Need expert oppinions

Recently racked my mead, while racking I didn't unfortunately have time to keep a sample, although I did siphon a little off the bottom without yeast, and tried it. It tastes fine except that it tastes watered down. I was wondering if the secondary ferment will help rectify that, but it seems as though the fermentation has pretty much stopped. There is nowhere near the pressure inside the carboy that there was in the ferment bucket. What are your thoughts? More honey and yeast and a little nutrient or? I do have a heat belt on the mead.

What was the original recipie? You can stabalize with potasium Sorbate and then back sweeten to taste. This is basically mixing in the procribed amount, usually 2 1/2 teaspoons for 5 gallons, though it should have dosage on the container. Then you let it rest for a day. This stops all fermentation as a just in case. Then you mix in more honey. It is best to take a measured sample of the mead and then add honey to is slowly to get the sweetness you want. Then take a little extra water to melt the honey in on your stove top and then mix in once it is fluid in the proportions that you like.

It's simple really. Unless it get's very cold where you have it then the heat belt is not neccessary. anything at around 64-70 will do.

But let me know the recipie you used and your processes so we can see where you are at. Depending on the start OG and the current FG you might want to add honey and repitch yeast due to low alcohol content. But hard to tell.

Berserk Mead

Recipe Ingredients:
12 l Water
6 l Honey
1 dl Dried Rosehips
1/2 dl cloves
1 packet yeast

Actual Ingredients:
3.95 gal Fred Meyer spring water
6 lbs Barleans Special Honey: "Neighborhood" 1195-y-2
2 oz The Herb Shoppe Rose hips
1/2 oz The Herb Shoppe Whole Cloves
65 g Rose Hips/Cloves food processed
1 Packet Red Star yeast: "Côte des Blancs" BB OCT 2012 8023
2 tsp Brewcraft yeast nutrients
Batch:9210
Reorder Code:670-A-1

6# of honey in what appears to be about a 4.5 gallon batch is...a hydromel. very light, gonna probably end up watery.

I'd consider either adding a bunch of honey and restart fermentation, or maybe some sort of fruit to give it some extra "umph!"

Check out hightest's mead calculator xls, but I'm guessing this thing is at or barely above beer strength, which is why it tastes kind of watery.

So another packet of yeast, and more honey/fruit?

Ok, so 6 pounds of honey for almost 4 gal. Usually a dry mead is 3 pounds per gallon. By contrast a sweet desert mead is at the high end 5 pounds of honey per gal. What you have here is 1 1/2 pounds per gallon. I would up the honey by another 10 pounds and you should end up with a medium sweet mead in the 5 gal range. Take another packet of yeast and hydrate it and pitch it in. 1 teaspoon of yeast energizer wouldn't hurt. Skip the potasium sorbate because with such little honey it doesn't matter.

Now if you add fruit, I would wait until the primary fermentation is complete and you rack it onto the fruit and off of the spices you have listed. This way you will get good flavor out of the fruit. Me personally, I like adding the fruit in the form of fruit juice. Just puree the fruit, or squeeze in the case of oranges, and then run through a strainer twice. Then just add the juice. Again, After the primary fermentation.

Primary fermentation is when the bubbling slows way down to maybe a bubble a couple of minutes. This is when the majority of the fermentation is done and you rack into another container leaving the lees.

When you rack to a secondary or the bottling bucket just add a couple ounces of Malto Dextrine to add body.

Another option is to serve it warm. Heat some water and warm the bottles in it before serving to get it up to temp. That's whaat I'm doing currently. Just make sure it's under 170 degrees so you don't boil off the ethanol. Just wish I had some star anise to add...

Over the years I've tried to help people save their first batch of mead, usually to little success. The best thing is to learn from what you did and if you wish to change it, do so in the future. Keep good notes.

After brewing meads for about 15 years now, I've found that a light/dry mead is about 10-12 pounds of honey for 5 gallons, a semi-sweet would be 15-18 pounds of honey for 5 gallons and a sweet would be about 20 pounds of honey for 5 gallons.

And there are a lot of variations on that, depending on what yeast you use, I like the White Labs Sweet Mead yeast for my semi-sweets.

Anyway, wish you many good meads in the future.

~r~