Not being an expert at mead making, or for that matter ever even tasting a
good batch of mead, my honey beer experiment was deemed a failure. You say
good mead beer, or braggart, has no sour lemonyish sort of taste? I kind of
assumed it was the flavor of the honey after the yeast ate up all the sugar.
Posthumously, I read that mead is better if the honey is added at the last
five minutes of the boil, as honey is inherently, in itself, sanitary. With
my experment I added three pounds blackberry honey at the same time as the
seven pounds of alexanders liquid wheat malt and boiled the whole thing for
an hour. Maybe this hour of boil time changed the chemical makeup of the
wort in some manner resulting in the nasty lemony flavor. I fermented at
about 67deg F(+ or- 2deg) for about two weeks and added 2oz. cascade boiling
hops and another two at ten minutes left on the boil. Primed w/ corn sugar
and bottled as usual. Three months later it was almost drinkable; holding
your nose and using a beer bong ::}}

Say Denny, if you have a good braggart recipie that dosn't taste like crap I
still have another three pound jar of honey sitting around, although I'm too
impatient to wait the year for mead to mature. Post it up dude.

As to the ice filter thing I once, long ago, accidently made a batch of ice
coffee. It turned to slush and I filtered out the ice, poured off the liquid
actually, and sampled both the liquid and the ice. It seemed that a lot of
the nasty flavor of the coffee became trapped in the ice, and the resulting
liquid was delicous. Attempts of recreating this were never succesfully
repeated, although I didn't try too hard. I used french roast, as I like my
coffee dark.

To John G: if you want a low alcohol beer try just using three pounds or so
of malt extract per five gallon batch. Adding sugar to the primary is for
wine making, ale should only contain the converted starches from grain. The
corn sugar is for priming only, 4 out of 5 ale purists agree. Unless, of
course, your goal is a zima clone or hard lemonade or some other sickly
sweet foofoo girly drink.::(

"I'm not above the law; I'm beyond it."-George Carlin

"Denny Conn" <denny.g.conn@ci.GETRIDOFTHISPART.eugene.or.us> wrote in
message news:3F12D62E.4A4C5964@ci.GETRIDOFTHISPART.eugene.or.us...[color=blue]
> John G wrote:[color=green]
> >
> > from reading the posts this is what i have arrived at. i was trying to
> > brew a light low alcohol beer by cutting back on the sugar, it only
> > worked for one day so i added honey to keep it working. DR.FLOURIDE said
> > honey will give a sour-lemon taste requiring months of ageing to mellow
> > the brew... sure enough i tasted a sample and it was lemony YUCK!! ..
> > this must be caused from bitter suspended proteins??
> > .... Denny said that freezing filtration increases the size of
> > suspended proteins causing the cells to clump together and fall.
> >
> > so after racking i placed my bucket in the freezer at 31F it has been 3
> > days now and has developed a thick layer of icy slush. i am ready to keg
> > it, but i don`t want the beer to be to strong. (can i)-(or should i)
> > replace the lost ice water with (boiled) tap water. can i add water to
> > my keg then rack the beer into the keg....
> > ANY ADVICE ON ICE FILTRATION WOULD BE VARY VARY
> > HELPFUL..................
> > THANK-YOU .......... John G[/color]
>
> John, I'm afraid you're so far off track I hardly know where to start!
> First, the ice filtration I described is very different from what you
> did..you basically used the European increase-the-alcohol method. Honey
> absolutely does not gib=ve a sour lemon flavor, and the bitterness you
> seem to be tasting is unlikely to be due to proteins from the honey.
> Let's see the whole recipe, including how long you fermented and at what
> temps, and see if there are any clues there. You can add water back to
> the keg to make the alcohol content lower, but you won't be doing the
> flavor any good by doing that.
>
> ---------->Denny
> --
> Life begins at 60 - 1.060, that is.
>[/color]