Mold in Mead

Hey all, I'm new to this sort of thing and I'm encountering some unsightly mold floating on the top of my precious mead. It's blue and has white fuzzy bits all over it and I'm afraid that my mead is completely ruined

http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr...830467&Signature=6RptDWKyUU24OnBI76wvOMfMtyQ=


This is the best quality photo that I could conjure up and I was hoping you could give me some advice as to what to do if the mead is salvageable and if not, what to do to avoid this next time.

Thanks so much in advance!

While I'm no expert, I would say toss the batch, it's been contaminated. Were you using an airlock? If not, there's the problem.

1) Did you sterilize the carboy and all equiptment you used prior to making the mead?
2) Did you sterilize everything you put into the mead when racking it? (the siphon, ect).
3) YoungBerry asks a good question, did you use an airlock? Was it used properly?

I'd like to know how you got mold in there as well so that this never happens to me, Im sure we all feel the same. Im leaning towards number 2. If you didn't sterilize the siphon before you stuck it in the first carboy to rack to the second carboy, this could be your problem. Backtrack, really think about it, and let us know. Thanks for this post.

I've had one batch of mead that did that didn't take off. We never could figure out why but it was a dumper but the yeast just never took off. I'm sorry to say that yours looks like it is a dumper too.

If it smells or tastes like vinegar it is done for.
If it smells and tastes okay, you can gently rack underneath it and sulfite it well, and transfer the mead to a container with no headspace.

This is what you get when you leave that much headspace full of air.

Medsen

Really? I have quite a bit of headspace in one of my batches. I brewed in a 3 gal and racked into a 5 gal carboy. Bottling it tonight. Thanks for this!

Ok my mead is offically bottled, thanks to this post. I had a lot of headspace in mine, def did not want this to happen.

Sounds like this mead never took off, sat stagnant and therefore formed mold.
I suspect the problem was yeast and not head space.

So, OP...did this mead ever take off?

-cheers

So unfortunately for me the original recipe that I read said that you don't need to add any yeast to the mead and that the yeast will form itself after a little while. This obviously isn't the case. Oh well it's a learning experience I suppose, it just sucks that I have to let all that delicious honey go to waste.
I'm glad I found such a good website with recipes and support so that my next batch will go so much better!

No yeast...yup that will do it. Sorry about your wasted honey brotha, there are a lot of easy recipes on this site. And on Gotmead.com as well. Good luck on your next batch and happy brewing!

Your recipe was for a 'wild yeast' mead...unfortunately when you let luck determine your fermentation bug, you have a 50/50 chance of getting a bad bug that ruins the batch vs. some helpful wild yeast spore.

A cool experiment...if you're willing to lose the entire batch.