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« on: August 21, 2020, 10:42:18 pm »
I guess I probably... should? I don't really have a good recipe for the gallon-batch braggot, that was pretty much just a freewheeling sort of thing I did in excitement, wasn't thinking about recreating it since it was mostly just whatever I had on hand. I added the fruit on a complete whim, for example, and didn't weigh it. I know somewhere in between a pound and a pound and a half of organic mango and a little less than a pound of pineapple just from the bags of fruit I used. The juice of six or so oranges that somebody left out for free in my apartment building. Don't recall how much juniper I simmered into the wort, I think six grams or so. I did take a few sparse notes, and I used .2 ounces of Willamette hops for a gallon batch, so it's hopped comparatively to most beers that aren't built around being really hoppy, probably on the lighter end. I wrote down "a little more than .6 pounds malt extract, a little more than a pound of honey" since I started with that and added a little more of each to get up to my target gravity of 1.090.
The first mead was less of a whirlwind, relatively simple and fairly easy to remember with some amount of forethought involved:
Simmer a pound of organic hibiscus leaves in a gallon of water for an hour. Half an hour through, put a brew-bag full of two and a half ounces lightly macerated juniper in. Put in bucket, including juniper. Brew seven bags of black tea in another gallon to get a weak black tea for the sake of tannins (this felt like maybe not enough tea). Put in bucket. Put around 20 pounds of unfiltered, unpasteurized honey in the bucket. Fill up to five gallons with water. Put in more honey until a gravity reading with a hydrometer shows around 1.152. Follow rehydration instructions for your yeast and rehydration nutrient, I used K1V-1116 wine yeast and Go-Ferm. Pitch yeast and seal in a container with and airlock. Add yeast nutrient over the next few days or so according to the TONSA 2.0 protocols- for this gravity and size of mead, that means 8 grams of Fermaid O at 24, 48, and 72 hours, and another eight grams whenever the yeast has burned through a third of the sugars as indicated by gravity reading. This will be different if you are using a different nutrient regimen. A few days in, freak out and take all the juniper out because some random on Reddit told you it was too much juniper for that amount of mead and you are just a complete sheep. Let sit until done.
Okay, maybe not all THAT simple. But it was fun enough to remember. Felt like alchemy, and it kind of is. Hard to tell without having finished a brew, but I think this is going to be a long-term hobby of mine, it appeals to me a lot. Also, it's a pretty cheap way to get booze. It'd be a bitch to calculate it exactly but I think the first mead comes out to probably somewhere in between 1 1/2 and 4 bucks to make a beer bottle's worth of an 18% ABV, which is pretty decent value. And you get waaaay more specificity as far as like, what you want to drink and what flavor you want.
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