First time meading

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Auger

Auger

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I brewed my first batch of mead a few weeks ago. I'm kind of assuming I'm just being impatient, but I figured I'd ask. It is an orange-ginger mead, I cobbled the recipe together from a few different ones I found. OG was 1.082, left it in the primary for 4 weeks, racked to secondary over the weekend, SG is down to .995.

1) I used sodium metabisulfite to sanitize the honey. The mead now tastes and smells really sulfury. Is this something to be concerned about or will it age out?

2) The recipe I used called for 5oz of fresh grated ginger for a 5gal batch. I'm thinking it was a little overkill. The ginger flavor is very strong, the orange flavor is almost nonexistent.

Should I do anything at this point, or just be patient? My original intention was to bulk-age for about a year prior to bottling. I'm wondering if I should do a seconary addition of honey to bump up the gravity/alcohol a bit...it tastes a bit thin right now, but again that might be an aging issue.
 
K-meta smells like burnt matches not like rotten eggs and so if you smell the first then you may have added too much K-meta (any , would be a lot as honey is in and of itself a bactericide which is why it does not go bad or need to be refrigerated etc - it is so water deficient before you dilute it that it sucks moisture out of the cells of microbes and bacteria, killing them). If the mead smells of sulfur as in rotten eggs (hydrogen sulfide) then that suggests that the yeast was stressed perhaps because of insufficient nutrients in the must (honey lacks nutrients that the yeast need) or because the yeast was suffering from alcohol poisoning (the alcohol level was too near the tolerance the yeast had. I think Nottingham may be OK (just) at 1.085 but if the problem is hydrogen sulfide then patience may not be what is wanted. You may need to try to remove the H2S by whipping air into the mead (I know .. I know) or by racking the mead through or onto some sanitized copper (scouring pads are good for this)...
 
How much orange did you add? In my last 5 gallon batch of ginger mead I used 2.5lb of fresh ginger! And I thought it was just right.

If it tastes thin then stabilizing with some K-sorbate and bumping the gravity up to 1.004 ish will add some mouthfeel and make that orange pop more.
 
I'll have to check the recipe, but I think I used 6 valencia oranges. I cut them into quarters, squeezed the juice into the mead then dropped the orange slices in as well. They stayed in there until I racked to secondary.
 
That is a fine amount of orange. I know ginger is pretty powerful so that has something to it but I bet just a little but of sweetness added would help a lot.
 
bernardsmith said:
K-meta smells like burnt matches not like rotten eggs and so if you smell the first then you may have added too much K-meta (any , would be a lot as honey is in and of itself a bactericide which is why it does not go bad or need to be refrigerated etc - it is so water deficient before you dilute it that it sucks moisture out of the cells of microbes and bacteria, killing them). If the mead smells of sulfur as in rotten eggs (hydrogen sulfide) then that suggests that the yeast was stressed perhaps because of insufficient nutrients in the must (honey lacks nutrients that the yeast need) or because the yeast was suffering from alcohol poisoning (the alcohol level was too near the tolerance the yeast had. I think Nottingham may be OK (just) at 1.085 but if the problem is hydrogen sulfide then patience may not be what is wanted. You may need to try to remove the H2S by whipping air into the mead (I know .. I know) or by racking the mead through or onto some sanitized copper (scouring pads are good for this)...
Click to expand...

Its not really a strong rotten egg smell. I used DAP and Fermax so nutrient levels shouldn't be an issue, I don't think.


Arpolis said:
If it tastes thin then stabilizing with some K-sorbate and bumping the gravity up to 1.004 ish will add some mouthfeel and make that orange pop more.
Click to expand...

I think I'll let it sit for a few months and check it again and see how things are coming along.


What is the prevailing wisdom as far as stabilization and bulk aging? I would assume that I want to age for whatever amount of time, then stabilize/backsweeten immediately prior to packaging?
 
Adding honey to back sweeten always adds a haze to the mead and so if you back sweeten and then bottle it will add sediment in your bottles. So I always back sweeten at least 30 days prior to bottling so that haze drops out and then I can do a final rack/bottle.
 

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