Mead

The mead was a joint venture.
I was perusing the internet looking for simple alcohols to make when I found this:
http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Mead
I looked it over... It seemed relatively simple. I happened to already own two 6.8L bulbous wine carboys (My parents had gotten them for free and never used them) so really the only cost would be the ingredients. Because of the odd nature of mine and my friends conversations I thought it would just be easier to post the Facebook thread (Oh the glorious days of technology). I'm "Red" and my friend is "Yellow" (Click to get large image).


As you can see we decided to try the super simple "WikiHow" method of mead production. This recipe seems to skip the step where you transfer the mead from a fermentor to a carboy. Instead it opts just for using the carboy the whole way through. Of course we added some extra stuff too like yeast energizer and some oranges to one of the carboys. This is what we ended up with:


Now here are my concerns (after reading some stuff on the web and an old book from 1973 called "BETTER WINE MAKING AND BREWING FOR BEGINNERS" by B.C.A.TURNER)
My first concern is that the clear carboy which has no orange in it will either take a very long time or will not work because it lacks citric acid. I've learned that honey is very hard for yeast to break down on its own so citric acid "must" (according to That 70's Book) be added to mead. Also yeast requires extra energizer in mead, about "twice the amount called for". So I have yet to add the citric acid (Don't have any and I am still not sure), but I did add the energizer.
My other main concern is that there is a lot of room left in the carboys. The carboys are bubbling which means that the CO2 is escaping and they both have extremely good airlocks on them, but I'm concerned that the oxygen which is in there may be sufficient to make the mead go bad (Foreign yeasts). It's all a learning process. It's very hard to know these things before you actually do it... That's what I've always found anyways.
So mead is a very good starter booze to make. Just make sure you have a chat with the guy in your local brew shop (Me and my friend went to a few and settled on the smaller one that had more "bits and bobs" and a friendly-ish owner). The total cost for the mead was $30, but this included many things which can be reused and enough sanitizer for several batches. I'll update on the mead when it reaches the next stage and/or when something unexpected happens.
The mead was started on June 4 2010.