Hey all-
I'm making a version of one of Curt Stock's huge melomels. It's got ~20lbs of cherries/blackberries and 22 lbs of honey in a 5 gallon batch. Anyway, I was trying to do everything right: SNA, adding O2 every day/degassing during primary. Anyway, yesterday was about 48 hours after fermentation had begun (~18 hr lag time) and gravity had been dropping at a fairly regular and moderate rate. Having a routine for this sort of thing, I degassed, added my nutrients, and then hit the must with some pure O2. I pulled a sample for gravity, and to my dismay, the gravity was at 1.100 (down from 1.170)!
With a target FG of 1.030, that put me at 50% sugar break! In the previous days, it had not fermented nearly that fast and nothing had indicated an increase in activity (blowoff or airlock activity). This is a very expensive batch of mead. I'm hoping that I'll be alright just because there is SO MUCH MORE sugar to chew through, and the mead is still fermenting quite vigorously and offgassing hard.
TL;DR: I oxygenated at 50% sugar break- do you have any experience that can tell you what this may do? Nothing I can do but wait, obviously, but if there's anything that may reduce the ill effects, let me know.
Cheers, and thanks!
I'm making a version of one of Curt Stock's huge melomels. It's got ~20lbs of cherries/blackberries and 22 lbs of honey in a 5 gallon batch. Anyway, I was trying to do everything right: SNA, adding O2 every day/degassing during primary. Anyway, yesterday was about 48 hours after fermentation had begun (~18 hr lag time) and gravity had been dropping at a fairly regular and moderate rate. Having a routine for this sort of thing, I degassed, added my nutrients, and then hit the must with some pure O2. I pulled a sample for gravity, and to my dismay, the gravity was at 1.100 (down from 1.170)!
With a target FG of 1.030, that put me at 50% sugar break! In the previous days, it had not fermented nearly that fast and nothing had indicated an increase in activity (blowoff or airlock activity). This is a very expensive batch of mead. I'm hoping that I'll be alright just because there is SO MUCH MORE sugar to chew through, and the mead is still fermenting quite vigorously and offgassing hard.
TL;DR: I oxygenated at 50% sugar break- do you have any experience that can tell you what this may do? Nothing I can do but wait, obviously, but if there's anything that may reduce the ill effects, let me know.
Cheers, and thanks!