Intro to Making Mead

A complete beginner's guide to making mead at home, from equipment and ingredients through fermentation, back-sweetening, pasteurization, and bottling.

Bottling Day: The Final Stretch

From siphon setups to pasteurization and the danger of bottle bombs, here is my guide to successfully bottling a 1-gallon batch.

The Tilt Hydrometer promises 24/7 gravity and temperature readings straight from your fermenter. I wanted to love it, and in some ways I do—but a few persistent flaws keep it from earning a permanent place in every batch.

My Home Brewing Journey: From Mead to Beer on Tap

How I started home brewing in 2022 with a 1-gallon mead kit and ended up with a full keezer setup in my kitchen thanks to a chance encounter at a Honda dealership.

PLAATO Airlock Review

The PLAATO Airlock promised smart fermentation tracking through a sleek bubbler. For a few months it worked. Then the company abandoned homebrewers, killed the app and API, and left every customer with useless hardware.