Fermentation Charts

After being resident on the HBT forum for a few months, I've often seen questions that relate to the general notion of fermentation rate - Is it ready now", "how long does this take", etc...

In an effort to offer some tangible insight, I added a few charts to my Mead FAQ sticky that depict the fermentation rates of 4 different group brews I've managed over the past few years.

Hopefully, this information will provide the newer mead makers with some sense of typical mead fermentation times. In some instances, they also show where something happened to certain individual meads, which adversely affected the fermentation time, or the final product.

Should there be any questions related to these charts (how to read, what something means, etc.), please ask them in this topic rather than in the "sticky" - thank you.

Sweet. Thanks, this should come in handy.

I'm looking at the 2007 Traditional Mead chart... Does each line represent a different brewers batch? Did you not hit your Target FG, or is the data incomplete? I'm just making sure I understand what I'm looking at.

I'm glad you asked...

Yes, each line represents a different brewer, and as you observed, my batch did not reach the TG. However, there was a good reason why.

The group brew recipe was to make a must whose OG was 1.124, with TG between 1.005-1.010. Because I've made so many traditional meads, I intentionally used more honey just to see if I might get the yeast to finish before the TG using a yeast not normally used for mead (58W3) - I wanted some baseline data for this yeast.

My OG was 1.135 and the FG was 1.024 (14 points above the target). Had I used the actual recipe proportions my OG would have been 1.124 and the FG should have been lower by the difference in OGs (11 points) - or 1.013 (fairly close to the target)...

You also may have noticed that the 5 brewers whose OG was ~1.130 all finished above the TG. In addition, 5 types of yeast were used (R-HST, R2, D47, 58W3, & 71B)

Hightest,

Thanks, it was a nice addition to everything else in your FAQ. On the 2006 Riesling Pyment, what did you introduce on the eigth day and also you include a target FG and also a 60 day target. Would you please explain.

thanks
ty

travestyofnature said:

Hightest,

Thanks, it was a nice addition to everything else in your FAQ. On the 2006 Riesling Pyment, what did you introduce on the eigth day and also you include a target FG and also a 60 day target. Would you please explain.

thanks
ty

Click to expand...

You're welcome, and so far the questions being asked are very good - it shows an "attention to detail"

The first thing I should note is these charts start on "Day 0" - the date of yeast pitiching. That would mean that the SG increase you saw was actually the 7th day of fermentation.

As to your question. This recipe was more complex than most as it included the addtion of another 1 lb of honey on day 7 (explaining the increase in SG), the addition of ~½ gallon of freeze concentrated Riesling juice on day 60, and then was allowed to rest on the primary lees for an extended period (up to 12 months).

The reason these targets were established was that the originator of the recipe did not keep any brew notes, and there was was some question in my mind as to the legitimacy of some of the recipe's gravities & volumes. So before I made it (and asking others to make it), I reconstructed the recipe from the author's recollections, and mathematical models to build confidence that it would work and fit into standard carboy sizes.

While making the pyment, I privately charted my actual recipe's performance against the estimated recipe, and was quite pleased at how closely they aligned. If there's any interest in seeing that chart. I can add it to the FAQ.

Did I answer all your questions?

hightest said:

While making the pyment, I privately charted my actual recipe's performance against the estimated recipe, and was quite pleased at how closely they aligned. If there's any interest in seeing that chart. I can add it to the FAQ.

Did I answer all your questions?

Click to expand...

Perfectly, and I would like to see that charted recipie performance as well if it isn't too much to ask.
thanks
ty

Not a problem. The estimate comparison chart has been added to the FAQ...