Low temperature primary

I've read quite a few posts where people are concerned about wintertime wine and mead making. Most of the dry yeasts I use actually do quite well at lower temperatures. Here's a photo of two meads, a traditional Blackberry Blossom Mead made with K!V 1116 (SG 1.120) on the left and a coffee mead (SG 1.112) made with 71B 1122 on the right. The meads are 36 hours after pitching and are in my winemaking room in the basement with an ambient temperature of 62F.

I have been having similar results @62 degrees in my basement with the same yeast strains plus D47 and US-05 (for cider). For clearing I can put the carboys against the wall where it is 58 degrees.

Summer, do you ferment them open like that or did you just uncover them for the photo?

Good luck aerating that coffee mead.

What type of coffee, and how much per gallon did you use? Did you cold steep it? I'm wanting to make a coffee mead maybe this year, but it's way down the list, and so I've slowly been trying to figure out what type of bean to use. So far I've crossed Kenya off of the possibilities.

These were uncovered for the photo. I lightly cover my primaries to keep out dust, fruit flies, etc and, yes the coffee mead primary is far too full. You can see where it's actually overflowed a bit. I plan to remove some of the liquid.

I used one pound per gallon of whole beans that I ground just prior to a 24-hour cold brew. Aside from about a half gallon of warm tap water to help dissolve the honey, this is straight coffee.

summersolstice said:

I used one pound per gallon of whole beans that I ground just prior to a 24-hour cold brew. Aside from about a half gallon of warm tap water to help dissolve the honey, this is straight coffee.

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Wow! Sounds delicious! Breakfast mead. Mmmmmm.