Begin Brewing!

Way back when Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were married, I read that their wedding cake was going to be a lemon and elderflower flavored one.  Having not tasted elderflower infused foods before, I wondered how that flavor might work in a beer or mead.  A good friend picked up two containers of Ikea's elderflower drink concentrate for me, so I would be able to try the flavor in both a mead and a beer.  With the Brewie+ still down for repair (almost 6 weeks now), I decided to create an elderflower mead first. Ingredients 6 pounds of Wildflower honey 1 bottle of Ikea Elderflower drink concentrate 1 gallon bottled spring water (see note below) 1 packet Lalvin K1V 1116 wine yeast (plus yeast nutrient mix, described next) Note: Enough bottled spring water was added so that after the honey was dissolved and the drink concentrate added, the total volume of liquid was 1.5 gallons in the fermenter.  When this resulted in too high a starting gravity, additional water was added to

You'll notice that I'm doing meads this summer, though it might not be for the reason you'd expect.  It's not because the warm weather impacts my fermentations or that I'm trying to avoid raising the temperature and humidity in the house.  Bottom line... my Brewie+ stopped working in July and I am (still) waiting for a repair part to arrive from... somewhere. The inspiration for this mead was a trip to Ikea some months ago. I saw Lingonberry drink mix for sale and thought this might be interesting in a beer or mead, so I bought a bottle.  With the Brewie+ down for the count, I decided to try it in a mead. Ingredients 40 ounces of Wildflower honey, plus enough more to raise gravity to 1.127 SG 1 bottle of Ikea Lingonberry Juice Concentrate (16.9 ounces) 4 grams Fermaid O 3 grams DAP 1 packet of Lalvin 71B yeast Bottled spring water Original Gravity: 1.127 SG actual Final Gravity:   TBD (expected around 1.020 SG) Batch Size:   Approx 1.6 gallons ABV: