mead not bubbling

Alright guys I'm new to wine making so bare with me i used a recipe out of a book i got to make mead and its been in the demijohn now since the 13/10/12 and there is no sign of it bubbling should i add more yeast or leave it and see if it dose in the book it says it can take up to 3 month for it to ferment I'm just a bit puzzled

Problem being, that your phot doesn't show the ingredients list, so hard to tell.

Perhaps if you posted the ingredients, it might give us a clue.......

Plus, the bit that I can follow is using very old technique. There's no reason to boil, or even heat the honey. Some of the archaic recipes mention this, but it was probably the ignorance of the age or more about access to unclean water and more about sanitising that, than the honey. If you get "good" (relative, most supermarket ****e isn't good, it's been processed for eating and will have been heated and filtered to hell and back - and yes, that does include branded stuff like "Gales" or "Rowse", though at least Rowse manage to keep some of the difference in the flavour, but you probably need a mortgage to afford enough for a decent batch) honey, then heating it drives off a lot of the aromatics and some of the more subtle flavours.

So if you can find a source of "raw" honey, that's the stuff to go for, though if it comes from a local bee keeper, it will have been messed with less than most.......

Ingredients are 500g honey 4.5 liters of water 1 orange sliced 1 teaspoon of wine yeast 1 teaspoon of yeast nutrient 1 stick of cinnamon 2 cloves pinch of ground nutmeg pinch of ground allspice pinch of ginger and 30 raisins

Hi I made 2 batches of Honey Mead using 6 squeezy bottles of Rowse with which I dissolved in 2 quarts of water....then I poured it into my sterilised Demijohn which was already half filled with cold water....I had a sink filled with cold water to bring the temp down of the hot honey solution....I then give it a good shake.
I added 1 teaspoon of Yeast nutrient....I then give it another shake and finally added the yeast....rubber bung and fitted the airlock with which I started to get fermentation within a matter of hours....if you follow this method you will get excellent results as me and my friend was enjoying my Honey Mead last night which he thoroughly enjoyed due to the nice sweet taste....it is head strong but a lovely wine...with which I will continue to make due to how good this turned out.
I would try giving it a shake or perhaps adding a yeast pitcher and see if that does anything....but my recipe for my Honey Mead works a treat without any problems!

I've just made a yeast starter so il see how it goes now

The ingredients you mention, read rather like Joes Ancient Orange/JAOM recipe, but with only 500g of honey, it will make for a very dry, low alcohol mead.

Normally JAO calls 3.5lb of.honey made up to a gallon, plus it uses bread yeast.

Now I'd suggest your likely scenario will be, that using wine yeast, it will ferment dry, which puts the focus of the flavour on the bitterness that will come from the orange pith.

The principle behind JAO, is that the use of bread yeast means it poops out at a lower alcohol level, leaving residual sugars, which are balanced by the bitterness of the pith, but leaves enough taste from the honey, orange and spices for a sweet, enjoyable spiced taste.

If the 500g figure is correct, then you can increase it to 1.6 kg, let the wine yeast do its thing, then once its finished the ferment (follow the JAO instructions as a guide right down to letting the fruit sink before racking), then stabilise with campden tablet and sorbate, then back sweeten with honey (to taste, but enough to cover the bitterness).

Dry JAO type recipes aren't usually good (that's not to say all dry meads are like this) its because of the way it works out with whole orange. Also you might think of changing the fruit.......the only citrus one I've made that was ok (apart from using orange) was lemon. Lime was over powering, grapefruit had too much bitterness and kumquat wasn't fruity enough.

S'up to you, its your mead......

No bubbling isn't a sign of no fermentation, some yeast strains take off like a bat outa hell (71b narbonne) and some will lag for several days before any activity (wyeast 3787). When you first pitch yeast it doesnt start fermenting right away, it goes through an uptake phase of consuming nutrients, building cell walls and reproducing more yeast to get ready for the fermentation phase. Generally you wont see any activity during this stage. The key is too pitch the right amount of healthy yeast for the gravity you have. You want around 1 million cells for every milimeter of wort or must.

Thanks guys I will see what happens

Right it's been a few weeks now and still no sign of bubbling I did pitch a starter an nothing but all the fruit pieces are starting to sink and it's coming clear so I don't no If I should tip it away and start again or leave it anymore ideas cheers

I don't have the best expierence but by what you have written , 500 g honey to 4.5 L water should have an approx: SG of 1.035 (according to -calculaters) So i bet we are going to see the best answer of being to take a hydrometer reading and see where your gravity is at. In the nearly 36 days since its been pitched you should of seen a considerable drop in gravity.

Good luck

I agree with shhh. Take a gravity reading. Since it is clearing the gravity should have dropped. I would not be surprised if it is below 1.00 and the fermentation happens without you noticing obvious signs. Meads are not like wines and beers. Some times the fermentation is really subtle. If you can not do a gravity reading, give it a taste. Is it super sweet with no alcohol taste? That can give you a rough measure as to if fermentation happened.

Absolute worst case scenario is that there really is no signs of any fermentation and you have a sweet syrup. Then do this: make a real JAOM with 3.5# of honey, no yeast nutrients, bread yeast and follow the original JAOM instructions to the letter. That will ferment and at about the day 10-15 mark when fermentation is in full swing blend these two together. That will ferment for sure. 3-4 months later you can bottle and a couple months from there you will have a nice spiced orange mead.

Hey madgaz. My first batch ever was 1.1Kg of honey to 3 liters of water and it came out very dry. I had to backsweeten it in the end. Also, the larger the batch, the longer it takes for it to start "bubbling". In a 5L batch, you'll see bubbling after 1 hour. In a 10L batch, it might take 3 hours. I just made a 20L batch last week and it took about 8 hours for the bubbles to start showing. Now they're going non-stop in insane amounts. A bit scary really.

In a batch like yours, the bubbles should start coming in 1 to 2 hours.
Did you shake everything well to make sure it was well oxygenated at the start?
Did you check for possible leaks? Maybe something in your setup is not air-tight?

Right I will check the reading and see what dose it need to be about