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Comment by kevinmchugh | Hacker News Reader

> To avoid the chlorine, fluoride, and other additives found in modern tap water

You should be able to get a water report from your municipality, listing any treatments they perform. Chlorine and similar can be removed with Campden tablets, available at your homebrew store. I've never heard of fluoride causing a change in a fermented product. I know plenty of breweries that just use fluoridated city water.

Note the special lid on that mason jar for allowing off-gassing. Fermenting in a mason jar with a standard lid is a recipe for exploding glass.

I'm not sure what to make of the fermentation time here. Meads are usually fermented longer, older recipes tend to have very short fermentation times. Especially older, low gravity recipes.

If you don't want to play the guessing game on fermentation time, buy a hydrometer or refractometer.

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> Chlorine and similar can be removed with Campden tablets, available at your homebrew store.

Never heard of this. I've googled a bit around, and I think I'll try this in the future.

> I'm not sure what to make of the fermentation time here. Meads are usually fermented longer, older recipes tend to have very short fermentation times. Especially older, low gravity recipes.

The caramelization process does slow the process down a good bit. I've made a few bochets, and I notice they go slower than other meads.

I've heard of people having issues using Ale yeasts with meads. The temperature of the house could have an impact. The lack of available nutrients (raisins a hotly debated topic in the mead community).

I would expect the Kveik yeast, the Lalvin D47, and maybe the "yeast party" to be faster than the S-04 and Saison yeast.

> I would expect the Kveik yeast, the Lalvin D47, and maybe the "yeast party" to be faster than the S-04 and Saison yeast.

Kveik has extreme Nutrient requirements compared to other yeasts. Likely also why the sample of that batched tasted off.

> The temperature of the house could have an impact.

Temperature cycles. The barn wort batches are always more complicated flavors than the steady temperature basement batches.

The choice of distilled water in particular for a historic recreation is very strange; water makes a big difference. Unless there's reason to believe water in whatever part of France is very soft, a bottled spring water would have been a better choice if you don't want to use tap.

Right, simple minerals such as calcium can make a big difference in final taste of a beer. The excess calcium in waters of karst country (big limestone deposits) is said to have a huge effect on German beers historically, and I'd imagine some of that extends into France as well.

Distilled water minimizes variables of course, but it by itself indeed very non-historic.

Or, you know, just draw water from an old well. Distilled water seems too clinical.

It shouldn't matter much; both chlorine and fluoride evaporate faster than water, and with all brewing processes you need to boil the water anyway.

Distilled water is no good, it lacks the minerals, and without minerals water has no flavor (and it's actually harmful to drink distilled water for too long).

I'm just glad our water is not fluoridated or chlorinated. There's evidence (citation needed) that drinking fluoridated water impacts neurological development, mood, behaviour, etc.

> There's evidence (citation needed) that drinking fluoridated water impacts neurological development, mood, behaviour, etc.

Citation definitely needed. General Ripper notwithstanding, the science doesn't seem to support the conclusion that the amount of fluoride that is intentionally added to drinking water is detrimental to health. (https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/new-study-show...)

There's only a brief boil in this because it's mead. There are plenty of no-boil meads, like JAOM.

Chlorine can be removed just by leaving the water uncovered over night before brewing, but chloramine can't. Chloramine is common. Not treating for it risks chlorophenol creation in the finished product.

> I've never heard of fluoride causing a change in a fermented product.

I've never done a comparison myself, but I've seen this mentioned many times as a consideration when fermenting foods. A cursory search indicates that floride can have detrimental effects in wine yeasts as well.

Yeah. I think for historical accuracy they should go ahead and add some cholera bacteria too. Why stop at removing chlorine?

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