First tries

Yo Mike,

Dude, welcome to the forums!! (Native SoCal greeting)

Lemme see here . . . first, if you're heading to the Pomona area for supplies, keep going east to where the 60 and the 91 collide, and stop in tomorrow morning to Beer, Beer, Beer and More Beer where I get most of my supplies. They are having a mead event, and there will be folks like Brian Kettering and some of his brewing brethren putting on a mead making event, along with tasting of meads, wines, and various other "stuff" that will be sure to curl your toes and grow hair on your tongue.

Here's a link to the B3 website:

http://www.morebeer.com

Call in and ask Karl for directions. I'll be there along with several other posters on this forum. Try to make an effort to be there because seldom (except for the meadfest) will you be around so many mead folks who know what they're talking about.

Next. If you have K1v-1116 you'll need to make a high gravity must around 30 brix/1.130 SG if you want it dry, which is somewhere around 3.5+ lbs of honey in a 1 gallon yield recipe.

If you want it demi-sec to sweet you'll need to go at least 32 brix/1.140 SG which is at slightly less than 4 lbs of honey in a 1 gallon yield recipe.

Use the mead calculator in the "Site Tools" section to give you some more tangible numbers.

Make sure to feed your yeast, some people prefer raisins, dates, dried cherries, and others use nutrients such as Fermaid K, etc. to compensate for the low levels of YANC and FAN in honey must. Either way one thing to be aware of is that K1V-1118 needs additional nutrients in the must to ensure a strong, clean, fast, and unstressed primary fermentation.

Here's a link to the Lallemand website for some further reading on the subject.

http://www.lallemandwine.us/products/yeast_strains.php

Follow the links on the individual yeasts, and you'll get even more information than you ever wanted on yeast, temperature and alcohol tolerances, etc. Bear in mind that you can make great mead without being a scientist, unfortunately most of the information on yeasts and such is written in very "nerdy scientific" terms with temperatures, pH, yadda yadda. Bottom line is to take the time to get to know what you need to in order to produce the kind of mead you like. If it takes you five minutes of research and you're happy with the outcome, that's great. If it takes you a year to get down the basics of producing what you like, that's great too. It all depends on what you like and if you can hit your marks consistantly.

Cheers,
Oskaar

You'll need to follow the recipe posted by Norskersword. I have not made this particular cyser. It depends on stopping the fermentation at a certain SG, in this case I think its 1.017.

I make my must to end at the gravity I desire so I don't have to stop the yeast, so I'd advise that you follow this recipe exactly, and send some smoke signals to Norsk!

Cheers,

Oskaar

Duuuude!
Welcome to the forums ;D
Did you use DAP? I used it with K1-V1116 amd I had a 11 day fermentation. I followed Oskaar's advice ( 2 teaspoons at start, 1 teaspoon aftre 12 hours and 1 teaspoon in the third day) and it worked like a charm. The OG was about 32 BRIX and the first taste tells me there is some residual sugar, but not overly sweet. If you haven't done so, picj up a lees stirrer, it is a great tool to have. Also, follow this link to some abreviated description of the different yeast strains, it will gve you an idea of each yeast's potential and character http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/strains.asp .
See you at B3

Ted

Same here! Keep making mead!!

It was great meeting all you folks there at B3!

A BIG thanks to Brian for hosting, and for Karl (B3 Store Manager) for graciously giving us the space and a tent to keep us from getting heat stroke!

Cheers,

Oskaar

I will make sure there are a lot more tasting corks on the table so we can easily re-cork any open bottles. And I'll make sure there are more ice-filled coolers to keep the bottles nice and cold.

Brian K