Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Update #2: Ginger Honey Mead

My home-brewed Ginger Honey mead is coming along nicely. It has been bubbling like crazy since the day after I started it.
So today I checked my Ginger Honey mead progress.
I have been stirring it up vigorously every other day to help oxidize it. At this phase of fermentation, the oxygen should help the yeast. Stirring also seems to release a lot of the carbon dioxide, which I also think would help those yeasties out. Apparently my mead has a very high starting specific gravity (og). So my yeast will need all the help they can get.
After I stirred things up to add oxygen today, I took a gravity reading and it's at 1.1090.
I added 1 tsp of yeast nutrient and 5 grams of potassium carbonate that I purchased at a brewing supply store today. I wish I had known about a staggered nutrient schedule before I started this but now I know. I can do it with my future batches. Each batch will hopefully be better than the last but I still have high hopes for this one.
We moved our fermentation bucket to our laundry room. Unfortunately it is cooler in there so fermentation might slow down a bit. We shall see. We didn't want our kitchen to smell yeasty.

I mentioned briefly that I went to a home brewing store today. There I purchased some empty wine bottles and some corks for when it comes time to bottle. I also snagged another 5 gallon fermentation bucket and a kit for brewing some oatmeal stout beer. It's a little present for my husband. So I have that coming up in the future for me.
I'll work on the oatmeal stout either tomorrow or during my next weekend.

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