Wedding Mead - Input Appreciated

I'm getting married at the end of the year and we just decided to give out little bottles of mead to the guests as one of the guest-present things (sorry for the lack of terminology, all this is new to me!). So I know I'm waaaay late getting started. Oops. And I've made a few meads but never really done anything by the book, it's always been, well I've got some honey and some ale yeast, lets throw them together and see what happens. I want to do this one right, and with the short 3.5-4 months I have, I need it to be pretty quick.

I've already got 12 lbs. of orange-blossom honey and 2 packs of d-47 on the way. I have DAP and fermaid-k. I don't have any go-ferm. I was planning on just doing a straight orange blossom honey mead with no other honeys or flavorants (unless you think it needs some wine tannins or acid or something, I have no idea). So my questions are as follows:

1. How big should my batch be? I only have 12 lbs of honey so if I make 5 gallons it might be a little weak, right? But won't it age quicker? I think I'll need at least 3 gallons in order to get bottles to everyone. They'll probably be smaller than 12 oz. decorative bottles.

2. Should I pitch one or two packs of the d-47, and is go-ferm necessary or will rehydrating in water alone work fine?

3. I'll be staggering nutrient additions according to the sticky unless someone has a better plan to speed this up. I'm not trying to have it drinkable by the wedding, just cleared and bottled. I'll let everyone know it will only get better the longer they age it. Hopefully I'll have several bottles to keep and age for anniversaries as well!

I guess that's it for questions now, thanks for taking the time to help out! I want to ask about water profile target but that might be taking it too far.

I would do 2 packets of yeast, expect it to dry out with so little honey. I would add atleast 6 more pounds of honey if you are looking for a sweet mead. Ofcourse a dry champaign mead is good too. With the clearing, Primary should last 1-2 weeks. Then rack to the secondary, then rack each month. I have heard some using filters to clear it quicker. I think a dose of Sparkloid and cold crashing would be good some time 1 month before bottling it. Cold crashing is bringing the temp of it down to under the yeast temp tolorance upon which is settles and then most yeast sink to the bottom. Sparkloid is also a good clearing agent, How you use it is you mix up the sparkloid hot and rack onto it. Then it should clear fairly quickly. For speed sake, you can use the sparkloid and then wait 2 weeks and try it again. Now this should age a year before it is aged properly and drinkable. So your 1 year aniversiery should be fine.

For a 5 gallon batch You can get 42-48 22 oz bottles. That is the regular beer size. The fun is in labling it too. You can photoshop up a lable and buy at your local brew store gummy paper that you can send through the printer. Cut, stick on. Done.

Con grats by the way.

a day before bottling hit is up with a dose of potasium sorbate to stop fermentation so that you don't have bottle bombs for your guests.

i did a simple cyser and it was done in about 3 months, maybe less

i used 15 lbs of clover honey in 7 gallons of water, yeast food, did a short boil, didn't skim protiens off the top. pitched 118 champ. yeast. after 1 week added 10lbs of cored peeled pasturized and pureed apples, left for 3 weeks on fruit, transfered to carboy, let sit for 1 and a half months and we never bottled this one, i put it in a bottling bucket with a spigot and we drank it just like that from the fridge. it was great

Thanks for the help guys! By the way, although I don't make it in here to the mead forum often, I brew beer a couple times a month, so I know all about cold crashing, racking, bottling and all that. I'm mainly interested in the subtle differences peculiar to mead-making. And matrix, do you mean 12 oz bottles? There's no way in hell you can get 42-48 22-ouncers from five gallons!

12 lbs of honey will make a somewhat dry mead. A medium show mead has ~12.5-14 lbs of honey; you are just a little under that. No problem there.

Go-ferm really just increases the number of viable yeast cells that make it out ok from dehydration. My first mead didn't use that or staggered nutrients and it turned out delicious!

If you do the staggered nutrients and just do a straight up simple mead, it will almost certainly be cleared and ready to bottle before then. I started one in April and it has been clear for about a month now I think.

I believe that using the two packets of yeast won't make that much of a different. It may decrease the time it takes for something to into "violent" ferementation as less cells are needed to replicate. So I don't see how using two packets will negatively effect flavour.

You could always add a little note on the bottle asking people to open it on your one year anniversary to help you celebrate.

This will ensure a pleasant mead experience for all.

i almost forgot, i also added 1lb of dark german candi sugar to the cyser at about week 3. this stuff had great flavor, loads of apples, nice sweet mead. it was my best so far

SpaceInvadingMonkeys said:

12 lbs of honey will make a somewhat dry mead. A medium show mead has ~12.5-14 lbs of honey; you are just a little under that. No problem there.

Go-ferm really just increases the number of viable yeast cells that make it out ok from dehydration. My first mead didn't use that or staggered nutrients and it turned out delicious!

If you do the staggered nutrients and just do a straight up simple mead, it will almost certainly be cleared and ready to bottle before then. I started one in April and it has been clear for about a month now I think.

I believe that using the two packets of yeast won't make that much of a different. It may decrease the time it takes for something to into "violent" ferementation as less cells are needed to replicate. So I don't see how using two packets will negatively effect flavour.

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Thanks for the advice. I could always lower the volume to 4 gallons or so to get it into the show mead range if that was thought to be better. I think an off-dry mead would be best for this one. Not so dry as to put some people off, but also not so sweet as to be candy-like or dessert-y. What kind of OG should I aim for to get an off-dry mead with d-47?

KingBrianI said:

Thanks for the help guys! By the way, although I don't make it in here to the mead forum often, I brew beer a couple times a month, so I know all about cold crashing, racking, bottling and all that. I'm mainly interested in the subtle differences peculiar to mead-making. And matrix, do you mean 12 oz bottles? There's no way in hell you can get 42-48 22-ouncers from five gallons!

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Sorry, Typo. Yes, 12 oz bottles.

Alright, this mead stalled a few times and I finally got it moving again but it's only down to 1.028 right now(OG was 1.101). I tasted it and it tastes great, if a little boozy and the sweetness wasn't at all cloying. So I need to get it cleared up and prevent bottle bombs a nd I've only got about a week. I know I'm pushing it. I was thinking about racking it to another carboy on top of some campden tablets (how many? volume is about 4 gallons) and some gelatin (unless some other clarifier is suggested), then putting it in the chest freezer to crash cool. Would this plan work? Thanks everyone for any help!

If you're planning on consuming it soon, I wouldn't use campden tablets. I use them when I bottle wines, but the wines aren't consumed for at least 6 months to a year. If you're drinking the mead soon, you don't want it to taste of sulfur.

I never rushed a mead before, so I don't have much advice beyond racking it off the yeast when it's cold, and maybe rack again to get rid of much of the yeast. It does sounds like you'd be handing out bottle bombs, though, unfortunately.

Is there any way to kill the yeast without it tasting sulfury? The card we're attaching to the bottles will make it clear that it will get better with age, though I'm sure some people won't wait. How much campden is recommended? I'd rather hand out sulfury mead than bottle bombs though. Is gelatin an okay clarifier or would something like isinglass be better?

Campden doesn't kill yeast- it kills other microbes and bacteria and works as an antioxidant and preservative. Sorbate is often used to prehibit refermentation, but it doesn't kill yeast either. And it has a definite taste that many would find unpleasant in too large a dose.

I've never had any luck with stopping an ongoing fermentation, but I know that the cider forum has a member who has done it with cider by cold crashing and racking off of the yeast. That would definitely be worth a read, to see if it's something that would work for you.

save the mead. give it to special guest as 1 yr anniversary approachs. hand deliver or other shipping methods.

damn, now we've got to scramble to figure out gifts. those bottles of mead would have been perfect with mead being the traditional drink of wedding celebrations and all. we were going to bottle in the little 187 ml clear bottles, dip the top in wax and attach a little card around the neck with each persons name to let them know where to sit at the reception. the inside of the card was going to have a brief history of mead and it's importance for weddings, as well as talk about the california orange blossom honey used in it (the wedding will be in so. cal) and that it was handmade and all that. don't think i'll be able to top that.

Don't worry - you can still make this work. Since you're satisfied with the residual sweetness that it has at the moment, you can coax your yeast into hibernation (where most of the cells will fall out of suspension) by "cold crashing" the brew. Get hold of a refrigerator that has enough room to hold your fermenter, set the temperature down low - to around 36F or so, just above the freezing point of water, and put your carboy in there for a week or so. That should slow fermentation to a crawl if not completely stop it. Then rack the clear mead off of the lees, and treat it with sulfite and sorbate.

As was noted earlier, sulfite won't kill healthy yeast cells, but it will make cells that have cold crashed even less likely to re-start fermentation. You will need the sorbate to complete your job, since it will prevent any of those cells still remaining in the mead from ever reproducing.

Get a way to measure the pH of your mead, and add enough metabisulfite to raise the free sulfite level up to 50 to 75 ppm. That is below the sensory threshold for everyone on the planet, save those few who are really allergic to sulfites. Then dose it with sorbate per the supplier's directions (I don't off-hand remember how much sorbate is required to inhibit yeast - I don't make sweet or semi-sweet meads very often any more). Then you can bottle, present the bottles, and your guests can drink them later that evening with no ill effect. But you may want to suggest that they hold onto them for 6 mos or longer, since the flavor will improve dramatically with a little aging!

This sounds like a job for... (*trumpet blows*) pasteurization!!!

I have successfully pasteurized sodas at home. Your mead will not be aged properly, but you'll be able to prevent bombs, and the flavor should still age to maturity without the yeast in there. just make sure it has enough secondary time for them to do some cleaning before you begin the genocide.

I have a thread with my experiments here.

As you can see in the OP, there are some dangerous results possible if you aren't careful and take some precautions.

Think about it, maybe it will help you out.

wayneb said:

Don't worry - you can still make this work. Since you're satisfied with the residual sweetness that it has at the moment, you can coax your yeast into hibernation (where most of the cells will fall out of suspension) by "cold crashing" the brew. Get hold of a refrigerator that has enough room to hold your fermenter, set the temperature down low - to around 36F or so, just above the freezing point of water, and put your carboy in there for a week or so. That should slow fermentation to a crawl if not completely stop it. Then rack the clear mead off of the lees, and treat it with sulfite and sorbate.

As was noted earlier, sulfite won't kill healthy yeast cells, but it will make cells that have cold crashed even less likely to re-start fermentation. You will need the sorbate to complete your job, since it will prevent any of those cells still remaining in the mead from ever reproducing.

Get a way to measure the pH of your mead, and add enough metabisulfite to raise the free sulfite level up to 50 to 75 ppm. That is below the sensory threshold for everyone on the planet, save those few who are really allergic to sulfites. Then dose it with sorbate per the supplier's directions (I don't off-hand remember how much sorbate is required to inhibit yeast - I don't make sweet or semi-sweet meads very often any more). Then you can bottle, present the bottles, and your guests can drink them later that evening with no ill effect. But you may want to suggest that they hold onto them for 6 mos or longer, since the flavor will improve dramatically with a little aging!

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Awesome, I'm going to try this since I can't think of anything else to use for gifts that would work as well as the mead. What pH do I aim for so I know the free sulfite level is 50-75 ppm? Thanks for the help!

PintOfBitter said:

This sounds like a job for... (*trumpet blows*) pasteurization!!!

I have successfully pasteurized sodas at home. Your mead will not be aged properly, but you'll be able to prevent bombs, and the flavor should still age to maturity without the yeast in there. just make sure it has enough secondary time for them to do some cleaning before you begin the genocide.

I have a thread with my experiments here.

As you can see in the OP, there are some dangerous results possible if you aren't careful and take some precautions.

Think about it, maybe it will help you out.

Click to expand...

I thought about pasteurization but I'd be worried about the flavor/aroma degrading as well as the inherent danger of heating closed bottles!

My preference is always to shy away from preservatives, so I prefer the pasteurization option. I'm sure you'd have good results with either approach.

I will mention, though, that all my pasteurization has been done on carbonated bottles. It sounds like you're making a still mead, so the safety of the process would be higher. All you really need is an accurate thermometer. I like the pressure canner approach because it creates a solid barrier between me and the bottles. As long as you don't allow the bottles to heat past the pasteurization temp, everything is fine.

I had a JAOM that just refused to clear even after two other batches the same age were perfectly clear. The LHBS recommended Super-Kleer. It was noticeably clearer within a couple of hours and was ready to bottle within 48 hours. It's a shellfish product, so be aware of that if you have people with shellfish allergies.

You should indicate on the bottles to drink them on your one year anniversary to celebrate a year of marriage. that gives it enough time in the bottle

Regarding the relationship between free sulfite and pH, there is an online calculator that can get you "close enough for government work" with regard to dosing. Check this out:
http://www.winemakermag.com/guide/sulfite

Meads can be modeled the same way as white wines, so choose white from the drop down, then enter your current pH, enter your desired free sulfite level (ppm is the same as mg/l, BTW), enter the number of liters in your batch, assume that you have negligible sulfite content to begin with so the current level stays at 0, and run the calculator.

While it isn't as accurate as actually measuring sulfite level with a test kit, this will get you where you need to be at least to the first order.

And as far as pasteurization of meads, while I have tried some in the past, I find that a pasteurized mead compares to one not subject to that heat in the same way that pasteurized apple juice compares to fresh-pressed. There is a "cooked" flavor in the result that I just don't like. Of course this is all subject to taste, and you may not find that to be objectionable. But if you like the way that it tastes now, I would suggest the sulfite and sorbate after cold-crashing approach over the pasteurization technique.

Wayne, thank you SO MUCH for the help!! That calculator will work perfectly.

Great calculator! Make sure you let us all know how this works out Brian. It's a great idea, and I'd love to see it be a momento that others will appreciate.