so here's my recipe:
6lbs alfalfa or wildflower honey
1 cup buckwheat honey, 1/2 cup at bottling
3.3 sorghum LME
1/2 cup of molasses
orange peels and juice of 4 oranges
1/2 cup corriander\
Danstar nottingham ale yeast
heated the must/wort just enough to get the bitterness of the hops and bring out the flavour of the corriander.
S.G. 1.060 or so, fermentation was about a smooth sailing as it can go and pretty much fermented to 1.003 within a week. Racked into secondary for 10 days to 2 weeks then bottled with 1/2 cup of buckwheat honey/water into bottling bucket. Tried a bottle a week after bottling, this bottle i added about 1/8tsp of corn sugar because i knew i would be trying this one early so i wanted to make sure it was carbonated. I hit the nail on the head with this "braggot style" mead. It was exactly how i wanted it to turn out and it was only about a month old. It smelt amazing and tasted perfect to me anyway. for the next week I was craving this beverage all the time. The next time I had one, it was flat as apple juice and we all know how good flat beers are. I had 10 or so that i had bottled in the grolsch style bottles so decided to open them up and put a 1/4 tsp of corn sugar in each bottle then let them sit for another week even putting a little space heater on them to kickstart the yeast. Tried a week or so later and still flat.
I had made another batch of this because i loved the first bottle i cracked open so much and wanted enough for summer. Let it sit in the primary for a week and a half then racked and with what was left in the bucket after racking most of it into a secondary. just to test, i put the leftover in 2 grolsch bottles and primed them with corn sugar again just to see if this batch would carbonate as it had only been a week and a half so surely the yeast wouldn't be dead and not have a problem eating the sugar enough to carbonate the 2 bottles.
Now i ask, why the H is this not carbonating?? i didn't want to add more yeast at bottling and don't want to force carbonate through kegging, so while my 2nd batch is in the secondary as i write this, what can i do different? i've heard that it takes up to a month or so to carbonate but why did my first bottle from the first batch work out so perfectly and the rest didn't?
sorry for the length of this post.. can't wait to hear your answers/opinions on this.. thanks in advance!!
6lbs alfalfa or wildflower honey
1 cup buckwheat honey, 1/2 cup at bottling
3.3 sorghum LME
1/2 cup of molasses
orange peels and juice of 4 oranges
1/2 cup corriander\
Danstar nottingham ale yeast
heated the must/wort just enough to get the bitterness of the hops and bring out the flavour of the corriander.
S.G. 1.060 or so, fermentation was about a smooth sailing as it can go and pretty much fermented to 1.003 within a week. Racked into secondary for 10 days to 2 weeks then bottled with 1/2 cup of buckwheat honey/water into bottling bucket. Tried a bottle a week after bottling, this bottle i added about 1/8tsp of corn sugar because i knew i would be trying this one early so i wanted to make sure it was carbonated. I hit the nail on the head with this "braggot style" mead. It was exactly how i wanted it to turn out and it was only about a month old. It smelt amazing and tasted perfect to me anyway. for the next week I was craving this beverage all the time. The next time I had one, it was flat as apple juice and we all know how good flat beers are. I had 10 or so that i had bottled in the grolsch style bottles so decided to open them up and put a 1/4 tsp of corn sugar in each bottle then let them sit for another week even putting a little space heater on them to kickstart the yeast. Tried a week or so later and still flat.
I had made another batch of this because i loved the first bottle i cracked open so much and wanted enough for summer. Let it sit in the primary for a week and a half then racked and with what was left in the bucket after racking most of it into a secondary. just to test, i put the leftover in 2 grolsch bottles and primed them with corn sugar again just to see if this batch would carbonate as it had only been a week and a half so surely the yeast wouldn't be dead and not have a problem eating the sugar enough to carbonate the 2 bottles.
Now i ask, why the H is this not carbonating?? i didn't want to add more yeast at bottling and don't want to force carbonate through kegging, so while my 2nd batch is in the secondary as i write this, what can i do different? i've heard that it takes up to a month or so to carbonate but why did my first bottle from the first batch work out so perfectly and the rest didn't?
sorry for the length of this post.. can't wait to hear your answers/opinions on this.. thanks in advance!!