Mead, a sweet and ancient substance

I had been thinking of making a mead for quite a long time. I had acquired an extra five gallon carboy to use a secondary about 6 months ago and it has been sitting there empty waiting to contain and clarify the sweet and ancient substance.

Experiment Number 8

So with the biggest most expensive beer I've made to date I've decided to conduct an experiment. It's really more of a sensible departure from the home brewing norm but I'm not sure if it's going to work so it is a little risky. Most home brewers when brewing a big beer prepare for a violent fermentation with a blow off tube and a bucket. I guess it works ok but it's not the optimal way in my opinion to deal with the large amount of krausen. A blow off tube seems like a perfectly acceptable stop gap measure when foam is erupting from your air lock but not necessarily a calculated brewing methodology.

Getting The Equipment

I've been lucky in getting my brewery started as I haven't needed all of the brewing equipment right up front. I was able to borrow what I've needed as I've brewed until very recently as I have a friend that brews down the street from me so borrowing equipment was very easy. I started out with a brew kit that I acquired off of craigslist for sixty dollars (originally listed for one hundred twenty five dollars).

My First Brews

So I've made five beers so far, two batches of NB's White House Honey Porter, one batch of a recipe I modified from the web that was supposed to be a clone of Anderson's Summer Solstice, NB's Brickwarmer Red, and NB's Number 8. These were all extract brews and I have no intention of even trying all grain at this point as that is one more variable I'm not ready to tackle yet aside from the fact that I don't have the equipment do so even if I wanted to. The Brickwarmer and Number 8 are currently fermenting and the others have been bottled and consumed.

Intro Post

Brew Memoir was created to help me document my brewing brewing experiences and discuss those experiences with other people. I am a home brewer with relatively few brews under my belt and I'm seeing that documenting what I have done can be really valuable, mostly so I can build my knowledge base instead of relearn things over and over. Since brewing beer is such a complex mixture of art, science, and biology I think I will most likely spend my lifetime perfecting my processes and recipes so this is where I'm going to record my experience. Hopefully this information will help other brewers as well as myself.