let's talk about my equipment well my brewing equipment welcome back to method of the meanness i'm burly mullins and if you saw that intro you know that we're talking about my brewing equipment now i decided to uh split this episode up into uh you know mini series uh and start with my fermenters it would be a terribly long video if i did this all at once um let me know in the comments if you like this format or if you want that super long episode but uh you know we're starting with the fermenters and uh
before we go into them just um gonna go ahead and let you know that i'm talking about all of the fermenters that i've used through my meat making uh and i'm gonna start with a couple that i have gotten rid of or stopped using um and i'll talk about why when i first got into mead making i was in college and i wasn't sure if i really wanted to do this as a hobby i just really wanted to taste mead so i went online found a couple of recipes and i found um somebody recommending using
water jugs and balloon airlocks with a little pinhole and the balloon uh and for me in college not looking to sink a ton of money into a hobby and you know trying to do things on the cheap that seemed like an incredible way to get started and i used that technique for a long time i built onto it i got vinyl tubing to just do siphoning straight from the tube and that worked for me for a very long time i made some pretty decent mead with that equipment it was exactly what i needed in my
financial situation at the time and you know if you're going to you know save on any part i would say that the fermentation equipment as long as it's food safe is something that you can save on in meat making and there's a couple things that you do actually want to spend the good money on if you're trying to minimize mac you know min max your investment in the hobby i'll probably talk more about this later i'll probably do an entire episode about that let me know again in the comments if that's something that you want
to see um but then i moved on to a couple of uh three quart uh jugs that cider came in and then i bought a couple of airlocks those were great um for a long time but there were a couple of problems with them um i was still shaking them up to uh get the honey mixed in and aerate the must and uh and you know the lids were the uh jar kind they weren't like threaded they were like a jam jar that you can get like a smucker's jar uh they lost their seals eventually
um and three quarts was just an awkward size for me to use uh mathematically previously i'd been using gallons it was weird for me to scale back like that and then i came into the next fermenter this is a mr beer now these can be found um in thrift stores all the time i cannot tell you how many times i go into a thrift store and i see one of these this is actually the second one i owned the first one was a gift and i do not know why i got rid of that first
it was for space i had i got rid of it for space um i mentioned before that uh my housing situation wasn't conducive to doing lots of brews or really big brews you know i made some decisions and got rid of my mr beer uh this i got the price is still written on the lid it was six bucks and i think i got it on a half off day at a thrift store um for the section this was in the only problem with these is uh they're only good for primary fermentation uh just like
the balloon air locks with the uh you know with the water jug um fermentation methods but this relies on positive pressure uh to keep things out there's a couple of channels inside uh the lid that lets air out so it's not airtight which is good because you do not want a plastic bomb in your house but if you're making sparkling mead this is a great way to start um you know it's two gallons a little bit more um the volume is marked on the back uh and honestly if you don't want to spend a ton
of money to get started making sparkling meats and this is not a bad way to go for that or if you want to make ciders or if you use extract to make beer honestly you can find one of these at a thrift store and i do recommend you give it a go this is a pretty standard three gallon carboy many of you who already brew uh will recognize this style of fermenter um it's super duper common and uh i got the three gallon size because i also got a two and a half gallon or ten
liter so roughly two and a half gallon a barrel that i aged meat in um and i also wanted to scale up some of my recipes just to see how well that works spoilers meat scales pretty well you need to buy two of these at a time if you're going to be brewing uh just so you can rack off the sediment into secondary fermentation and maybe even do another rack to clear it further if that's what you want um but you need to have two and you need to keep one or have one empty when
you need it but otherwise uh this is a great workhorse uh you cannot go wrong getting a uh car boyle's car boy style fermenter uh there's it's a standard for a reason and there are so many accessories that you can get that specifically go with these um it's an easy recommend especially if you're just getting into the hobby they come in so many different sizes one gallon five gallons six and a half gallons and up it's once you get into the much bigger sizes you'll need other accessories because it gets kind of a pain to
be shaking it to mix the honey in and to aerate it most of you will recognize these um these are the workhorses for this channel um you know one gallon fermenters with 0.4 gallons of headroom for really excessive fermentations they can get you know they can get pretty uh what's the word energetic let's go with energetic um i like the options of these the wide mouth makes it really easy to put in and take out uh adjuncts and herbs fruits other additives that you want to have and say cheesecloth or sachets um really makes that
process super duper simple there is a built-in airlock in the lid you know what i did an entire unboxing episode on these i'll that side i'll put it up there in the corner um but no complaints um except that you might not want to use the built-in airlock it evaporates pretty quickly um just something to look out for if you can keep your eye on it and keep refilling it you know day in and day out um you know every day every other day then uh this is honestly as good a choice as any other
to start brewing with all right and this bad boy which i just did an unboxing of i'll go ahead and link that up here um was a birthday gift for my wife i have two of these now note if the marketing is to bully is to be believed uh you do not need two of this one uh but i am uh a bit skeptical about that we will i'll do some brews in it and we will see i'm not sure if the slope of the conic section on the bottom is steep enough uh to keep
enough sediment from my tastes from uh you know out of the meat but that's something that will come with time you know i don't want that much meat sitting on dead yeast especially for a full brew time there's the potential for many off flavors uh to come in and not ones that i'm specifically looking for sometimes i do like to slightly stress a yeast for a little bit of estrofication but you know in a very controlled manner you know especially if this yeast you know if specific yeast is known for producing specific off flavors or
promoting specific flavors you know that might be something that i'm looking for but sitting a bunch of mead putting pressure on dead yeast is not something that i want um but that's all hypothetical i still haven't brewed with this um i'll get back to you on that uh after i do it um and i do have at least one really exciting brew plan uh for this bad boy so you know go ahead and subscribe if you want to see where this one's going and that is it for this episode um we've gone through all the
various fermenters that i've used in my mead making from early 2013 to now it's kind of hard to believe that it's been that long and honestly any one of these even the plastic water jugs that i talked about in the beginning can produce great need so if you're willing to plunk down the uh two hundred dollars regular for this or the uh six dollars or less for this depending on how you find it i hope you make some made now if you like this content please let me know in the comments uh let me know
if there's any pop culture meads you want to see me recreate don't forget to like subscribe hit the bell icon do everything that the algorithm likes or i am told it likes [Music] say hello to thor i'm burley mullins and this has been method of the maintenance thank you very much sir [Music] boy why are you crying huh why are you crying come here [Music] so
