Sound the trumpet

One month ago I racked my peach melomel, it had just turned six months old. I drank the sample i drew from it, it was allready awesome tasting. Tonight I was down checking on a wine I had just started and decided to look at the melomel and see how it was doing, I quickly noticed the airlock had some melomel in it, come to find out I had topped off to much and the stopper was sitting in the melomel. So I proceeded to draw off some of the liquid and then of course tried to taste it. The taste was hard to explain like rancid cardboard. Im pretty sure its done for. Dont know if I wanna cry or or punch myself in the jewels for being stupid.

Sorry to hear it man. You can always remake the same recipe and give it another go around.

Yep but have to wait for fresh honey, last year I started a blackberry bush so thats what Im probably going to make. It just sucks to lose six gallons of goodness.

I can't believe there's no way to recover that? I made a batch of wine last year that went sour after I left fresh fruit in the primary for waaay too long...smelled like a dead skunk. After a year of racking onto some campden tabs about once a month it's better then I ever would've hoped for.

Was it just oxidized by the stopper not being completely sealed? How long was it like that?

abbeyroadhelp said:

The taste was hard to explain like rancid cardboard. Im pretty sure its done for. Dont know if I wanna cry or or punch myself in the jewels for being stupid.

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Sounds like oxidation to me. I don't think there's any way to save it, but you might want a second (or 3rd) opinion on that before you toss it. I lost 3 gallons of mead to oxidation once, it sucks, but all you can do is learn from it. Regards, GF.

Yeah pretty sure it is oxidation, I havent dumped it yet going to give it a few weeks, just in case it isnt bad.

Can you describe your racking process? It's best to not allow the drink to splash into the new carboy. Reportedly, adding campden (1 tab per gallon) will also help prevent oxidation.

I don't think the racking had anything to do with his problem...according to his first post the mead was left sitting with the stopper floating in the mead for a month.

It's stories like this that make me glad my wife lets me use our spare bathtub for my brewing. Every time I go in there I pull back the curtain and check on my babies.

If I were you abbeyroadhelp, I would rack this once a month onto a couple of diluted crushed campden tablets. See how it tastes in six months. Even if this doesn't work, you can't say you didn't try to save it, and all you'll be out is a few cents worth of campden tablets.

Thx pizzaman that was the idea I was going to use just kep hittin it with campden tablets. Hopefully the spirits will smile upon me.

As long as you don't give up faith...stranger things have happened.