A couple months ago I tried a batch of hard cider for my first attempt at creating alcohol. Success and the wife's headache this morning proves it! ;)

Now for mead. Two one gallon batches. Each batch identical.

1 gallon bottled water
4 pounds locally cultivated clover honey
1 packet D47
1.5 tablespoons of raisins
1.150 sugar level

24 hours later the are both sitting in 67 degrees and just starting to bubble slowly. Excited. I love honey.

Too high sugar levels so after 24 hours I racked 10% of each gallon and diluted it with water. Sugar still was high at 1.13 but both carboys are bubbling like crazy.

I make mine at about 1.083-1.085. It usually ends up somewhat sweet at 11-12% ABV. Yours is going to take a really really long time to age out.

That's what I'm hearing. Week one and still bubbling like crazy. I'll let it go for 6 weeks and then wrack to a secondary. Let it sit for 3 more months and then we shall see where we stand. Enjoying this very much.

I would bet on it tasting like gasoline for the first year. After that it may mellow out. Don't take it too hard if it's un-drinkable. My first couple batches were so un-drinkable I had to dump them. Aim for 11-12% ABV. Use something like fermaid k in your recipes and your fermentation will only be a couple weeks. After that it's all age time. Honey is awful for fermenting without nutrients to help the yeast out. Stressed yeast leads to off flavors which is a problem that won't age out. Live and learn.

I hear you. Ferment K isn't something I have so I had to improvise. I had read a q on homebrewing and someone had asked what they could do with the crap at the bottom (leads?). Anyway other than fertilizer it was suggested it could be used as nutrients for a new batch. I have also read the majority of yeast in dry yeast is dead (with more than enough live cells to get the job done) thus similar to the lead. I had about a cup of must sitting in the honey jar to get the crystallized honey out. Dumped an S58 yeast packet in and it went CRAZY. Dumped that in the must and the speed of bubbling quadrupled within an hour. It is my first try w this stuff so more than willing to try different things.

I generally just dump the lees down the sink after racking. You don't really want to use it in your next batch unless you are making batches fairly quickly, and you are washing the yeast. Washing refers to the process of separating the good yeast from the other junk that lees is made of. It's easier to just make yeast starters (like you did) from new packets of yeast in a small sample of your wine/mead. The lees is pretty useless as nutrients for the next batch. It's mostly (in mead) just proteins that the yeast cant do anything with anyway, and dead yeast. It doesn't contain nitrogen or any of the other nutrients which are important for propagating healthy happy yeast. You would still have to make a starter with it even if you were washing the yeast. I think the only thing you really did that wasn't right was that you used too much honey. Fermaid k isn't really necessary either. Lots of people add raisins for nutrients. I just prefer Fermaid k. It seems like it would be a more complete nutrient source than raisins.

This is what I'm going to be doing when I do a mead. I'll be brewing this in a month or so.

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=429241