Hello
I recently restarted beer brewing after a pause of some years. I like to drink and brew bitter, so I restarted from there. This in the picture is the second brew in my "second era", an e+g beer brewed in a 10 l fermenter (I don't want to manage bigger volumes).
Recipe is: 1 kg dry light malt extract; 50 g crystal dark (ebc about 270); 20 g Challenger for 40 min; 15 g Challenger for 2 min; 10 g Challenger in dry hopping; Mangrove Jack's M36 yeast. ABV 4.2%, IBU about 34.
I should change the 50 g crystal dark for, let's say, 60 g crystal medium. I'll think about it. In order to spend less I used a dual purpose hop. Maybe in the future I'll use some Target for the bittering, but for now I'm quite happy. I use a single fermenter, so the result is a bit opaque. I don't care so much about that, other than try to cool down the beer for a night before bottling.
Also I would like to resume my production of porter and maybe try some barley wine. Since a friend beekeeper gave me some honey, I would like to try mead making, but I know precisely nothing about that.
Other than finesse from literature, meadmaking is very simple - start with something like 300g honey diluted to 1L with clean water, try not to heat at any stage (I tried centrifuging frames - works, obviously - and I tried just dumping honeycomb wax and all into water - this is yet simpler and you get amazing propolis flavor in mead), pitch wine/mead yeast (for example those from store.zymologia.fi, that's my store, very much affiliated, but it's what I use), lock and leave for about a year, longer is better.
I was just thinking of heating a bit the jar in order to get as much honey as I can fluidifying it. So I better don't do it? I'll stick to room temperature.
It dissolves in cold (tested with 14C) water, just takes a bit more time.
Thank you