Tej is a honey wine made in Ethiopia and Eritrea, flavored with a shrub called gesho. Tej is floral, herbal, sweet, and effervescent. Lactic acid bacteria give it a slight funk and a bit of a sourness. Our tej recipe borrows from the scientific literature to try to replicate a traditional recipe with “modern” meadmaking practices – primarily: not doing a wild ferment, definitely using yeast nutrient, and bottle-conditioning with…
We made a tart cherry melomel with 50 pounds of fruit! We juiced the cherries for this mead and used all-natural ingredients throughout the process. If you’re looking for how to make the most intense cherry mead you can, this video will show you how to juice, ferment, and balance a big bold cherry melomel. Some call this viking’s blod – but we just call it delicious! Here’s how we…
We made a blueberry melomel with 45 pounds of fruit! Some call this a bilbemel. We juiced the blueberries for this mead and used many natural ingredients throughout the process. If you’re looking for how to make the most intense blueberry mead you can, this video will show you how to juice, ferment, and balance a big bold blueberry melomel. We used blueberries, yeast, malolactic fermentation culture, blueberry blossom honey,…
Homebrewing glass carboys are some of the most important investments we can make. Brewing in plastic buckets or stainless steel fermenters are both fine options, but some of us like to easily see what’s going on with our brews – and limit headspace during aging. However, some glass manufacturers are cutting corners during one of the MOST IMPORTANT parts of the process – which creates internal stress points that can…
A few years ago, a gene-editing laboratory went viral for creating a Belle Saison yeast that glowed in the dark. The claim was that, with this specially modified yeast, brewers could make beer that glowed fluorescent under black light. We were fascinated by this concept – and skeptical of the potential. So we put it to the test ourselves. And no matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t get a…
This is a complex brew using multiple types of fermentable and nonfermentable sugars, some of which must be caramelized to achieve the roasty toffee and butterscotch flavors of the brew. This brew is designed to be carbonated and sweet. If you will be bottle conditioning, this will require the use of a nonfermentable sweetener (here, erythritol) as well as a fermentable sugar for priming the bottles. If kegging you can…
Everybody’s playing Valheim, the new Viking game set in an afterlife. A big part of the game is the building and crafting mechanism, which, wouldn’t ya know it, includes making mead! There are a ton of mead recipes to make: Poison Resistance Mead, Minor Stamina Mead, Medium Stamina Mead, Minor Health Mead, Medium Health Mead, and Frost Resistance Mead. But we chose the one made with blueberries, raspberries, and honey:…
Are you wondering how to make your first mead? Or maybe you want to improve on your mead-making skills? Maybe you want to see a starter recipe you can work from to build a mead that works for your palate? Well, here we are! This video has been a long time in the making – and we can finally present you our Triforce of Balance. Acid, Tannin, and Sweetness are…
How do you make a dandelion wine or mead? That is the question that has plagued humankind since the discovery of the humble dandelion. Some of the recipes shown in this video are from the Great Depression and earlier. When we set out to make this dandelion home brew, we set a big goal: over two pounds of hand-plucked dandelion petals. And we exceeded it! This recipe is inspired by…
Home brewing a capsicumel can be an intimidating concept – what if it is too spicy? What if you can’t taste the chile pepper flavor? Infusing a mead with chili flavor and capsaicin doesn’t have to be difficult. In this video we present an easy recipe for a very simple, fruity chili pepper mead that has bold, fruity flavors, a nice whiff of spice, and drinks smooth. We call this…