Mead or Hydromel?

Greetings all,

Just racked my first mead today. I decided to use a raspberry varietal honey, since my wife loves raspberry so much. This type of honey is very delicious; since I've tried it, it is probably one of my favorites as well. But I digress...

When I made the mead, I aerated it quite a bit, so much so that there was a foam layer at the top of my primary fermentor (a carboy) around four or five inches in height. Instead of waiting for the foam to subside, I pitched my yeast and let it start fermenting. When I racked today, I added 42.5g American oak cubes, plus the distilled water it was boiled in, which gave me the desired volume in the secondary fermentor (about an inch from the stopper). Now I'm wondering if I should have just let it be. I know it's too late to go back, but I'm curious what you all think.

Many thanks for your opinions.

I always pitch my yeast on a lyaer of bubbles. I dont think that it is supposed to casue a problem.

Whenever I have used oak, I steamed it to sanitize. How much water did you wind up adding? I guess its a trade off: on one hand you have less airspace in your secondary, on the other hand your ABV will be a bit lower.

I wouldnt think that the taste will be dramatically affected unless you added a lot of water as compared to your batch size.

- magno

I think the amount was roughly one quart. I wasn't too worried about the ABV, since the mead tasted fairly strong. But, since I hadn't read anything against adding water, I decided to try it. I probably shouldn't have added it the way I did, though; I think it may have aerated the mead a bit much. Oh well.

If it turns out as a hydromel, that's fine.

Well Hydromels are done faster so there you go. But just having added water doesn't make it a hydromel. A hydromel is <7.5% or around that I believe.