Jacking it!

[Foreigner]

No, it's not what you think sickos

I racked my 23L carboy of wildberry mead (which has a beautiful rose crystal clear appearance and tastes great ) into a 19L carboy beacuse it's all I have on hand and it was racking time.

So:

I've got ~3 1/2L of ~14% that I racked into a big bowl and its now in the freezer.
The FG was 1.010. I anticipate a few bottles of near 30% with an FG of 1.020.

I expect these will be for special occasions only. eg: no work for a few days

I've just been swimming in raw sewage - I LOVE IT! I said, I LOVE IT

Any else into jacking? Oh, if anyone asks, I'm from Zaire where there are no legal issues with this sort of thing...

 

[marshman]

I don't know what happened, but when I made my first mead/berry (melomel?) it was a 2 gallon batch. I don't know what I was thinking, but I thought for some reason that I'd be able to rack it into a 1 gallon jug. D'Oh!

So, the extra 3/4 gallon or so went into a big bowl and into the freezer. I reduced it by half, then put it into an empty, sanitized 2-liter and left it in the fridge for 6 months.

At 6 months, I had a 2nd brainfart and thought I'd be able to squeeze the 'normal' gallon into six 12 oz bottles. D'oh!

So, I quickly sanitized a pair of port bottles, and put the 'normal' version in one and the 'special' version the other.

A month later (mind, this is 7 moths after adding yeast), a friend and I had a taste test and though he liked the slightly stronger kick of the 'special', we prefered the flavor of the normal.

fine print--I use no hydrometers, so I have no idea what my alcohol levels are/were. I used a standard, dry-packaged ale yeast, so I would not expect that the ferment got much higher than 6% or so, so the special would've been double(-ish) that, and they were both still plenty sweet.

What part of Zaire are YOU from?

 

[Foreigner]

fine print--I use no hydrometers, so I have no idea what my alcohol levels are/were. I used a standard, dry-packaged ale yeast, so I would not expect that the ferment got much higher than 6% or so, so the special would've been double(-ish) that, and they were both still plenty sweet.

What part of Zaire are YOU from?

This stuff is quite delicious. So much so that I'm considering turning my whole 5 gallon batch into an ~3 gallon batch. That is some serious stuff. I drank a bottle of it last night with a few friends, only because I had decided to take the day off today...it was a good decision.

Oh, the northern part of Zaire, you know...

I've been told from a number of different people that this is the best alcohol thing I've ever made...I imagine it's because they expect their beer to taste like water and so mine overwhelms them Maybe one day I'll make a batch a batch just for them...not too likely...

 

[marshman]

Good luck with it. I'm still trying to get the basics down to start deliberatly branching out into that realm.

Besides, I don't have the freezer space

 

[malkore]

I used a standard, dry-packaged ale yeast, so I would not expect that the ferment got much higher than 6% or so, so the special would've been double(-ish) that, and they were both still plenty sweet.

you'd be surprised at what an ale yeast can do. I made many batches of mead with Edme Ale yeast (now Safbrew S-33) and regularly hit 12% ABV range.
use 3lbs of honey per gallon, and end up with a potent yet fairly sweet mead, that's not gaggingly sweet.

sadly finding 'choice' honey in my area is dodgy, so all my meads were store bought clover 'blends'.
I can only imagine what I could make with REAL honey.