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Perhaps it's to keep out the wascally wabbits and marauding meadmakers.

Keep the bottle. Go buy some apple juice and vodka and mix up three bottles of little white lies to give away. Most people wouldn't know good stuff if they tasted it. The ones who did would never ask you for another bottle after tasting the fake stuff, leaving more for you.

I've used diluted bleach to sanitize containers for making mead, but I always rinsed carefully afterwards. No problems I could attribute to either bleach contamination or unsanitary conditions. But some sanitizers don't require rinsing. I'm using Star San now for that reason - it's more convenient.

Good deal! Is it raw honey?

Anything that says "First aid for ingestion: DO NOT INDUCE VOMITING" gets a no vote from me. That's generally the recommendation for things that are corrosive or otherwise cause tissue damage on contact. In other words, stuff you shouldn't have placed in your mouth in the first place. That...

Don't get me wrong, buckwheat honey has its place. (My fiancee loves it.) But when you dilute it in water for fermenting the flavor and aroma are less overpowering, and you can identify what it smells like. And like you say, it's not usually something you want in your glass.

The buckwheat honey that's made around here has a very strong, harsh flavor that doesn't seem to lend itself to making good mead. I saw an article somewhere (sorry, i can't find it right now) that describes Eastern U.S. buckwheat honey as having a "barnyard" aroma and flavor. I wouldn't call it...

What yeast did you use? I bought some EC-1118 a couple years ago by mistake, and my jaw dropped when I saw it would tolerate up to 18% alcohol.

Yikes! I paid over $60 for a 6 gal. glass carboy locally. In fact, $36 is pretty close to what the same shop charges for that size in plastic. Wish I had room for 3 or 4 more.

Apple seeds contain a chemical that emits cyanide when it comes in contact with digestive enzymes. Swallowing an occasional apples seed isn't dangerous because the seed coat resists digestion, but swallowing crushed or chewed seeds is a bad idea. I'm guessing here, because I don't know if the...

That's fine, but remember there are two kinds of nations in the world - those who use the metric system, and those who have landed men on the Moon. (grin) I'm really looking forward to seeing how your date mead turns out. I think it sounds great!

Sounds like you're on the right track. You're learning one of the basic lessons of winemaking - patience. (grin) Degassing isn't strictly necessary, but it does improve the wine's flavor by removing the harsh taste of dissolved CO2 left over from the fermentation. That comes after you've moved...

I've heard of whiskey being aged in sherry casks, but not the other way around.

I use something similar called a Vacu-Seal. It looks like this: The tapered nozzle fits into the hole in a rubber stopper, and as long as you hold it in place it seals well enough for the vacuum to draw out the gas. The tip also has a small moisture trap in it so if your product foams up...

Hah! Fat chance. (Literally) But you're right, vacuum in a glass container is dangerous. I used to work on televisions back when they still used big picture tubes, which had vacuum inside, and I learned early on to respect those things. When one shattered it could be scary. Whenever I'm...

I'm just getting back into making mead, and discovered I still had an account here from back when I first got started.

I've been degassing with a handheld vacuum pump, the kind you use to evacuate plastic baggies. I think I paid $20 for it on Ebay. It has a tapered nozzle tip that I mush down into a hole in a rubber stopper in the carboy. Thumb the switch and watch the fizz! I stop it and break the seal...

Around here (upstate NY) the honey farmer I normally deal with at the public market is selling wildflower honey for a little over $4 a pound. I think I paid $15 for a quart (3 pounds) last week. A few times when I've bought a large amount for a batch of mead they knocked the price down to $3 a...

Saw it mentioned on Homebrewtalk.com.

Now that just makes sense. My latest batch I had just enough honey to make 5 gallons that finished out at a whisker under 12% dry. I was going to back sweeten it, but now I think I'll keep a half gallon or so dry for just such purposes.