We seem to have some talented brewers here in the forum. Would be nice to see some final results from the community members in this forum! Perhaps it can also inspire some people who are curious about the hobby.
I can start: here is a sparkling mead along with my labeled bottles.
Beautiful color. How does it stand up to the 16%? Is there sufficient fruit or is it overpowered by the alcohol? I have some strawberry in the cellar, but I made it 11% off-dry.
The alcohol is not overpowering, the flavor is both complex and smooth with a perfect strawberries and sunshine aftertaste. I made 5 gallons with 25lbs of strawberries and 12 pounds of sugar so strawberry essence was really packed in there! I failed at a scuppernong wine before this so was ready for disappointment but I got an acid kit and think that lends a lot to final product. I also was a little OCD every step of the way but I think that's part of why it actually turned out so well.
I brought some up a friend's house in the North Carolina Appalachian mountains. His cousins who have been 'home brewing' for generations probably paid me the highest compliment when they had some and were like wow, that actually tastes like something you'd but at a store!
Thanks! Melomels are great. I have found they are perfect intro meads for those who do not "like the taste of mead" as there is additional fruit flavors... Have had good luck with blackberry, blueberry, and 50/50 black/blue blends.
Oh I love mead. Those bubbles in yours look extra fun. Blackberry is what I was interested in making, though I found a recipe for dandelion mead (is that a melomel?) and found that intriguing. Have you tried that?
EDIT: I've switched the image host because it seems catbox.moe was having some issues displaying for people. Hopefully imgbox.com will be a more reliable image host.
Here is 1 of the first meads I ever made, split 3 ways. 1 is a traditional, 2 has blackberry, and 3 has ginger/lemon. Very happy how this batch came out but alas it is long gone.
This is a Westvleteren 12 Clone I made with yeast harvested and propagated from the real Westvleteren 12. It's been bottle conditioning for around 6 months now and it's just starting to develop the complexity I'm looking for.
I tend not to bottle too many things I make because I have access to several kegs and that is definitely my preferred method of carbonating and serving. That being said, I still enjoy making labels for some of the beers I make such as this I made (read: shamelessly photoshopped) for a British Brown Ale.
Hmm. The pictures are hosted on catbox.moe and should just be embedded here. I'm still trying to find a better image hosting service because most Lemmy instances only allow images up to 100kb.