Wine Yeast: Substitute bakers yeast for wine/bear yeast. Use ~1/2 tsp/gallon for the first 3 gallons or ~1 tbsp for batches greater than 3 gallons.

Dextrose (corn sugar): Can sub table sugar (1:1 ratio) in any recipe that calls for dextrose.

Yeast Nutrients/Energizer: Can use bread yeast as a yeast nutrient. Just make sure to boil it in a bit of water for a few minutes to make sure all the yeast are dead and not competing with your active yeast colony. Note: If you are using bread yeast instead of wine yeast to ferment, it may be more efficient to just add a bit extra yeast at the beginning if you think you are going to have trouble fermenting rather than going through the trouble of boiling the yeast to add. May still help a stuck fermentation if needed.

Tannins: Strong black tea or raisins

Acids: Lemon juice or citrus peel

Potassium Sorbate & Potassium Metabisulfate: Used to stabilize and allow for back-sweetening without refermenting additional sugars. Here are some other options I have used that don’t require Sorbate/K meta:

1. Back sweeten with a non-fermentable sugar (i.e. erythritol) — This is what I do most of the time
2. Pasteurization: I wouldn’t recommend this for beginners but, if you want to give it a try, here are some instructions.
3. Step-feeding or Overwhelming the yeast tolerance: Yeast will stop fermenting at a certain ABV (tolerance varies by yeast strain). If you add enough sugar to surpass that ABV, the leftover sugar will not ferment and the finished product won’t be completely dry. This doesn’t make for the best tasting beverages but it’s much easier to manage than pasteurization. You can add all of the sugar at the beginning if you want but, since you can never be 100% sure when the yeast will stop and don’t want to end up with too much unfermented sugar, you can also ‘step-feed’ and add a smaller amount of sugar at a time until it stops fermenting then sweeten to taste.

City Steading Brews

Doin’ the Most Brewing

Man Made Mead

Faewood Mead

SG Calculator: https://gotmead.com/blog/the-mead-calculator/

Brewfather recipe app and brew tracker

• Plenty of Wine, Mead, Cider, Beer, Soda, Liqueur, and Cocktail Recipes. Here are a few that look interesting:
  • elderflower wine
  • fragrant fig wine
  • pineapple wine
  • lemon & line wine
  • mint wine
  • cyser
  • pear & ginger hard cider
  • pumpkin ale
  • lavender sparkle
  • orange bitters
• Ingredient Guides

The Joy of Brewing Cider, Mead, and Herbal Wine by Nancy Koziol

• Brewing Equipment and Sanitation Tricks
• How to siphon without an auto-siphon
• Honey & Apple profiles
• 1 Gallon Recipes and Pairing Suggestions:
• Troubleshooting Your Brews (with common off flavours & causes)

• Lists of ingredients with tips/resulting flavours
• Honey profiles
• Extensive list of yeast profiles
• Detailed brew log template
• Good beginner brewing instructions (with lots of pictures)
• How to balance/fine-tune finished brews
• Lots of recipes (none particularly interest me right now as they look like a lot more work/expense than I’m up for right now)

• Plenty of recipes (most require juicing the fruit yourself)
• Troubleshooting completed ciders by off-taste near the end

Make Mead Like a Viking by Jereme Zimmerman

• Origins and History of Mead
• Equipment & Techniques
•  Recipes:
  • Spiced Orange Mead (based on JAOM)
  • Banana-Coffee T’ej
  • Chai Metheglin
  • Cinnamon-Vanilla Metheglin
  • Melomels & Cyser
  • Flower Mead(s)
  • Beer & Braggots