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agree with fatbloke...the more honey you use, the longer it'll have to age and mellow out. not a bad thing, but its a key reason most wine isn't over 12% ABV...it just starts losing flavor when the alcohol goes up. Just try not to sample it too often :)

This. Apfelwein (and Ed's recipe for it) does state it needs at least 6 months aging. I too was kind of underwhelmed by it, and so it sat for many many months in the basement. Then it was time to free up some bottles, and man the stuff was great!

I don't post my beer tally here, since its a wine forum lol :)

Just backing up Wade...secondary can be used, but skipping it does not mean 'cloudy beer'. Go a solid 3 weeks, even 4, in primary, and CAREFULLY rack it for bottling. Reckless racking is usually what resuspends the yeast cake and gives you a cloudy bottled beer (which WILL settle again anyhow)...

What's the recipe? Some yeasts like to foam/krausen. It could be the honey, if its more 'raw' than you've used in the past, there's more proteins in it. If you added any spices or other flavorings, same thing...it changes the surface tension, adds proteins, etc.

Off topic, but I've made several batches of wine, and always snap the lid down and affix an airlock. I don't stir until I'm adding finings/stabilizer, etc. Not saying you are wrong...just that there's plenty of right ways to do things :)

brewer's best may not ship with the 'best yeast' for the kit...I've had many that only had Munton's yeast inside which is as generic as you can get. depending on what the style is I sometimes upgrade to liquid yeast ...sometimes not.

I did some reading on the zero water pitcher for coffee brewing water. It takes over 3 hours for the water to drip from top to bottom. It is indeed a tiny RO system that's really slow.

This de-sanitizes your equipment bud. If its no-rinse, its NO RINSE. Tap water isn't always as clean as we think. The only way to rinse (bleach sanitizer) correctly is with sanitized (i.e. boiled and cooled) water.

I'm curious too, as I had a fairly old mead that, when tasted by the club, a few people noted oxidized flavors. But it was 11 years old, and never sulfited, so I was not offended or put off by a little oxidation.

I'll counter with this: because he wasn't sitting around drinking extra beer, was he out doing more active things? was he not having a bunch of chips/nuts/pretzels with his beer anymore? i find its my inactivity and poor food choices, not a beer or two, that makes my weight fluctuate.

never even heard of sparkle brite. its not one we see in the USA apparently. is it a white powder? if so its an oxygen cleanser that only santizes with lengthy contact time. See if you can order a big bottle of Star-san which only takes 30 seconds to sanitize. as far as how long it...

If you throw enough PSI at it, it'll be damn near instant carbonation. Guys rapid force carb at 30psi for a day or less. Consider CO2 is about 900psi at room temperature. If you threw just 100psi of CO2 at a little bottle of water it'd be carb'd (not stabily) pretty fast. but you'd use a...

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I use beertools.com online for my recipe creation of some beers. it DOES tell me how many calories my finished beer has, and I can tell you an IPA is no where close to those 'Ultra' low carb beers out there like Michelobe and whatever those other BMC guys put out.

Hops wouldn't add an important amount of calories. It'd matter more about the OG/FG of the two IPA's, how many calories they'd have. Sugar is 4 calories per gram, Alcohol is 7 calories per gram.

Because I've never used raisins in a mead :) I need to update my version to include the staggered nutrient addition, which takes care of the nitrogen the raisins add.

CO2 really blows out a lot of delicious aromas and flavors. its one of the reasons mead makers add fruits/spices after primary.

The local club (www.lincolnlagers.com - Lincoln, NE) is doing a big brew day right around there.

Do any of the winexpert kits use grape skin 'packs'? I have not strayed above the $80 range and am just curious how far up I have to go to hit that tier. I know the $120 kits at my brew shop have more juice in them, in addition to being 'better regional' grapes used to make the juice...