Sterilizing mead bc of mold on top

Batch of chocolate mead cocoa and nibs ( nibs in the secondary) has mold on top in the secondary. There is liquid in the lock and it smells good, made back in sept is in a cool cupboard


Can we save this, it was a lot of honey

In the cupboard there is sodium metabisulphite, potassium metabisulphite and potassium sorbate.... All in powder form....no idea how much of any of these to use.... Or which ones.

The mead was one big batch , but will be split into small gallon carboys to make it easier to manage

What should we do now
it is one big batch

shinning a flash light thru it there is still a lot of bubbles coming up the sides... is it possible its not mold just some scum.... what do you guys think



Thanks!

Are you sure its mold and not something that came floating off of the nibs? Do you have it in one carboy or a bunch, if its in a bunch are all the carboys affected or just one? Mold needs air to live so are your airlocks filled right, is there an air leak around the seal between the bung and the bottle or the airlock and the bung?

Is the metabisulfite new or old? If its old it might not work.

You know a picture would really help out a lot.

WVMJ

Is it fuzzy, furry stuff?

no fuzzy just white, hasnt changed in the last 5 days or so..... at a loss as new to this!

You can reach in there with a papertowel and swab out the gunk on top if you want, then add some potasium metabisufite just to be sure. What you have there looks just like residue from the wine, maybe some protein from the honey etc, the little rim of white stuff is common. Does the mead itself smell funny? You can probably chill out and stop worrying. WVMJ

Here's 1 way to tell that has worked for me. Draw a sample of the 'stuff' with a baster. Put that drawn sample in some small container with a honey/water (or water/sugar) mix, place it in a warm, preferably dark spot for a few days. If you have growth in your sample, it's a mold. If no growth happens, it's just some 'floaty' material, and not harmful. Sounds like a lot of work, but that's nothing compared to losing your whole batch!

How much k meta... Would you add, we have powder....
Will swab the stuff up first

Thanks!

1/4 teaspoon in a 5 gallon batch, dissolve in a quarter cup of water and gently stir it into your wine, or rack your wine, add the dissolved KM, stir and top off. The KM is just insurance, especially good for newbees or winemakers like me who never ever think its acceptable to loose a batch of wine because we didnt add $0.05 worth of insurance. WVMJ

Skim it and rack into clean sterilized carboy

jackfrost said:

Skim it and rack into clean sterilized carboy

Click to expand...

Terminology issue here......

We will all have enough kit to "sanitise" glassware and other kit, but to actually "sterilise", most of us don't have access to an autoclave or similar, or even 95.6% ABV spirit so give a carboy a "slosh round".

Hence being a bit picky, I'd say skim/swab out the white stuff, then rack it a "sanitised" carboy, onto sulphites.

That way, you've removed all the visible white stuff. Racked off any sediment and then the sulphites should take care of any other stray mould spores that might be in there - but it'll stun any yeast as well, so hopefully it's finished fermenting........

Ok, now returning to "pedants corner".....

FB, our modern yeast dont get stunned by normal levels of KM very easily, I add KM directly to the secondary when I transfer from the primary bucket to the secondary carboy and they yeast never skip a beat and keep churning. We dont even wait sometimes after adding KM to add the yeast without any problems, I usually use starter cultures which may be why they are not shocked when introduced straight away instead of just dumping some dry yeast on top that has to rehydrate with KM around. I dont think most people know the differece between santasized and sterilized so you are right there, at least most recognize that its nice and clean either way WVMJ

I use a medical grade alcohol to sterilize containers and equipment when messing with fruit or chocolate. I sanitize using easy clean on traditional meads. Hence the reason I chose the word sterilize.

Great thanks ... Will get on it

update
went to slide the carboy across the floor.... "mold" disappared !!! it was all just scummy bubbles

thanks everyone for all the replies- definetly learned some new things....didnt realise you should be adding sulphites when racking to the secondary

All good in the end. Unfortunately mold creates toxins that can't be filtered out or removed. It's not the visible mold that gets you

Bump for floating white fleckquestion

I remember as kids we were told to just scrape the mold off of the top of the jelly and eat what was below, the mold was just on top, the jelly still tasted good and never affected us. When we were kids we used to eat the jelly below the moldly top layer, everyone said it was ok and it still tasted good and never affected us. As kids we always dug down to the bottome of the jelly jar to get the stuff under the mold, it always tasted good and never hurt us at all. WVMJ

I found it, garlicbee. Thanks for the lead! Your pictures could've been mine they resembled so closely! I'll jump back over to my thread now... https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f30/white-floating-specks-ok-infection-381938/

Thanks!
Ed