garlicbee

Recipes 

Made a large batch of chocolate mead with some cocoa and cocoa nobs back in sept
Have racked it once back in nov and it is sitting in the dark at about 16 degrees c

Small floating white patch on top not sure how long it has been there..... Is it ruined.... It's the first time making a big batch....

Thanks in advance

WVMJ

Recipes 

Was your airlock in place and filled? Do you have it in a glass carboy? What does it smell like? Did you put in an Potassium Metabisulfite? Did you stick your finger in the carboy for a taste and forgot to wash it first? If you can reach in there with a papertowel and remove the floating stuff and put a good dose of KMeta you will probably be ok. WVMJ

garlicbee

Recipes 

Air lock is full and ok, haven't touched it since it was racked, every thing was sterilized before except the cocoa nibs were added raw.....
So should it be racked aGain or is it ruined?

Thanks

WVMJ

Recipes 

Do you have potassium metabisulfite? You can try to remove the blob and rack the rest to another clean carboy and hit it with KM. HOW DOES IT SMELL? WVMJ

garlicbee

Recipes 

smells good like alcohol not and off smell for sure
if potassuim metabisulfite is one of the things you add at the begining or sterlize with the yes (sorry havent got box of stuff in front of me)
or is that what campben tablets are?

fatbloke

Recipes 

Campden tablets are indeed sulphites in tablet form, being either potassium metabisulphite or sodium metabisulphite.

So that the tablet should give between 40 and 50 ppm per gallon per tablet.

You should likely have added some when racking the finished (finished fermenting that is) batch. Then it's recommended to add further sulphites on every second racking to keep the levels of free SO2 up to a level where it inhibits any fungal growth......

Or that's the idea anyway.....

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