You are some of the best teachers I have had in 60 years. So much fun to watch and learn from.

I actually had the exact opposite childhood grapefruit experience. I grew up in Deep South Texas, and my family had a grapefruit orchard. Grapefruit are picked before they are fully ripe so they can be shipped. We would go in after they were picked and find the ones that were missed and pick them when they were perfectly ripe. To this day, I will only eat grapefruit around the middle of December because of those memories.

"Earl Grey Hot" is the name of one of the teas we sell in the shop! I love the references. Shiny!

Brian's rant about his grapefruit trauma is awesome. When my wife insisted on tasting the first mead I ever made at 18days, I told her it would be unpleasant. She promptly spit it into the sink and told me it tasted like spoiled grapefruit. 😵‍💫

I'm making a tea wine from Lady Grey and butterfly pea flower. I had it cold brew and tasted good before the brewing. It's name for when it is finished its name is Signora Grigi Clitoride.

I make this all the time. I use 16 stash double bergamot earl grey tea bags when I'm doing 5 gallon batches. I also use lemon zest and I still back sweeten. Also, wildflower honey works better for me too.

Hey guys. Wanted to thank you for all I've learned through your work. I just finished my first brew, which was a metheglin (about 2 months). I did primary with just Champagne yeast, yeast hulls and my own wildflower honey. Added tea, raisins, orange peel, spices (cinnamon, clove, allspice) and yellow hibiscus infusion during conditioning. Also back-sweetened it to 1.008 final gravity. Turned out amazing, including clarity. Citrus flavor very strong but wonderful. Bottled it for my 52nd birthday, feeling happy ; ). Thanks, your videos are outstanding.

I work in the medical field, I was a nurse tech or CNA for several years, so hearing you guys cracking up over what the color in the sample tube looked like was making me crack up too! Thank you for the laughs and awesome information! This is definitely going to be one of the brews that I try, Earl Grey tea is my absolute favorite. If you guys haven't tried it yet, the most interesting and tasty Earl Grey tea that I have found is a brand called Ahmad Earl Grey. It's a tea based out of London and it has such complex flavor and great floral notes mixed in with the citrus adjacent notes. =]

I recently made a blackberry Earl Grey mead that turned out absolutely fantastic and smooth. But it was very weird at first and took a couple months to age into quite a wonderful beverage that my friends love!

Strar Trek & Star Wars references in the same paragraph? WONDERFULLY BLASPHEMOUS!

I’m a fan of what you do watch everything I could find love what you do thanks guys great video

A perfect explanation and I don't need to explain which it was.

funky dance of love! ;D Derica, you rock!

You two at the end, way off the path, buying grapefruit to make the other grateful... I just love you two. (I also love learning from you and making your stuff. I've got a pineapple habañero mead going right now.) Thank you for being you!

A little trick I learned while studying chem, is that you can prevent dripping by placing the edge of one container against the edge of the other.

Ah man, now I gotta try this recipe. Been following you guys for a bit now and you never disappoint. I used Earl Grey in my first mead last year and that was just 1 bag for the tannin. My family loved it. Now with this recipe they should "request" it..... Thanks for the great work you are doing to educate.

Gotta agree with the choice of stash double bergamot earl grey, it's so gooooood

YES! Might be trying this one next. Currently have a batch of your tea wine in primary, but made with 'Bella Luna' Earl Grey. Earl grey with hints of coconut and cream.

You two got me into brewing and having a fun time with it. My wife loves my cranberry wine!! Making mistakes but getting better. Never quit wineing meading or brewing. 😂👍

Earl grey tea is my favorite flavor of tea and that Stash is one of my favorite Earl greys. I also really love their Breakfast in Paris tea.

This is amazing, a few years ago when I was learning I watched your 'first mead' video. I made it with Orange Blossom Honey, Earl Grey tea for the 'black tea' , and oranges... It was and is amazing and I just made 5 more gallons of it. I'm so happy I saw this video now because I did this very same thing just adapted from your 'first mead' recipe. Earl Grey is a great flavor paired with oranges and orange blossom honey for this mead.

Loving the longer videos

Yes I love bergamot earl gray and honestly been using it in my mead

Thank you both so much for your simple, yet in-depth explanations! There are a lot of different resources I've come across for mead making and none of them are as informative, easy to understand, and enjoyable to read/watch as these videos! Very new to this hobby and until I found your channel was feeling stressed and overwhelmed. Now I feel loads more confident and feel like I can relax a bit and actually enjoy the process[: You both are great, thank you for this channel!

Another great video guys! Oh, Brian, I figured out why the cups and pitchers make a mess on you; you're pouring too fast. After multiple changes in pitchers and cups because of the messes I was making, I happened to slow pour, one day, and it stopped the spills. Even the items that were making messes no longer do. I have no idea why. In my mind, the spout lip should direct liquid out and not down the side of the pitcher/cup. Truth be told; I don't have patience for the slow pour, but I do the best I can.

Your tasting glass is really cool looking.

Wow today you guys are out of control. Love it!

I grow Bergamot (Bee Balm), I'm going to give this mead a try. I've made a Lemon Balm mead that was lovely from fresh lemon balm leaf tea, the flavor transfers beautifully into the mead.

Made some Earl Gray mead about a year ago, turned out fantastic.

You used the word!!!!! Penultimate tasing!!!! This made me smile.

Brian, Derica, I love that y’all can share each other’s opinions on stuff that y’all brew. My wife turns her nose up to everything that I brew, but in her defense, she doesn’t like the feel and taste of anything with alcohol. (Or coffee, but that’s a different story). Our closest friends have different tastes than mine as well. I would love to have a friend that I could have tastings with, that would give me honest feedback.

Honestly, I don't care how many times I have to see someone racking a jug of wine. It is kind of oddly satisfying to watch. I wouldn't mind seeing a sped up version of it every video.

The list of the rating numbers for each brew will be very helpful. Thanks.

Best tea! My go-to on work days.

Nice.. shall definitely try to make it at home.

The funky dance of love, Derica is so friggin cute!

4 Days till our favorite Earl Grey drinker is back in his element.

So much fun learning from you guys.😂

You guys are very inspiring. I'm currently brainstorming flavors I want to try for my first mead and fruit wine and I keep coming back to. mango green tea mead, a blue berry lemon with lavender honey, and either a triple berry or triple melon wine with vanilla

I take SG readings of all of my favorite commercial meads and I found that I prefer them really sweet, like 1.04 to 1.088!!!. The 1.088 is a step-fed Polish Dwojniak while the lower one is a Polish Trojniak and may favorite cysers are 1.046. When I make meads for me alone, and they go dry, I always start with adding 1 pound of honey. But like you said, it's all about what you like.

Oh cool, I never used earl grey before because I heard the bergamot hindered the ferment. But good to see you guys vouch for it.

Since we started degassing our musk, we have seen below 1.000 fermentations. So….. we degas every day for the first four days, we feed nutrient every two days for six days. Works great!

I use that tea to!

The Star Wars reference makes me love you guys even more😊

Not sure why this showed up on my feed, but these two are adorable!!!

I made a 1 gallon tea mead about 2 years ago for a friend and I found that after primary the package instructions just weren’t strong enough and most of the flavor blew off. So at the start of secondary I added probably (guessing) 40 small bags while sitting the fermenter over a AC floor vent, trying to cold brew the tea. Long story short, after some lemon additions later, turned out amazing.

Funky dance of love I absolutely love y’all’s energy and I ordered the tea btw we love tea

Oh yeah, honey adds so much viscosity. Super fun. Might try to make an Oolong mead at some point.

I don't know what was better brians face or derica's yeast speech!

I watched this (How to Make Mead From Earl Grey Tea) again today. I'm truly amazed that the segment from 13:58 to 14:20 has not been made into a short. It's classic Derica. Makes me laugh out loud every time. Thanks again guys.

I made wine with every teabag you can think of LOL . Herbal wildberry singer, blueberry raspberry tea, dandelion tea, ginger lemon tea, apple cinnamon tea bags. They all came out great just add nutrients

You beat me to this project. I am going to do this for my wife later this year.

May you 2 continue putting out vids for my enjoyment. I just need to shut my typing finger up and go to bed.

Very, very, interesting!

Sounds good. I did a couple experimental tea wine batches with earl grey tea. One batch had generic red star bread yeast, and the other one had red star cuvée yeast. Both fermented to 1.0. The cuvée yeast wine turned into harsh rocket fuel, which I guess isn't surprising as that yeast isn't know for flavor development. However, the bread yeast wine was delightful with a sweetness that belied its dryness. My one complaint was the wine was too thin on the palette, which your mead should rectify as the honey will provide a better body. I bottled both and it's been over 1 yr, so I should check on the cuvée wine to see if age has mellow it out.

I’ve found one alternative to the autosiphon that is very helpful especially if you are a solo brewer. Northern Brewer has a plug in pump that works really well. I don’t think it will work with a bottling wand(I’ve yet to test it yet), but for racking it works very well.

Make it so number One.

DERICA!!! I Think U and I are Soul Mates. I use Movie Lines TOO😂😂😂❤

Sous vide works well to de-crystallize honey. We are bee keepers and in order to be considered “raw”, we have to keep the honey cooler than the hottest day in our area the previous year.

I just shovel crystalized honey into the fermenter and don't worry about how well it mixes during the aeration shake.

Stash is what started it all for me and I've been an avid tea drinker for nearly 30 years since then. You guys should check out Mei Leaf's post-fermented and aged lines of tea. Childhood food trauma! My babysitter used to frequently serve canned pea soup and it'd stink the whole house, and I wasn't authorized to leave the table for the rest of the afternoon until I made a concerted effort to eat it, sometimes not earning the final approval until my mother picked me up. I'd have to sit in the pea soup stench for 3 hours and now anytime I smell canned peas or pea soup I get nauseous. I was 4 so I didn't know the nose-plugging trick.

When my wife and I made our experimental earl Grey mead. We used no extra water. We brewed 1 gallon of tea. Zest of lemon and cream of coconut. It turned out amazing. Step fed slowly to our perfect sweetness.

Never had Earl Gray tea, but saw this video and went and bought some. I was watching the video again and taking notes and figured I’d go open a pack and smell it. Wow!!! 😮 the amazing smell is lingering on my tongue. Can’t wait to make this one. I’ll let ya know how it turns out in 4-6 months. Thank y’all for everything and your pointers.

As an Oregonian, I appreciate your advertising Stash, which is headquartered in Tigard, Oregon.

one of my favorite meads I've ever made was an Apple Earl Grey Mead.

Hurray!!! The TURBOS theme is back!

Overcooked and dry liver was the bane of my childhood school meals.

Picard @6:00 mark! True story: every morning @ work I would go get tea. One day they were out of "regular" black tea, so being a Star Trek fan, I tried the Earl Grey. It's been 20+ years, and I've never gone back! Current favorite is Bigelow Earl Grey Green Tea.

You've mentioned about the questions of "what kind of tea should I use?" before, but I've got a couple of interesting questions for you (at least I hope they're interesting). I moved to China nearly 8 years ago, and right before I moved, my cousin was getting into making mead. It slipped my mind until I came across your channel recently. I've looked into doing it a little bit - mostly along the lines of how and where to get various supplies (heck, I don't even know if it's legal to make your own alcohol, but I'm nowhere near that point, yet). It's a bit difficult, though, since my Chinese, although better than the average foreigner, is still not amazing. On Taobao (the equivalent of Amazon in China), I found a nice wild honey from the province I live in (Shaanxi), which I want to use. However, they offer basic wild honey and two-year old honey from more mature hives. Does this make a difference? I just figured I'd go for the basic stuff, but if it's recommended to go for the other stuff, what's the difference? I also saw a black honey from Yunnan province for sale. It was more expensive, and supposedly had medicinal properties, but it is naturally black. I would never use that for my first mead, but have you ever used a honey like that before? I've tried to look into it a little bit, and there are black honeys from other countries as well. What's the most interesting/strange honey you've ever used, and would you be willing to do a video making (and tasting) mead(s) made from "odd" honeys? I know that you usually do wildflower or orange blossom honey (at least, based on the selection of videos I've watched so far), but it might be fun to experiment with some of the less common ones. Finally, would you be interested in making a "Chinese mead"? I was thinking about it, taking the whole spices that go into Chinese Five Spice (such as thick-bark cinnamon, star anise, cloves, fennel seeds, and Sichuan pepper corns), but I wouldn't know where to start. Again, I would never do such a thing for my first mead, anyways. I just thought that maybe you'd be intrigued enough to give it a try. I love the content, by the way, and I'm excited to do more research into making my own here in China!

You explained in the terms that I understand whys

Hey your grapefruit experience I know all too well. It wasnt until I was about 50 that I learned of pink grapefruit. A completely different beast. Your Kilju video got me too thinking. After it is done fermenting I want to add a pumpkin pie coffee flavoring to one and a peppermint to the other. Wish me luck. One is sugar free the pumpkin pie is not. Hopefully they will be ready for Christmas.

Pasteurizing can and does speed age meads, it is a crazy effect of it. High temp messes with flavors but low temp like you do seems to age it. it is more noticeable when done in bulk and that part I am not sure as to why yet. I do 3-6 gallons in bulk and have noticed it is different than in bottles alone. Totally makes some brews super drinkable quickly. Way cool and I will take it haha.

if you're on an incredibly tight budget, start the syphon with your turkey baster. several ft of food grade tubing is a few bucks at a hardware store, and you need a turkey baster anyway.

From gardening I know soaking green leaves for a few week will extract some of the nitrogen into the water. Not sure if the hot water would extract a significant amount from tea leaves in the time you have it in there but maybe it does speed up extraction.

I am not into making alcohol but I enjoy watching you guys do your thing. But after watching a few of your video's now I am kind of curious in trying to make myself a batch.

Mom had a set of grapfruit spoons which add a light serrated edge on one edge

Love how you guys work so well together. I have learned so much and laughed along the way. ❤

13% is fine. When I want a high ABV I either start off between 1.090-1.100 then step feed , or fortify with a splash of Everclear.

I am now going to sing, "Bow Chicka Bow Bow" every time I pitch my yeast! 😂😂

I’ve been brewing kombucha for a long time, and squeezing the bag is frowned upon. That being said!!… I squeeze mine 😃 I brew my tea exactly how I like to drink it, and when I drink my tea I squeeze the bag. Instead of steeping for 15 minutes, I steep for no more than five and squeeze those suckers out! Either way works, I just like getting all the good stuff out and I’ve tried it both ways. The flavour seems nicer overall when I don’t over extract the tea

Here in Canada: Tim Hortons has the BEST Earl Grey tea, get 24 oz for 1/2 the cost of S'Bucks 30 oz, black 1.5 tsp of sugar, then drink it while I work (or let it get cold, or add a cup of ice to it). I like cold tea, ok.. gimme a break.. I would rather drink cold tea, than hot/cold coffee..

As a kid I felt grapefruit was way to sour but I loved lemons and limes. I don't know why I didn't like grapefruit but like Brian I still can't eat them. I have tried a palmmellow and found it tasted a little like grapefruit but not as bad. But I can't eat them either.

This is fascinating. Wondering if during conditioning if there is some malic acid to lactic acid conversion giving the creamy milk flavors. Keep brewin!

I used clover Honey in mine beg gravity 1.080 and lalvin D47 yeast

I'm new to your videos, love the plain concise instructions and explanations. I'm looking to take this up as a hobby. This has me wondering have you made a cinnamon tea based mead?

I’m sure you done Jean-Luc Picard proud

My childhood food trauma is more of a childhood drink trauma. I’ve never liked overly sweet things. When I was four years old I had to be hospitalised for eye surgery and spent a few days post-op with bandaged eyes in an unfamiliar place with Mom only allowed to visit me for a few minutes a day. The nurses were very big on everyone: Finishing their food and drinks FAST Finishing everything they were being served Kids doing as much as possible all by themselves. Strike one: being told off as I wasn’t done when all the kids had finished their meal. I was struggling to find my cup and plate, let alone whatever was on there. I was given hot chocolate to drink and the nurse put so much chocolate powder in there it was like drinking liquid sugar. To add insult to injury, it had cooled and she proceeded to stir in the skin that had formed. She dunked my sandwich in the chocolate milk to make it easier to eat and soften the crusts (I happened to like crusts and hate soggy bread). Now I was left with sickly sweet liquid-with-snotlike -fragments to drink. That stuff came right back to sender which did not amuse the nurse. At age 53 I still hate overly sweet chocolate milk, am paranoid about anything floating around in it and never, EVER dunk anything in a hot beverage. Makes my skin crawl. I will try to sit next to people doing it instead of sitting across from them just to avoid having to see them dunk and slobber. Throughout the day we had to drink a minimum of fluids. A firm believer of “all kids like it sweet” the nurse poured just about double the recommended amount of grenadine syrup in our water. All kids loved her for it. I hated it. To this day I still can’t abide grenadine syrup in anything.

You should make a mead with Celestial Seasonings Red Zinger tea (lots of rose hips)

I also enjoy tea, Earl Grey, hot and am looking forward to trying this. One question, on the top shelf behind Derica is a bottled that is oddly shaped. The label is facing away from the camera and it looks like Angel’s Envy rye. Is that it? Great stuff.

Capt Picard! Make it so!

I also can't STAND grapefruit in any way, shape, or form, but I also LOVE Earl Grey. I wonder how Picard would feel...

Where did you guys get the double walled glassware? Really like the look of thoes

Plum Deluxe sells a tea tin for Early Grey with a Star Trek inspiration. It says "Earl Grey, Hot" on it lol; I have it.

City Steading!! I’d REALLY appreciate some advice. I saw your Rooibos vid after I’d bought some to make a mead. Coincidence. Then I saw yours stalled and I wanted to get to around 15%. To overcome the potential antibiotic of rooibos I did a mix of 6 rooibos and 6 black teabags. 3.5lb of Aldi honey. Came out to original gravity of 1.120. I used bulldog mead yeast that includes nutrients, and I added hulls for good measure. The fermentation was extremely successful. In just 10 days the gravity is 1.000 and it has a young, but complex semi-sec flavour. I’ve racked it off the raisins purely by chance because I discovered there was a hairline crack in the carboy. So it’s all by luck / unlucky chance that I’ve found out the taste is great and the ABV is %16. I don’t want it any higher. Should I let it calm down and give it a week after racking off the cracked fermenter? Or after only 10 days to prevent going lower than 1.000 would pasteurisation be a plan?

The “creaminess” could be the lactic acid from the secondary fermentation 😊

Do you recommend adding yeast nutrient to water first before adding it to a batch at all times? I will be adding some to a batch tonight and my practice has been to just add it right into the mead. This is a 5 gallon batch of "Peach Pie Mead" that I am making, if that matters. There is only peaches in it right now and will be adding additional flavors in secondary.

I've done a couple of Earl Grey hydromels and I feel like they need a bit of age to taste good.

I’m doing a similar using Chamomile and orange. A glass before bed would knock me right out.

We make our own joghurt, and if we have crystallized honey, we always put it in with the joghurt. 6 hours at 40°C and it is decrystallized.

ST: TNG ST: VOY (Neelix once ordered a "bergamot tea") Star Wars Toy Story That rose odor/flavor might come from fermented citrus. I've noticed that spoiled lime peel smells/tastes like roses. I suspect you could have used 8 tea bags rather than 16 because one tea bag really makes 2 cups of tea. And then it would be less astringent. I love grapefruit. We used to do that half-grapefruit-with-sugar thing when I was a kid, but now, I just peel and eat.