new to mead.

I have a friend how is a bee keeper . This is goof for free honey. The honey i started with was soled so i reconstituted it in a water bath. I used the wife juicer and juiced some black berries. I poured the honey berry juice and add some yeast energiser and nut... This lead me to a problem. Oh yes topped it up with water and pitched yeast . Now i have this stuff that looks like a lava lamp from my dorm room. Is it OK to stir it after i have pitched the yeast.


Help

4xtreme said:

I have a friend how is a bee keeper . This is goof for free honey. The honey i started with was soled so i reconstituted it in a water bath. I used the wife juicer and juiced some black berries. I poured the honey berry juice and add some yeast energiser and nut... This lead me to a problem. Oh yes topped it up with water and pitched yeast . Now i have this stuff that looks like a lava lamp from my dorm room. Is it OK to stir it after i have pitched the yeast.


Help

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Yeah you can stir it, I tend to aggressively stir my wines a couple times during the primary. What you have there is just pulp and it will settle out as fermentation progresses...but you will have a thick layer on the bottom that you will carefully have to rack off of.

On closer inspection is the layer on the bottom your honey? Or is it pulp on top?

:cross:Yes that is the honey, then yeast then, pulp weird . It is not like beer at all. But hell it got alcohal in it.

I would like to start by saying thanks. I am not much of a wine mead maker. I took a long plastic spoon washed it in one step and stirred the heck out of it.

I was wondering if i need to top up my ferminters or just leave them be?

nothing bad will happen to them now in primary fermentation but I like to keep them topped up as much as possible. You just need to be carfull the first few days to make sure it does not foam out the airlock. If they seem calm enough then go ahead and top up to just below the neck.

Is it ok to degas your mead in the first week of fermintation

Shake the hell out of it till you reach the 1/3 sugar. Break then leave it alone.

4xtreme said:

Is it ok to degas your mead in the first week of fermintation

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It is going to kick out CO2 until it is finished fermenting. A mute point to try to degas so early. I never put an airlock on any wine/mead until 2/3 sugar break and stir twice a day until that point.

I think it is good to keep the must degased a bit in the early stages because that keeps the dissolved CO2 levels down. Dissolved CO2 is carbonic acid which if too much in an already acidic must may cause stress on the yeast or worse stall the yeast.

But just gentle stiring twice a day is fine to achieve this.

Thanks. I have had fun with this mead thing. I made a gallon of just pure mead. I thought it would be a good idea to add a extra pound and a half to it bring the total to four and a half pound in one gallon of mead. I found out after not take a ag reading. That the fermentation was crawling along. So i pulled out the hydrometer and found the potential alcohol was thirty percent. So off to the home brew store one more gallon jug,sweet mead yeast,water and now i have one more gallon of mead . Oh i did add some more honey as well. It is now happily fermenting . I would like to say thanks again for all the help.

O.k. I am back with another quetion . I would like to know how long I sould keep mead in the primary ferminter?

4xtreme said:

O.k. I am back with another quetion . I would like to know how long I sould keep mead in the primary ferminter?

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This can depending on you yeast and ingredients .....how ever I dnt let mine sit more then 25-30 days in primary....

4xtreme said:

Thanks. I have had fun with this mead thing. I made a gallon of just pure mead. I thought it would be a good idea to add a extra pound and a half to it bring the total to four and a half pound in one gallon of mead.... So i pulled out the hydrometer and found the potential alcohol was thirty percent.

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I do not see a mead or wine ferment ever hitting 30% potential ACV, no wine or mead yeast will reach that, nor a turbo yeast. Are you sure you read your hydrometer correctly, perhaps 30 proof which is 15 ACV?

Ok to saramc: I know that yeast cannot ferment higher than twenty eight percent. It also need to be done by cooling the fermentation and extracting the water . I could go on with this but if you read more you will see that I split it and got around fourteen to fifteen percent.


On to my question. I had to top up my fomenters because I lost so much to the spent yeast . I add more honey water to it .I know that it will start the fermentation up again. I just would like to know if anyone has done this and how it turned out .

4xtreme said:

Ok to saramc: I know that yeast cannot ferment higher than twenty eight percent. It also need to be done by cooling the fermentation and extracting the water . I could go on with this but if you read more you will see that I split it and got around fourteen to fifteen percent.

On to my question. I had to top up my fomenters because I lost so much to the spent yeast . I add more honey water to it .I know that it will start the fermentation up again. I just would like to know if anyone has done this and how it turned out .

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My bad 4extreme, I now follow what you did when you posted about buying more supplies. As far as topping up with more honey-water that is a good thing. If you are a stickler for keeping up with the SG then you would want to use the same SG that you started with, otherwise just figure out the points the volume you top up with will contribute. Or down the road, if you keep a few gallons of dry traditional mead on hand you can use that too.

Thank for the reply. I will keep you guys updated.