Long Earth SocietyLong Earth Society

02 · Epistemic Brewing

Every batch
is a question.

Mead, made in a garage, measured like a lab. Two research tracks at opposite ends of the alcohol spectrum, and a CSV log for every batch in between.

Batches What's a hydromel? → The two tracks →

The style

Hydromel

A low-alcohol mead, roughly 3.5–7.5% ABV, finished dry and carbonated. Think of it as the session beer of honey wine: light, fizzy, drinkable in an afternoon rather than aged for a year.

Honey Fruit Spice Weird Airlock Light shield · controlled Heat band Temp pH SG Nutrient dosing Batch log SG · °F · pH · CSV ●
Every input and every condition is a variable. Temperature, gravity and pH are logged through fermentation; nutrients are dosed on a schedule; light and heat are controlled, not left to the garage.

Low gravity

Start around 1.030–1.055 instead of the 1.100+ of a standard mead. Less honey, faster ferment, drier finish.

Carbonated

Finished with a priming dose or force-carbonated in a keg. The fizz carries aroma that a still mead hides.

Quick turnaround

Days to weeks, not months. Which is exactly why it's the right style for controlled, repeatable experiments.

The research

Two ends of the spectrum.

Most of the batches here serve one of two long-running questions. Everything else is an excuse to try a strange ingredient.

Track A · Speed

Fastest clean hydromel

How quickly can a hydromel go from pitch to carbonated glass without off-flavors, if every factor is controlled?

  • Yeast strain and pitch rate
  • Temperature profile, held by a heat band and logged
  • Staggered nutrient additions, dosed on schedule
  • Oxygen at pitch, light exclusion, pH management
  • Carbonation method and conditioning time
Track B · Strength

Highest ABV we can reach

Can we push a mead past the published alcohol tolerance of its yeast, and keep the yeast alive and working to get there?

  • Step-feeding honey to manage osmotic stress
  • Nutrient and temperature strategies for late-stage viability
  • A yeast-longevity R&D tool, designed and built in-house (in development)
  • Measuring where each strain actually stalls versus where the datasheet says
0%5% 10%15%20%+ Hydromel · Track A Standard mead Typical yeast limit Track B →
Approximate ranges. The published tolerance of common wine yeasts tops out in the high teens; Track B is about finding out how far past that a mead can be taken.

Batches

Every batch gets a page: the question, the recipe, the readings, the answer. Logs download as CSV.

Loading batches…

Download the batch index (CSV)

About the data

Each batch log is a plain CSV: timestamp, day, specific gravity, temperature, pH and a note column for events like nutrient additions. The index CSV summarizes every batch in one table.

Per-batch logs are open to download. As the research tracks mature, the deeper technical datasets, such as sensor-level logs, the yeast-longevity rig, and full process parameters, may move to a subscriber tier to support the work.