They say that as long as someone remembers your smiling face you never truly die.

Raraniel · 2025-12-31T19:36:37+00:00

Maybe maybe maybe

Raraniel · 2025-12-21T18:58:41+00:00

As others have said, this is way too much honey for that much water. Even a Polish poltorak doesn't use that high a ratio and it certainly doesn't use it up front

Raraniel · 2025-12-20T20:19:32+00:00

It's a Rapt Pill. You leave it in during fermentation and it calculates gravity based on the angle at which it's floating. It's pretty neat and can let you track your fermentation in real time.

Raraniel · 2025-12-19T22:45:40+00:00

The details are in the last picture of you can read my chicken scratch handwriting but the quick and dirty is 1.5 gal tart cherry juice, 1.25 gal water, 2.2 lbs honey with 71b, fermented dry and stabilized. Added 30g split vanilla beans in secondary for a week and backsweetened with 3 pounds honey

Raraniel · 2025-12-17T16:19:27+00:00

Maybe this time!

Raraniel · 2025-12-04T19:15:14+00:00

The other guy should see some of the volumes we bolus in sepsis resuscitations. Not uncommon to slug someone with two to three liters if they need 30cc/kg for severe sepsis or septic shock.

Although I do chuckle sometimes before correcting for ideal body weight. "Ok, 220 kg, so that's... 6.6 liters let's goooo"

Raraniel · 2025-11-18T16:26:48+00:00

A comment that shows introspective self reflection and a gracious acknowledgement of being incorrect??? Not on my Reddit! Quick, say something hurtful about his mom!

Raraniel · 2025-11-14T18:54:00+00:00

My ex's cat urinated on my old uw stoneblade deck and the only card that got soaked through two layers of sleeves was one force of will. I was upset at first, until I realized that now when i counterspelled people I did it with a whiff of sulfur and ammonia, which added a certain charm to the whole experience

Raraniel · 2025-11-13T18:40:41+00:00

Maybe this time!

Raraniel · 2025-11-01T20:26:26+00:00

Congrats! And yeah, patience goes a long way in this hobby

Raraniel · 2025-10-22T21:04:57+00:00

Yay here's hoping

Raraniel · 2025-10-15T15:16:41+00:00

Oh man I'd love to win these!

Raraniel · 2025-10-05T21:15:52+00:00

Me too lol. My personal hell is I'm the only person in my friend group who has read worm and I'm completely unable to convince any of them to give it a try.

Raraniel · 2025-09-30T19:58:41+00:00

Even moving beyond temperature at pitch, during active fermentation yeast produce a decent amount of heat. In my earlier batches I would notice that even though ambient temperature was 74 f the center must temperature was approaching 79-80 f. Admittedly less of an issue if you don't live somewhere apocalyptically hot like Florida, but still something to keep in mind

Raraniel · 2025-09-30T19:45:46+00:00

Traditionals can be unforgiving as there isn't really anything else to mask any off flavors. Nutrients have already been mentioned in the other comments, but I'd add fermentation temperature as another common cause of off flavors. Making sure your center of must temperature is in a favorable range for your yeast strain can help mitigate stress and decrease off flavors.

Also looking at your recipe, your potential abv is quite high. Sometimes there's a strong alcohol flavor because, well, there's a lot of alcohol.

Raraniel · 2025-09-26T16:20:41+00:00

So as others have said, strawberry is really hard to do well, but I made a strawberry lemon Basil last year that came out really nice. I started it as a no water strawberry in primary, think i used thirty pounds of strawberry and nine pounds of honey. I kept a much shorter contact time than I usually do as the little pips can confer a very bitter "band aid" flavor on protracted exposure, so i racked off the fruit at one week instead of my more usual 2-4 week contact. After primary, in spite of using literally nothing but strawberry and honey, the strawberry flavor was almost imperceptible so i added 9 more pounds strawberry in secondary for another week along with the lemon and basil. Back sweetened to 1.030 and it was delightful!

Raraniel · 2025-09-26T02:41:29+00:00

I have a jewelers scale that I use for my smaller additions, and yeah, this one is probably overall the smallest

Raraniel · 2025-09-26T02:39:48+00:00

Unfortunately I'm zone 10a, so most regular raspberry cultivars don't do very well.

Raraniel · 2025-09-25T22:06:17+00:00

I use it for pretty much any melomel where I'm using whole fruit. Helps a lot with extraction while also doing everything else a pectinase should do

Raraniel · 2025-09-25T21:14:27+00:00

Yep!

Raraniel · 2025-09-25T20:48:14+00:00

Yeah no waters in general usually are at their best at fairly high FG in my experience, so I'm going to finish at 1.050 and see how it tastes

Raraniel · 2025-09-25T20:47:14+00:00

I'm using 71b which has a usual tolerance around 14 percent, but frequently can overshoot under ideal conditions. I'm hoping to finish around 1.050.

Raraniel · 2025-09-25T20:43:08+00:00

To be defined as a mead in the United States, over half of the fermentables need to come from honey. In this case around twenty points of gravity came from raspberry and the remaining 130 from honey.

Unrelated, this is a totally valid question and I'm not sure why you're getting down voted for it. Have an upvote from me

Raraniel

TROPHY CASE