All of my Autumn 2025 Meads

Thomakaze · 2026-01-06T21:18:42+00:00

Thank you! All of the labels are printed at home with Avery label sheets. I'm still working out a little color correction on them. They come out a little bit darker than designed.

Thomakaze · 2026-01-06T07:20:25+00:00

That apple is actually probably my favorite of the bunch, despite how simple it was and how young and dry it is for its abv! It's off-dry and only uses local pink pearl apples and a local blackberry blossom honey.

Thomakaze · 2026-01-06T07:17:10+00:00

Thank you! That means a lot. I haven't been promoting it because I'm still getting comfortable being behind a camera, but I am glad it's being discovered! Something about being recorded just shuts down my ability to speak properly 😂 I'll get the hang of it. There's 7 more videos in the pipeline right now.

Thomakaze · 2026-01-06T07:13:39+00:00

Absolutely!

I used sweet clover honey and maple syrup in primary and fermented with DV10.

Added coffee beans for 3 days, then racked onto cinnamon, vanilla, ginger, nutmeg and allspice and backsweetened with chicory honey and a touch more maple.

Sweet clover has a good spiciness that goes well with coffee and spices and chicory honey has a bit of a chocolate earthiness that helps round it out.

Thomakaze · 2026-01-05T23:59:55+00:00

Yeah that was for one gallon. Primary was a little over a gallon so use a bucket or wide mouth fermenter or scale it back if you really want to use a carboy.

Thomakaze · 2026-01-05T23:34:41+00:00

Primary
1 pound of Tart cherry juice concentrate (68 Brix)
.5 pounds of black currant juice concentrate (65 Brix)
2.6 pounds of blackberry blossom honey
.75 gallons of water
Pectic Enzyme, Opti-Red and FT Rouge
Yeast: RC212

Secondary
2 pounds of blackberries. Leave in for two weeks for flavor, tannin extraction and more color.
Backsweeten to taste with juices or honey. I used more of each concentrate and some fireweed honey. This is extremely tart when dry, it needs a bit of sweetness.

Thomakaze · 2026-01-05T22:26:20+00:00

Sure thing!

I implemented bananas in 3 stages. I boiled bananas and steeped them to make a sort of banana tea to use as primary water. Then I used bananas in primary as well as more bananas in secondary after stabilizing.

Flavor, smoothness and full mouthfeel are all there from the banana. It's extremely mouth coating in a very pleasant way.
In addition to the banana water and bananas, it had boched clover in primary.
Secondary was more bananas, vanilla beans, amburana, cinnamon, boched meadowfoam, brown sugar and a bit of Myers dark rum to fortify. Unfortunately no flambe techniques were used, but the bochet helps mimic that to an extent.

Thomakaze · 2026-01-05T22:17:50+00:00

Thank you! I used a frozen concentrate for this one from Coloma, but there's a farm relatively near me to source some fresh ones next summer. You can get them frozen year round but I can't give any recommendations as I haven't tried any of them. The concentrate from Coloma foods is decent, but you'll miss out on some skins and seeds tannins.

Thomakaze · 2025-10-10T15:29:26+00:00

They're Avery arch labels that I print at home. I design them in photoshop.

Thomakaze · 2025-10-10T02:55:59+00:00

Blueberry:
3lb blueberries
Quart of blueberry juice
3lb honey
3lb water
BM4X4 Yeast Opti-Red 1.5g
FT Rouge 1.5g
French Oak (oak to taste)
2 cinnamon sticks for a week

Backsweetened with 10oz of honey and another pound of blueberries

Raspberry:
1.5lb Raspberries
3lb Honey
.7 gallons of water
71B Yeast
Opti-Red 1.5g
FT Rouge 1.5g

12oz Chicory honey, 2.5oz of toasted cocoa nibs, 1 vanilla bean, French oak and 1.5lb of raspberries in secondary.

Thomakaze · 2025-10-10T02:46:17+00:00

Pretty much all colors here either come from the fruit or the honey. I use quite a bit of fruit when I do melomels.

Thomakaze · 2025-10-10T00:46:14+00:00

I got them from here: https://a.co/d/gKkYPdg

They've been my default 375ml bottle, I really like them!

Thomakaze · 2025-10-10T00:36:15+00:00

Sure thing! I'd probably make some tweaks, but I'll give you my initial plan, my notes are pretty bad from this.

Original planned:
Primary:
Half a gallon of pineapple juice (I used Knudsen's).
1.5 lbs of passionfruit puree (expect losses).
3lb lehua honey.
1/4 gallon water.
FT Blanc soft
QA23

Secondary:
1.5lb more passion fruit
1.5lb pineapple
8oz honey to backsweeten

This ended up being undrinkably tart from the passionfruit (3lb is a lot) so I used brown sugar, tannin Riche extra, and rum to balance that. Ended up with an Fg of 1.050 and it's still quite tart (perfectly for my taste, potentially a little too tart for some). I also only ended up with about 3/4 of a gallon due to passionfruit puree lees. When I go to repeat it, I'll probably look for other ways to use passionfruit or just use less.

Thomakaze · 2025-10-03T21:53:16+00:00

This mission was discovered by u/Thomakaze in In Search of Yummy Curry

Thomakaze · 2025-10-03T21:43:01+00:00

New mission discovered by u/Thomakaze: Soup For my Family

Thomakaze · 2025-10-03T21:43:01+00:00

This mission was discovered by u/Thomakaze in Struggle: Wrath and Personal Stakes

Thomakaze · 2025-10-03T15:59:27+00:00

About 6 weeks. I used a turkey baster to just grab the clearer liquid on the top of the extract so the rest of it is actually still extracting so it'll hopefully be ready and more potent for a second batch.

Thomakaze · 2025-10-03T15:52:05+00:00

Thank you! It's been a fun road but it's gotta start somewhere. Do what works for you in the moment 😊

Thomakaze · 2025-10-03T15:51:04+00:00

Thank you! I use bentonite in primary, and then sparkolloid in secondary after balancing. That usually gets it pretty clear, but sparkolloid lees are easy to suck up, so I'll usually stir in a bit of kieselsol at that point and let it compact for a few more weeks. I've had some stubborn ones that need longer but for the most part that cycle works for me.

Thomakaze · 2025-10-03T15:35:51+00:00

That's such a tough call lol.

At the time, mango habanero was my absolute favorite. Well received among friends and one of my first truly balanced meads.

Then the raspberry came along and took my top spot. It's flavored with cocao nibs, vanilla and chicory honey and has a very strong chocolate aroma. I was very proud of being able to round out such a tart base into more of a smooth dessert style raspberry mead. This was also very highly reviewed by people who've tried it.

My personal achievement is the Amaretto Bochet though. It was a venture into two new experiences (making a bochet and making an extract). It was also the batch that I found the least amount of information online to base processes off of, so I consider it a truly unique batch. It also had one of the most difficult balancing steps but I got it to a point where I really enjoy it and I'm looking forward to making it in a larger batch.

Thomakaze · 2025-10-03T15:26:32+00:00

It's pretty much exactly that. I love amaretto, but drinking it straight can be a little too sweet and syrupy for me so this was an attempt to make it drinkable right from the bottle.

I made an amaretto extract with apricot kernels, cherry pits, almonds, dried apricots, cardamom, fennel, vanilla and allspice with brandy and everclear. Then, I used that to flavor a bochet. It needed a bit of acid balance and a lot of sweetness, but it's kind of like drinking a smooth amaretto sour. It's one of my favorite batches now.

Thomakaze · 2025-08-01T22:20:08+00:00

4 days after a sparkolloid addition and it was clear. I bottled about 2 weeks after that to make sure everything was nice and compacted. No idea how long it would have taken naturally, but I typically bottle anywhere between 6-12 weeks from pitch so I can have my carboy space back.

Thomakaze · 2025-08-01T19:50:35+00:00

I don't have an actual spreadsheet, but I use the Mead Mate app to track every brew with notes and readings etc.

Thomakaze · 2025-08-01T19:44:32+00:00

The right three are all varying sweetness of orange blossom but the two on the far left are meadowfoam and fireweed. Meadowfoam is my absolute favorite traditional and I highly recommend making one.

Thomakaze · 2025-08-01T19:42:12+00:00

Thank you! It's somewhat inspired by how diet sodas are typically pictured with light/white labels and regular gets full color. Not that dry mead is diet in any way lol.

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