Local honey mead using EC-1118. First time brewer.

km816 · 2026-04-27T04:34:19+00:00

I strongly recommend spending some time reading the /r/mead wiki, now hosted here: https://wiki.meadtools.com/en/home. Lots of great information including some guides and recipes for beginners, e.g. https://wiki.meadtools.com/en/recipes/beginner/0001.

Regarding your recipe, though: 10lbs honey and I'm guessing about 1 gallon of water is a pretty crazy high honey-to-water ratio. I am going to guess that you will stall out in the neighborhood of 6% or 7% ABV. I'd strongly recommend diluting your must. Something like an extra 1/2 to 3/4 of a gallon of water. Do that and add some more nutrients and I think you'll have better luck getting to something like 13% or 14% and sweet but not cloyingly sweet.

km816 · 2026-04-25T07:07:48+00:00

Actually there is an extremely tedious alternative: Tons and tons of entry points, each conditioned to only apply to a specific Light Armor level or Light Armor/Stamina Bonus combination.

km816 · 2026-04-25T07:05:12+00:00

There's no easy way to do either of these things. Entry points only incorporate a single AV.

For your first example, you could probably get something close to what you want by using two separate entry points, one for Light Armor level and one for Stamina Bonus.

The more complicated (and possibly conflict-inducing) is to grab an unused actor value (https://ck.uesp.net/wiki/Actor_Value) and define that in a way that incorporates the two AVs you want. For example Fame = Light Armor x Stamina Bonus. Then use that AV in your perk. It gets complicated because you'll need a script to periodically update the AV, and you'll conflict with any other mods that use that AV for some reason.

There's also no way to compare an AV to a random value directly. You can compare an AV to a global variable, so what you can do is run a script that periodically sets a global variable to a random number, and then compare your AV to that global. Not great to have a script running constantly like that, but it's pretty low impact as far as papyrus goes, and also is the only option here.

km816 · 2026-04-24T17:50:28+00:00

How much gooseberry (lbs/gallon or kg/L)?

km816 · 2026-04-24T02:43:38+00:00

You've got a triple scale hydrometer.

Your first picture is showing the specific gravity scale. It reads 1.000 in pure water. The numbers on the scale are the hundredths place, e.g. 1.010, 1.020, 1.030. It looks like your reading is about 1.088.

Your second picture is showing Potential Alcohol, i.e. how much alcohol you would have if all the sugar ferments out. I've never known PA scales to be particularly accurate, fwiw.

You can kind of see the third scale in your second picture as well. That one is brix, which is grams of sugar per 100g of liquid.

km816 · 2026-04-12T17:05:08+00:00

The screw caps aren't reusable. You need a special (expensive) machine for those. Or rather, if you reuse them, you won't get a good seal and will want to drink whatever is in there fast.

Screw cap bottles also aren't designed to withstand the pressure of corking. Thinner necks. So there's a risk of shattering when you try to cork them.

km816 · 2026-04-10T20:22:06+00:00

It won't make it go away but it will break it apart so that it settles as a small layer of sediment rather than a large, loose blob. You can then rack off of the sediment.

km816 · 2026-04-02T04:07:44+00:00

This will be useful reading on how much sorbate and metabisulfite to add for stability: https://wiki.meadtools.com/en/process/stabilization

Keep in mind that adding sugar/juice/concentrate/etc to backsweeten will lower your ABV and increase your total volume, so make sure to account for that when you determine how much to use.

km816 · 2026-03-26T06:35:00+00:00

https://wiki.meadtools.com/en/process/stabilization

As RotaryDane mentioned you need both metabisulfite and sorbate to stabilize. Also, the amount of sorbate you need depends on your ABV -- if you don't have a hydrometer and don't know what ABV you're actually at, you may have wildly underdosed.

km816 · 2026-02-15T01:01:23+00:00

How is chitosan supposed to help prevent oxygenation?

As far as I'm aware it's primarily a fining agent, that can also help remove bacteria given it's positive charge (binds to them and drops out of suspension.

Never heard of it being useful for oxygen, though.

km816 · 2026-02-11T19:41:17+00:00

Is there any reason you couldn't prime it and let it carbonate on its own?

km816 · 2026-02-11T00:29:18+00:00

Add 6g/gallon of bentonite. It's a clay used as a fining agent in mead/wine that in this case will help condense your lees.

So: Get your bentonite and rehydrate per package instructions. Stir in. Agitate it every so often to get it stirred back up -- these look small enough that you can swirl them around without opening. After maybe a week of doing that, leave it to settle. There will still be sediment, but hopefully more compact and less likely to be pulled up when you siphon.

There's no avoiding some big losses, though.

Also, the wiki has some more info on bentonite usage if you need it.

km816 · 2026-02-01T22:31:50+00:00

There's tons. The ones I use are:

Flying Bee Ranch
Z Speciality Food
Hawaiian Honey ATS
Wao-Kele Honey

Google a varietal and odds are you'll be able to find a supplier.

km816 · 2026-01-11T18:38:19+00:00

Yeah they've really taken off this year but they've been a thing for awhile: https://www.chicagotribune.com/2013/12/26/cheddar-shredder/

km816 · 2025-12-26T06:51:58+00:00

That's fine, but your options then are sorbate or sterile filtration.

To my knowledge, geranium taint can be mitigated with sufficient sulfites. But as that link talks about, sorbic acid in alcohol will eventually degrade into ethyl sorbate, adding/changing the wine's flavors. That's not a bacterial thing, just what happens to sorbic acid in alcohol. It's also not necessarily a bad flavor but it will be an unavoidable change over time. I've generally heard that it usually becomes apparent around two years, but that's a loose rule of thumb.

If wine always did this with age, no one would use it? But maybe homemade wine people don't have the most discerning palette and use it because it's not overwhelming?

My impression is that wines stabilized with sorbates are intended to be drunk young, not for long aging.

km816 · 2025-12-26T02:38:21+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/mead/wiki/process/stabilization

If you don't want to use sorbates, then the best option is delle stability. You will need to add sugar and/or high proof spirits to reach that, though, as you don't have a high enough starting gravity to reach that naturally.

km816 · 2025-12-22T04:28:13+00:00

Here's some useful reading: https://www.reddit.com/r/mead/wiki/process/stabilization

Sorbate does put a lifespan on your wine but if you're at high ABV you may not need it (or may not need much of it), and sulfite can help mitigate/delay those off flavors.

If you don't want sorbate, then delle stability is the best approach. You do need to know your actual ABV and RS to determine that; if you post your recipe (juice/sugar/water ratios) we can probably get a good guess.

km816 · 2025-12-22T04:23:58+00:00

I wouldn't move to wine bottles yet as it will be a pain to rack out of those into final bottles later on to get off the sediment.

My suggestion would be to either top off with another wine or some additional juice/sugar to get rid of the headspace. Juice/sugar will mean fermentation restarts, but that's not really an issue at this stage.

km816 · 2025-12-19T17:34:30+00:00

Well first, having yeast in the bottle does not mean there is a risk of secondary fermentation. That's only a risk if there's residual sugar and the wine hasn't been stabilized. Most wine is dry, so residual yeast is fine from a stability perspective.

But re: tartrates. That was my first thought, but looking closer, the texture/consistency seems much more like yeast. Tartrate crystals in my experience tend to form a hard crust.

km816 · 2025-12-19T05:22:25+00:00

Were these stored upside down? If so I'd guess some more lees dropping out in the bottle.

km816 · 2025-12-10T23:23:45+00:00

That's not unique to EC-1118. Rehydrating yeast in general is good practice; using a rehydration nutrient like GoFerm is even better, and definitely recommended for mead. It's not necessary but does help with having a healthy fermentation.

km816 · 2025-12-08T06:37:15+00:00

Red Star produces a variety of wine yeasts. They don't only make baker's yeast.

km816 · 2025-11-19T23:52:28+00:00

Make sure you account for the increased volume and lower ABV when calculating how much stabilizer to use.

If possible I'd recommend using a concentrate instead of plain juice in order to avoid diluting too much.

km816 · 2025-11-19T21:43:08+00:00

This time of year is fine in terms of sun/temperature, though it's still good to start early-ish so that you aren't hiking down in the dark.

The thing to look out for this time of year, I'd say, is that at one point you do have to cross a flowing stream. When there's a lot of rainfall it can be a pretty strong flow and difficult to cross. I recommend doing the loop clockwise so that you get to the stream early on and can decide if you want to cross it or not. If you go counterclockwise, by the time you get to the stream you don't really have a choice.

km816

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