First Mead Stuck?

25 brix (~1.1.06) and pithced 2 D-47s and fed them.

SNA per the sticky, 23 brix at 36 hours and 18 brix ~1.054 at 6 days.

At day 11 now and down at 15 ~1.040. Was thinking I'd be racking soon.

Been at 62 degrees throughout. Should raise the temp? Feed them more? got plenty of both used in the SNA.

If you provide the complete details of your recipe and process, you'll probably get better answers. Including details about yeast rehydration, nutrients, pH, etc. will help.

It doesn't sound like it is stuck - slow, but not stuck. Dropping 14 gravity points over 5 days isn't terrible, and the cool temperature may be a big factor, but that isn't a bad thing. Slow cool fermentation with a mead often produces a better result in my opinion.

Recipe was 15 pounds of honey. And two packs od D-47. LoL. That was contrite. Sorry.


I followed Hightest's rehyrdation, basic mead, and SNA to the letter. The rehyrdation was a little long (40mins) so i did add a teaspon of sugar to it at 30 mins as the must was cooling.

Rehydrate the 10g of dry yeast using GO-Ferm in the rehydration water [167 ml water & 12g Go-Ferm].

SNA:
At inoculation - 4.5g Superfood (or Fermaid-K) & 4.5g DAP
- At Active Fermentation - 2.8g Superfood (or Fermaid-K) & 2.8g DAP
- Just before Fermentation Mid-point - 1.8g Superfood (or Fermaid-K) & 1.8g DAP

I have Fermaid-K and DAP still on hand.

3 Gallons of water in primary. 2 gallons to 105, dissolved honey, dumped in (i think, i did follow his instruction whatever they were)

I plan on adding Saffron and grains of parasidse when I rack.

pH I don't know. I will get the strips next time I make a mead. Thank you for your response.

The pH could be a factor and it is worth checking, though D47 is usually very tolerant of low pH in my experience. If the pH is okay, I'd just keep swirling the fermenter each day to help keep the active yeast up in the suspension so they can get to the sugars faster. As long as it keeps dropping, just waiting and watching is probably the best thing to do. Adding 0.5 - 1 gram per gallon of yeast hulls (ghosts) can be beneficial for sluggish fermentation by binding yeast toxins (and perhaps providing some survival factors) and that might be worth doing.

Medsen

Thanks MedsenFey. Googling pH and mead now and landing back on HBT. LOL.

I don't plan on drinking this until XMAS next year, so I'm in no rush, just had hoped to have it out of a primary for a Widmer Milk Stout I want to brew this weekend.

I would suspect that the same rule holds true for mead as for most beers...don't rack to secondary until fermentation is done?

I would suspect that the same rule holds true for mead as for most beers...don't rack to secondary until fermentation is done?

Click to expand...

That or add fresh yeast after racking.

Actually adding fresh yeast doesn't work very well. The alcohol level in most meads is higher than for beers and it is very difficult for fresh yeast to start functioning in that high-alcohol environment. This is why pitching new yeast into stuck fermentations often fails, and that's especially true once the alcohol level gets up to around 10% ABV. For those kind of restarts, you wind up needing to use yeast capable of getting started in harsh alcohol environments and those tend to be the usual restart candidates like Uvaferm 43, EC-1118, QA23, and the like (which usually have a high ABV tolerance). Even with using these yeast, acclimating them to the must improves the chances of their success.

You are better off letting the current yeast finish the job if possible, so I wouldn't rack as that tends to leave a lot of active yeast behind. Patience is the most difficult ingredient to find for meadmaking.

Medsen