Ale yeast in mead

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Unferth

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I know you've tried it, but most recipes ive seen call for wine or champagne yeast. Except joes ancient mead of course, but thats a different story.

What kind of results did you get?

Too sweet? Did you age it?
 
I used Wyeast London ESB 1968 in a pumpkin mead about 5 1/2 months ago. I choose it because It was known to throw fruity notes along with having some butterscotch/bready type tastes that come along with a warmer 70*F+ fermentation temperatures. It was also choosen because it was a very High floculant yeast and using pumpkin puree I wanted the yeast to drag out all the sediment with it. I also wanted a lower ABV mead at around 9% and that was this yeasts limit. It also said it had a pretty low attentuation rate so I hoped for a sweet mead that was not quite a desert mead.

I think it went very well. The abundance of simple sugars in a mead verses a beer created a super enviroment for this yeast and in less than 72 hours it had dropped the ABV down to 1.01% and still looked strong. I had to cold crash quickly/stabilize to keep the residual sugars present & without topping 10% ABV. It finalized at 9.74% ABV. Ohhhh and the krausen! I never had a mead go this crazy, it was enough to need a blow off tube bad. I am spoiled on calm meads with little to no krausen.

I was actually disapointed in the fruity aspect of the mead but I think that was the recipe rather than the yeast. But man is it smooth now. The mouthfeel is great. A very smooth almost creamy feel without being thick at all. I would expect that feel with a mead at a higher gravity reading like 1.025 - 1.035 but this ended kind of on the dryer side of sweet and retained the good feel. I enjoyed this yeast and with a few tweeks to the recipe will probably try it again.
 
Very helpful. So I'm assuming since you had to crash it, it would have been no trouble phagocyte prime for carbonation had you wanted too?

Do you remember your OG?
 
My O.G. was 1.082. So I could have cold crashed/bottled and let it Carb up if I wanted now that I think of it.
 
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