lose about 300L of product (it has to age, nothing you can do - and shipping alcohol is very complicated issue) - gave it away to friends, this was quite a challenge. Then started all over and over, the oldest bottles I have now are from 2019. The best time to make mead is 10 years ago, second best is now!
Then, recently I became a beekeeper myself. Oh, this is addictive stuff. My beehives are smart homes now, I can listen to the sounds of bees and check their environment from home and I’m going to start selling the system to other beekeepers within weeks. And something like this happens to anyone who gets into beekeeping, it drives you crazy. I won’t be selling honey myself for some time though, as I’ve only started recently and all I get goes into mead I can produce myself until the families grow enough, who knows how long it will take?
At least I’ve learned the ins and outs of the trade, why exactly honey from somebody you trust is completely different from retail anonymous “local honey” jar in store (or much worse, imported ones). There are quite objective shortcuts that should not be done but are economically attractive.
Refractometers are quite useful for pale wort and clear distillation products - or anything where you calibrate close to target phase subspace (honey, must, well-known beer recipe, etc.). I use mine to determine when fermentation rate slows down to determine termination in yeast tests - their relative readings are OK, if they aren’t changing, it’s worth considering density is stable.
Regarding U-tube, that’s fun enough little project if done right. I had even more daring idea to build contactless (read through glass) density scanner, I even have the already soldered and flashed board and transceivers somewhere around the place. The prospect of quick reading density and inner fluid temperature without exposure seems attractive enough, but it’s a lot of research work to tune this tool concept, and then to turn it into comfortable product, and I’m kind of short of time-money invariant resource now.
Refractometers are no good at all, especially with THIS much colored stuff. Could get over 2x error, which is nonsense.
After all, you don’t have to lose that stuff, if you had a tall and narrow plastic cylinder, that would fill that glass on the photo when you are done.
I was thinking to design and build a U-tube density meter for regular people who can’t realistically spend a few thousands on proper tool, I can see those in slightly above decent refractometer price range (and that would indeed take small amount of sample, not as small as refractometer, but still). I wonder if I’d be able to sell enough to cover the expences (and myself I do have a ridiculously expensive and unnecessarily fancy MettlerToledo U tool in addition to all floaters and refractomters, remaining from good old times I was hoping to do paid analytics for microbreweries and thus needed something certified).
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Did spurce basic pilsener ale experiment this summer! Of course, seeing them for what they are, I’ve stayed away from all pumps and filters, decanted the boil with tips and threw some tips for “dry… tipping?” Then some needles sneaked into the bottles. I’ve used fresh tips so they are just crunchy snack when you drink it. Weirdest thing, but I’m pretty sure it tastes like legendary Sahti beer. Well, the recipe is technically quite close, I suppose? Still have a few bottles (appropriately stored in sauna lol), I’m curious how it would age over a year or so. Totally doing it again next year.
We’ve caught something that looks, tastes, smells and behaves like brettanomyces from last field trip. They are really different and it seems their growth and fermentation profile does depend on conditions even more than usually! Never kept this culture before. Waiting for proper tasting procedure (could be something horrendous really, I’m pretty sure those will need some tuning in standard recepies). Then off to the library and store it goes.
Otherwise, there is full freezer of frozen forest berries waiting for the secondary in mead buckets and an infamous BAG I’ve bought to try the suffering others speak of here. Well, once I’m not the only healthy person in household, we’ll have lots of fun stuff to do, sigh.
Only proper wine corks are good for proper mead. I mean, yeah, there is place in our life for fermented honey solution that is consumed fast, but proper mead should age like expensive wine. It’s more noble than wine, after all!
Bottling mead thus is always a challenge. I’ve tried all kinds of methods, or course beer caps - and especially swingtops - just start leaking at best in few years. Compouns corks too, and, being low grade stuff, they are often stinky themselves. The only exception are belge bottles and fat compound corks for braggots, if corked belge way, they occasionally leak some liquid at first, but then seal themselves for good.
Even higher grade corks tend to degrade over the years. Highest grade does not degrade. I’ve just negotiated a sample of fancy corks from Portugal, about 1eur/cork, highest grade. They look really good and will probably work, but min order is 6000 and they have to be repackaged sterile. Good thung I have sterile line, but 6000? It’s 10x more than all bottles I have now! I could place them in my webstore in small bags? Would someone be buying them?
I was looking into alternatives, but nothing so far looks promising. I’m thinking about turning other wood types on a lathe, but that will probably result in a disaster.