Watching this with a chest infection, a ginger beard and a curiosity for other peoples brews. Small world hey! Thanks dude

I am most jealous of the Boots book - nice one Andy! I have the smaller: Beginner pamphlet [Ben Turner]. Terrible shame they decided to do away with their homebrewing department circa 2000 give or take a couple of years each way. Boots White Cider remains one of the very best homebrew kits I have made in my 40 years in this hobby. I haven't seen a white cider in any other range either.

How did it turn out ?

Chouchen is a Breton alcohol... not French. Breton is a Celtic minority in France situated in Brittany. I'm breton, we drink cider and chouchen, and I've never seen any french drinking chouchen.

How did this turn out? Do you just top it up with water? , I’ve brewed gallons of strawberry wine and orange wine in plastic buckets and never had a problem , I brew in what I can as long as it’s sterilised .

Did you ever do part 2? . Interested how it turned out

Have you tasted it yet?

Do u need to use peckalze

The Earth is Flat.

A handful of carrots to make carrot wine Put the carrot into the juicer and take the carrot juice, old uncle

Is that to help my Mead improve or to help my Mood improve ! 🤭 love those those bowls ! 🥳

Water is always listening 🎧 It is a programmable computer When you drink that mead you will take on that frequency 432hz???

Thanks for the video! I just bought some tins of these plums hoping to make wine from them. I love your simple approach...very refreshing!

I’d say the timing is good to have this ready for drinking. Rule of thumb 1 month conditioning for every Litre for honey.

Nice! Come to think of it, I’ve never made a pure orange wine…

Hi Andy, can u help please, my grape wine is so sweet can u suggest something, thanks

I need to make this. Sounds delightful! 😊

More often than not the difference between runny honey and solid honey is just crystallisation. It hasn’t got much to do with water content at all. If you add a few honey crystals in a jar of runny honey and give it a few weeks (some times days) the crystals will start taking over the entire jar. Depending on conditions, it can even happen in a matter of hours. There is a type of honey called ‘creamy’ (for the honey I get through a friend in France it’ll be ‘crémeux’). It’s basically crystallised honey that got stirred and blended vigorously to break up the crystals. It’s opaque and… semi-runny. Not so solid you have to hack at it, not so runny it’ll gloop off your toast and run down your arm. Spreadable. This mead seems like a delicious Christmas treat! Like fashion, a mead maker has to think one or two seasons ahead for the good stuff. 😊

How much water do u use

Interesting approach on your Elderberry wine. Think it will definitely come out with a nice flavor profile!

I think the sugar would dissolve better if you would have first put it in to the boiling water with the ginger. Easier to stir & dissolve. Then just pour the pot into the bucket. A net bag would be useful too. Have you made an update yet on this? Curious to know how it finished.

I used the same brand of honey for my last mead except the Forest Field variety but it was rock solid. Bent a couple of spoons trying to scoop it out. How long did you melt it for in the hot water?

good vid Andy, make it wobble.

Hi can u help I have dried active yeast do I need express wine compound and yeast nutrient

Doesn’t the majority of yeast extracts contain a lot of salt? That would seriously mess with fermentation, wouldn’t it? Which brand did you use if it doesn’t have any salt in it? On wine or mead for diabetics: my SO’s father has diabetes. He’s got a bit of a sweet tooth so I back sweeten bottles destined for him with diabetes-friendly non-fermentable sweeteners like stevia, erythritol or something similar. Not me preferred flavour but that way the wines and meads I make for him don’t taste bone dry. I bottle in 350 ml bottles and cork them to make them look fancier for him too and tell him it’s exactly the same recipe except for the back sweetening agent. Works a treat. Especially since the non-diabetic-friendly bottles are made to look less fancy. Makes him feel special. He loves it! As for when someone tastes both kinds side by side when my SO’s dad is around: we shut up about the difference in taste. Just in case anyone prefers the original version and he would hear about it. So far, so good... Both are always sweetened to the same level of perceived sweetness. I tend to pasteurise all my bottles anyway.

Exciting! I gave my suggestions when you first started this one and I wonder what you’re going to do with it!

Really intrigued about this one. I wonder how it’ll taste once it’s done and aged for a bit.

Seems to me this is going to turn out lovely! On my end I’ve finally managed to rack, balance, back sweeten and bottle my banana and tart cherry meads (with help: the old back and leg are still causing trouble). I’ve added fresh passionfruit pulp to the passionfruit mead as it was a bit meh on the aroma and I want to finish that one semi-dry. Aldi had an offer on elderberry juice and I couldn’t resist so I started an elderberry mead: just the juice, some wine tannin, wildflower honey, yeast nutrient, pectic enzyme and the juice. It’s happily bubbling away. Planning on giving the quince mead its first tasting soon. I want to wait until it’s well past the 6-month mark. Tomorrow I might schedule a serious petal-picking session to start this year’s batch of dandelion mead. Last year’s batch turned out delicious. Looking forward to your next video!

Do u stir it every day

How did it turn out sir?

I believe that the biological yeasts produced by Saccharomyces cerevisiae from bread are may be the same for wines and beers. But, without a doubt, wine yeasts will be more expressive. Thanks.. from Brazil.

Interesting, might see this was nominated at the end of the year!

looks good mate.

Another great vid Andy. Make it wobble

Nice job cheers ,bet it will taste fine .

Ivy is the traditional sign of taverns selling wine in Olde England since before the 15th century, for those who could not read. Ivy was sacred to Bacchus in Ancient Rome. I once put a cut piece of ivy branch in a jar to catch the abundant sap just to see how much it produced. I forgot about it for a day or two. When I opened the jar it went whoosh as the pressure equalised and the sap fizzed up. It stank of alcohol. I think wild yeast from the surface of ivy branches may have been used to start ferments but it was probably pretty rank. I don't drink or would have experimented with that.

As there are also wild yeast cells floating around in the air, if there are no via le wild yeast cells on the raisins, you might still get fermentation started. Chances are however, that there is viable yeast cells on those raisins if they haven’t been treated. Still, there is no way of knowing with certainty. If I’m not mistaken your sanitiser isn’t designed to kill yeast. If it’s a no-rinse sanitiser that’s designed for brewing it certainly isn’t. If there are yeast cells on your hands, knife, or cutting board you might have transferred them to your primary culturing medium (raisins + water + sugar). It might be wild yeast. It might be yeast cells from your many brews. A few drops of spilled mead or wine soaking in your cutting board can theoretically be sufficient. At the end of the day the question remains: “does it really matter all that much?” The experiment in itself shows you can start a fermentation using raisins. Those raisins picked up yeast SOMEWHERE and started a culture. That culture started fermenting your apple juice. Thanks for publishing this video. It was a good watch. Now I’m curious to find out if that cider you ended up with was tasty!

It must be discouraging when nobody leaves you any comments Andy... Personally, I happen to like your experimental sense of adventure!! Very interesting (never would have thought of it myself). Cheers!!

Over here in the US we can find raisins that are covered in yeast and raisins that are covered in oil. The raisins covered in yeast can produce a great starter and I can attest to the fact that you can use enough of the raisins to make a wine using the raisins and the indigenous yeast on the raisins. If memory serves me well, I used about 1.5 kg of raisins and about 2 lbs of sugar. No access to my notes, but it finished dry and at about 12% ABV. It was, a raisin wine, if yer knows what I mean. Nothing to write home about by way of flavor. Still have about 4 bottles aging with the hope that time might pull out some more flavors. But all that said, scientifically speaking, since you handled the raisins with your hands, you really have no good way of knowing whether you inoculated the raisins with the yeast cells in your hands OR the yeast was indigenous to the raisins or even if the yeast was in the cider and the cider all along. Science demands controlled groups and demands that you do everything to minimize the number of possible variables (read possible explanations).

I've seen this before on Turbo Cider for all. Someone said to use the old dried up crusty ones that have the white funk on them!!! Seriously, that's what I was told!😂

Brilliant, who knew!

Interesting. I wonder what the maximum amount of alcohol would be before the raisin yeast die and if it's possible to make a wine from it.

Hiya, Andy - new subscriber here... I must commend you on your inventiveness (I'll never look at Mead or wine the same way again)! I must inquire as to how this experiment of yours turned out. Perhaps you have a Video with the particulars?

Happy birthday 🎉🎂That’s going to be nice and rich. I love marmite I really really really love marmite but I got some of that truffle marmite, yuck no idea what was going on it was truly horrible 😒 great vid cheers 👍🍻

Happy Birthday mate, cheers 🍻

You'll be pleased to know that the demijohn crisis has been averted 😅 👍

Thanks for sharing your brew day. Happy Birthday from someone across the pond. Cheers!

Happy birthday 🎊🎁🎈🎂🎉

I enjoy the videos, Andy. Happy birthday!