2/11/25 - Started batch, 1.092 SG about ~1.2 gallons. Really boring mead to be making tbh just a traditional honey water and yeast, should make a good base for the spices tho.
2/18/25 - Added the measured yeast nutrient over the first 4 days, now a week later the fermentation is still going strong, probably needs another 3-4 days.
2/23/25 - This mead just will not stop slowly fermenting, going to take a gravity reading today to see where it’s currently at but it’s essentially been slowly fermenting for this entire time. This means I feel like I shouldn’t stabalize and start secondary.
Gravity is at 1.024, ~9% ABV. So I guess since it’s still bubbling I’ll just leave it, I’ll keep degassing and hope it goes dry. The taste and smell is still harsh and yeast-y so I’m going to take that as a sign that the yeast is alive and well and still fermenting.
3/16/25 - This mead took way longer to go dry than any other I’ve made and I have to assume it was the lack of other nutriets in the brew. Fermentation finally stopped and the mead started to clear maybe a couple days ago. Stabilized the mead over the weekend and today I racked it to a new carboy, cleaned/sanitized the original, and then split the mead between the two so that I could make both Honningbrew and Juniper Berry mead at the same time!. Since all the Skyrim meads start out with the same basic mead I might as well make both.
Involved in this was an apple taste test and both me and Shelby agree that Fuji apples had the most apple flavor while being not as sweet as envy and still decently crisp.
Both carboys contain a half gallon each at this point and infusing with the spices, no backsweetening has been done.
3/23/25 - Final Gravity 0.996 on both. Backsweetened and bottled the mead, honestly the Honningbrew didn’t need any sweetening but Shelby is as Shelby does so it recieved 1/8th cup honey mixed with 1/8th cup hot water bringing its final ABV to 12.3%. The Juniper Berry needed a bit more so we added 1/2 cup honey mixed with 1/2 cup hot water which brought it down to 11.2% final ABV.
Definitely need to make more Honningbrew from the inital tasting results.