Racked, backsweetened and ferm stalled

Heya everyone,

I wanted to go into homebrewing for a while but finally decided to give it a go, and maybe in an unorthodox way because the thing that always fascinated me was mead!

So my first 1gal batch was interesting, it transpires that I added too little honey for the yeast I used (champagne) and it turned bone dry with not any significant flavour so I kept a bottle and binned the rest.

My second batch though I put some more effort in, it is a version of JAOM with some extra christmassy spices (cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, allspice and ginger). So after pitching and leaving to ferment for 1 month I decided to rack it to secondary. After tasting some I felt that it was too harsh tasting - far too much tannin and taste of orange but otherwise still some residual sweetness and quite powerful alcohol content (used 1.5kg of honey for 1gal - about 3.3lbs). So I decided to add an extra 0.5lb of honey which I had from when I first prepared it but now there is no airlock activity after ~6hours. Should I leave it in secondary for lets say another month and then rerack and taste, do you think it will remain too sweet or it will get messed up? Should I expect the tannin taste of the orange to subside?
I really don't want to bin that one because the initial taste after just 1 month made me think that it will be terrific when aged and the flavours can come out. Plus the honey itself cost quite a bit!

Thanks in advance!

I don't know about the extra spices, but JAO will finish sweet. It's probably done and reached the alcohol tolerance of the yeast. I wouldn't have added the extra honey, but the only thing left to do now is wait. The couple batches of JAO that I've made were drinkable after 4 months, but the longer you age it, the better it gets. Same thing with your first batch. I bet if you had bottled it and waited a year or two, it would have been much better.

Hi there!
My first batch (a traditional mead) tasted like arse when it came out of primary, and even at bottling (about 3 months in) was almost undrinkable. Opened one another month later and it had completely changed, the honey was starting to come back through. I don't think you should have binned the first lot, a bit of back sweetening may have been enough to give it back some life.

As for the JOAM, 1 month in is VERY young, its only just done fermenting and is always going to taste harsh. 3.3lb of honey by my googling looks like 13% if it takes it to dry just from the honey. Depending on yeast may well be at it's alcohol tollerence, if it is, then the yeast won't ferment any more.
If it has gone completely dry 0.5lb of honey will bring it back to a gravity of about 1.02, which sounds like a amount to me. But you should probably get a hydrometer, that way you can find out exactly how sweet it is and whether or not it's still fermenting.

I'm fairly new at this myself, and can't help but keep trying to fix things, but try to resist and most of all don't panic just because something doesn't taste how you want or expect! Most people here will tell you to wait at least 6 months before drinking your mead as it can take a long time to age properly.

Plus, as Joe points out in the instructions, you don't touch it until the fruits dropped and you certainly don't rack it etc.....

You'll find that because with a recipe like JAO, where the honey isn't actually the main flavour (that'd be the orange and spices), that just cheapo supermarket honey will do the job and produce an acceptable brew.

As for the ageing thing ? Well, you'll notice, with a little searching, that 6 months ageing time is nothing. I've got a couple of books that mention stuff like meads continuing to improve for about 7 to 8 YEARS.

So, don't be disheartened by apparent failures (like your dry batch) because with that one, for example, dry ? Yes, but failed ? probably not. You could have back sweetened it, after sulphiting, stabilising, etc. Plus even if the back sweetening honey did cause a haze (as is sometimes the case), you can either leave it alone or hit it with finings.

Either way, once it's in glass (bottles or in bulk) with minimal air space, it would have been fine to leave it ageing away.

As for expensive honey ? by current prices, I feel the "E" word only really applies from about £4 per pound - and the only one that seems to qualify is Scottish Heather honey........

Ok the title here confused me a bit. So what you did was sweeten the mead but not back sweeten. Here's the difference:

The process to sweeten a mead is to first Stabalize it AND THEN add honey.

What Stabalizing is: You make the yeast stop or otherwise nutralize it's ability to reproduce. This makes it so that the yeast has completed it's job and does not continue to ferment, thus it doesn't eat up more of your sugar.

Then after Stablization backsweetening is just mixing in more honey.

What my guess is that in adding the honey to sweeten it up this thickened the liquid to the point of the yeast not being able to do it's job. My guess is that the solution hasn't de-gassed and it's simply too thick for the yeast to do it's job. I recomend racking it to get a bit more oxygen in it if you wish fermentation to start. The other possiblity is that the honey addition has thrown off the pH and the yeast can't work due to that.

By what you say through, you don't WANT more fermentation as you wish it to be sweeter. Fermentation will take away the sweeteness. So my recomendation to you is to rack it on to a capmton tablet and a little potasium sorbate to stop the fermentation. Then once racked, put the air lock on it and wait for it to clear. Then rack and bulk age for at least 6 months. Or if you don't wish to bulk age, bottle and put away for 6 months, I would go a year of aging and not just 6 months.

I hope it turns out well.

Thanks for the replies folks, a lot of interesting information.

A few quick answers: Indeed I know from reading that it is too young, but I had to have a sip, I have been looking at the carboy every day and wondering how its doing, how could I not!
Thanks for clarifying the difference between backsweetening.
Regarding the honey, it cost me 20 quid for 2kg, not something I'd want to put down the sink unless it got infected.

The happy thing was that coming back from work today I had a look and the fermentation picked up, sluggish to be sure but there is airlock activity so I'm happy