A few questions

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scottv said:
Well I think it's more of a factor if the vodka gets into the must no harm no foul. If the sanitizer gets in eeeeew. But I have been careful.
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Which is why I make up home made sanitiser from the recipe by CJJ Berry in his "First Steps in Wine Making" book.

It's just 5 crushed campden tablets and 1 teaspoon of citric acid all dissolved in a pint of water. I keep it in a hand spray and after everything has been washed and rinsed, I just spray liberally allowing for 2 or 3 minutes of contact time.

I also just squirt some of it into my airlocks. It's not got anything in it that would harm a wine or affect taste etc and it's a zillion times cheaper than buying something special or even wasting perfectly good drinking vodka.....
 
Ok so I've just taken out my raisins and strained them. Tried to take a hydrometer test but it basically just sunk to the bottom of anything I would put it in and my mead tastes like a vodka shot? After one week? 0.0 Any ideas?

Oh and I also can't taste any blackberries nor honey lol
 
I can not answer that. Hopefully fatbloke or golddiggie sees this. I just did my first racking into my carboy and added 9 lbs of peach purée and it does not look to great lol. Has a strong alcohol smell. The taste is ok but not like meads I have tried. So as golddiggie says I'm gonna put it in a dark corner and leave it the jxhcfhfgjjbfy alone lol.
 
Well on the basis that a hydrometer floats high before a ferment and the brew has lots of sugar and you say that now it sinks ?

It sounds like you may have a finished ferment on your hands.

Ok so its easiest if you have a 100ml test jars so you can take a sample (if the test jar is sanitise as well as the hydrometer I just make my tests and the put the sample back into the batch). The reading should be 1.000 or close to it. The test jar is used so its easiest to see the hydrometer scale but if your fermenter is a bucket and the liquid is deep enough for the hydrometer to float (and you can still see the scale) just sanitising it and dropping it in the bucket is also fine.

The taste you describe sounds like "alcohol hot". Which isn't a surprise. Generally it mellows with ageing.

So your next thing is to take a hydrometer reading and record the numbers then take another test after about 3 days and record numbers then a final test after a further 3 days and if all 3 tests give identical readings you can presume its finished as long as its somewhere around the 1.000 already mentioned. If it higher by any distance it could be stuck but it doesnt sound like that.
 
fatbloke said:
Well on the basis that a hydrometer floats high before a ferment and the brew has lots of sugar and you say that now it sinks ?

It sounds like you may have a finished ferment on your hands.

Ok so its easiest if you have a 100ml test jars so you can take a sample (if the test jar is sanitise as well as the hydrometer I just make my tests and the put the sample back into the batch). The reading should be 1.000 or close to it. The test jar is used so its easiest to see the hydrometer scale but if your fermenter is a bucket and the liquid is deep enough for the hydrometer to float (and you can still see the scale) just sanitising it and dropping it in the bucket is also fine.

The taste you describe sounds like "alcohol hot". Which isn't a surprise. Generally it mellows with ageing.

So your next thing is to take a hydrometer reading and record the numbers then take another test after about 3 days and record numbers then a final test after a further 3 days and if all 3 tests give identical readings you can presume its finished as long as its somewhere around the 1.100 already mentioned. If it higher by any distance it could be stuck but it doesnt sound like that.
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Thanks for the reply mate. After a week though?! Finished after a week? 0.0 the hydrometer was at near 1.000 but it has pretty much no flavor at the moment and its still bubbling the airlock.
 
Smiddy1488 said:
Thanks for the reply mate. After a week though?! Finished after a week? 0.0 the hydrometer was at near 1.000 but it has pretty much no flavor at the moment and its still bubbling the airlock.
Click to expand...

Any ideas anyone? So I can sort things out before Christmas if needs be
 
Ok so i took another reading to be sure. I'm now not getting any air bubbles pretty much took a reading and it's at .994? It started at 1.100.

I've now added stabiliser as i'm just going to bottle and let it age. Any clues to if i've done something massively wrong? It smells much like a wine (of course mead is pretty much a wine) and im hoping the flavors will come through after aging as at the moment it tastes pretty damn strong!
 
Haha well its safe to say my mead was a hit. Strong and a great aftertaste!
 

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