Hello Brewers!
I am still a noob to this, but I want to brew my wife something that she’d like.
I don’t yet have the equipment to do an all grain, and I am reliant on extracts.
I was wondering if anyone has experimented with adding flavour ingredients, like cherry for example, to an extract? If so, when and what have you added? And is this going to be an expensive process of trial and error?
have you thought of doing a mead?
It’s on the list, but not something I’ve researched much yet. Do you recommend?
I’ve made a couple batches, mostly with honey and meadowsweet. Just remember to feed the brew with yeast nutrient along the way, so the fermentation doesn’t get stuck eating only sugars. I like to remove the carbonation before bottling, but that is up to personal taste.
You can also throw berries, spices into mead quite liberally. Absolutely simplest, stuff, the only catch is long fermentation times. Yet, you can get quite awesome products in half year with tart berries or fruits.
I remember a couple tasting our simple mead once, and wife turned to her husband and said “hey, when you did the brewing, why did not you brew something nice instead, like this stuff?” So I’m pretty sure this is your best guess.
I was wrong many times on the matter. We had an idea to make strawberry beer for ladies, like “chicks like strawberry” - wrong! Dudes were like “honey, try some of this!” and drank bottles after bottles of pink beer, while their gfs gorged on proper imperial and belge style stuff.
But mead is solid option, always. Just make sure spice is not chili, unless she is into it.
It’s what I brew.
Very easy to add botanicals, fruit or even spices to get something very easy to brew and drink.
I currently have a hopped mead and a ginger mead brewing, the ginger one is my current goto