Cole125

Recipes 

Hey new here and a avid home brewer just getting into making mead.

In your opinions what is the best yeast and yeast activator for mead?

Thanks

malkore

Recipes 

no such answer exists. There's dozens of great wine and high attenuation ale yeasts that make great mead.

it depends on final ABV, and style of mead, what yeast will accentuate it the best, and how much nutrient and energizer (activator?....) you'll need.

melomels and pyments and cysers often have plenty of nitrogen to require no energizer.

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Malkore
Primary: English Mild
On tap: Pale Ale, Lancelot's Wheat, English Brown Ale, Steam Beer, HoovNuts IPA
Bottled: MOAM, Braggot, Raspberry Melomel, Merlot, Apfelwein, Pyment, Sweet mead, Cabernet
Gal in 2009: 27, Gal in 2010: 34, Gal in 2011: 13, Gal in 2012: 10

Cole125

Recipes 

I am looking for a good yeast and yeast energizer combo for a plain medium sweet mead.

Any places you guys recommend online for buying such items?

Thanks!

fatbloke

Recipes 

You should have a look through gotmead. There's a lot of different yeasts that can be used. Each of those different yeasts has a different characteristic i.e. some like a lot of nitrogen, others not so much. some need to be removed from the yeast relatively quickly after the ferment has finished, others can just sit there with no problems.

Some mead recipes benefit from staged nutrient addition, other's, it doesn't really make any difference. Some mead recipes will recommend very high starting gravity and then need a lot of attention in the earlier stages of ferment, while others will just need to be mixed up and left.

If you're just looking for "easy" to start with, then I'd say that you should search for the Joes Ancient Orange recipe and follow it religiously. It's very straight forward. Following it exactly will allow you to understand the taste of the finished mead as it was intended. Don't be tempted to sub a wine yeast for the bread yeast in the original recipe, and the only final suggestion that I'd make that could potentially improve the original slightly, is that if you don't like marmalade, then peel the orange so that you don't get much of the white pith, and then "segment" the flesh out of the skins (you can take the pips out then as well) and just use the outer orange skin that you peeled earlier and the flesh. The rest should be adhered to as per the original recipe.

Your choice......

regards

fatbloke

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malkore

Recipes 

Well, I've made plenty of mead with S-33 ale yeast and the generic yeast energizer at the LHBS.

Its an odd yeast choice, yes. But it makes a good 14% sweet mead with 3lbs honey / gallon.

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Malkore
Primary: English Mild
On tap: Pale Ale, Lancelot's Wheat, English Brown Ale, Steam Beer, HoovNuts IPA
Bottled: MOAM, Braggot, Raspberry Melomel, Merlot, Apfelwein, Pyment, Sweet mead, Cabernet
Gal in 2009: 27, Gal in 2010: 34, Gal in 2011: 13, Gal in 2012: 10

abbot555

Recipes 

I am new to mead making and am trying the D-47 yeast.