Before Secondary--Do I have options?

[Reverie]

...And some general troubleshooting.

As a preface, this will be my first upcoming mead and for it I chose a traditional mead recipe. About 10 1/2 pounds of clover honey + water filling to 3 gallons, Irish moss*, acid blend added at the start*, champagne AND wine yeast*.

*Added by the recommendation of my local homebrewery for, respectively: clarity, sharp flavour, and a "quick-starting, enduring combination".

I had a smooth start except for the fact that I had neither a hydrometer nor ph test when I started, and the lack of bubbles in the airlock caused a lot of worry. Though, seeing the yeast happily spreading on the top when I finally broke down and opened the top made me realize it's probably just the small amount in a large container. One week in I worried about the must feeling cold to the touch at night time and so now I keep the must on the floor, wrapped in a blanket which channeled air from a small heater duct around the bucket. The air itself gets a little hot, but never constant and never hot enough raise the liquid temperature to kill the yeast (I think). I've done a lot of homework since I began, so I also know it's miraculous that the acid blend didn't push the ph into lethal range, and that I should have welcomed some oxygen to my must and not shunned it. Yet, despite my best efforts to kill my must, I have a strange situation. My first stage of fermentation appears to be ending ahead of schedule.

Everything in the recipe was scaled down for the 3 gallon recipe from a 5 except the yeast. I thought, they'll reproduce at their pace anyway, and I'm not going to do anything with two nearly empty packets of yeast. But now I'm wondering if I've done something to end the lifecycle early because: it's exactly three weeks in and I opened the lid today for a gravity reading. My SG reading said 1.037 but there's pretty much nothing left of the yeast on the surface. Should I be worried? Should I add nutrient? Is it normal for the last week or two of fermentation drag out with this little yeast?

One more problem. Although it's only three weeks in, I'm not too sure I like the taste of this simple, clover brew--it's almost identical to an unfinished Riesling, and I was hoping to taste something I haven't had a dozen times before/can buy in twenty varieties at the grocery store. I have some French oak ready for the second fermentation, which I assume will add subtle flavours at best. But what options, if any, do I have for changing the final product this late in the process?

 

[DaveAllen]

1. I would guess that your heating of the must via the heater vent may have produced some fusel alcohols. These will age out. What specific strains of yeast did you use? If you used champagne yeast, it's going to taste similar to rocket fuel for a while.

2. Invest in some pH strips-your ferment may have stuck due to an improper pH. I have NEVER added acid blend to a mead, and have never had a problem with a single batch. Check the SG in a few days, and if it is still dropping, you are still going okay.

3. Mead doesn't truly come into it's own for a looooong time. At least nine months aging after fermentation is complete is common. A year or two is even better. Making mead will truly teach you patience.

4. RDWHAHB.

5. You may want to rack over some fruit in secondary; blueberry, strawberry, etc. I've never oaked a mead, but others do seem to like it.

 

[david_42]

You're three weeks into a 3-5 year process. #4

 

[ByCandleLightWinery]

What is the acceptable pH? I've been trying to figure that out before I start my first batch.

And what does RDWHAHB mean?

 

[wayneb]

Reverie, your experience is yet another example of how many LHBS just don't keep up with meadmaking. I can understand why they don't; after all, mead is a sideline to most since the bulk of their sales come from beer brewers' purchases. However when they provide advice and claim to have meadmaking expertise to back up their recommendations, yet they still recommend stuff that has been proven detrimental to success for almost a decade, I start to get annoyed.

Before you go any further, or stress any more, have a look at the sticky at the top of the Mead forum section. Hightest, the guy who published all the information there, has been at the vanguard of meadmaking technique improvement for most of the previous decade. Armed with the information that he has generously made freely available, you should both put most of your fears to rest, and also should be able to make stellar meads starting with your very next batch.

That said, let me now comment on your specific questions.

First (and I know some of these points aren't questions you had, but in order to manage the batch as a whole I need to address them), don't bother with Irish moss in any future meads. Not only is it completely unnecessary, it can add a slightly saline, slightly "sea-weedy" flavor to a traditional mead that does nothing to improve the flavor profile, unless you happen to like chewing on kelp leaves in your spare time. Irish moss was added to mead recipes that were initially concocted by beer brewers back in the late 1970's - early 1980's, and they put it in there because, frankly, it worked to help clarify their beers, so they thought why not use it to help meads to clear? The answer to that question is that it won't, since the grain proteins typically bound by the moss and dragged out of suspension in beer worts, aren't even present in a honey must.

Second, don't add acid blend to any mead pre-fermentation. It can be used to "sharpen up" a flabby tasting mead once fermentation is ended, but when you add it prior to yeast pitch, or while the yeast are actively working, you run the risk of dropping pH down below the point where the yeast can continue to function. If I had to guess, lacking any other information about your current batch, I'd say that low pH may be what is slowing your current ferment to almost the point of sticking. BTW, wine yeasts like to be in musts with pH from between about 3.4 to 4.0. They will work at lower pH, but they are stressed. Once you get below about 3.0, they generally all but give up and fermentation will proceed at a snail's pace, if at all. They are actually fine above 4.0, but when you get out of the 3.'s, other spoilage organisms find it easier to take up residence in your must. So 3.4 to 4.0 can be considered the sweet spot for mead fermentations.

Pitching extra yeast is not a problem, unless you do it to extreme (as in 10x the recommended pitch rate or higher). The reason is exactly the one that you concluded - they will reproduce up to the point where a sustainable colony exists in the must, and all will proceed apace. The lack of surface yeast colonies on your must late in fermentation is not necessarily an issue. Wine yeast actually work throughout the must medium, and the reason that you find surface bubbles and accumulations of yeast at the top of a must early in fermentation is that the individual cells are essentially hitching a ride on microbubbles of CO2 that are generated during the fermentation process. Later in primary fermentation, the CO2 generation slows, and fewer yeast cells ride that "gas lift" to the surface. Never fear, they are still fermenting, unless they have been stressed by some environmental characteristic of the must.

Finally, don't judge your mead by the flavor it has while it is still fermenting. Far too much of the taste profile is being dominated by yeast residue, lack of integration of the flavors, and by the presence of fusels (as an earlier poster noted), that you can't appreciate what your mead will eventually end up tasting like this early in the process. Let it finish fermenting, allow all the yeast lees to settle, rack it (over some oak, if you'd like), and let it rest for a while. Taste it every month or so, and bottle it when you think it is ready. That may not take 3-5 years as david_42 suggests (although some very high initial gravity musts do benefit from years of aging), but you'll have a much better feel for how this batch will turn out when you taste it about 6-9 months from now.

Hope this helps!

 

[wayneb]

Oh, and for the other poster, RDWHAHB is Charlie Papazian's old adage: Relax, Don't Worry, Have a HomeBrew!

 

[Reverie]

Thank you, DaveAllen and david for your encouragements, I've decided to stick this batch out with only the oak chips (I'm thinking I'll like the effect) and age it out, while I try my hand at a melomel or maybe something even quicker to keep me entertained--so I can have a homebrew the next time someone advises it!

To Wayneb: above and beyond, sir. Thank you. And although I'm as new to the homebrewing scene as I am to mead, I would agree to what you said about my LHBS. The owner had some good general advice and claimed to have a gold medal for a sack mead (among what prestige, I wonder) but something told me his heart isn't in mead. I'm glad to hear I won't need to use Irish Moss anymore, it smelled like a ripe whiff of the sea.

 

[DaveAllen]

Reverie, I'd highly recommend you try Joe Mattioli's Ancient Orange Mead recipe on gotmead.com. Simple as can be, and relatively quick to drinkability. Follow the recipe exactly as written the first time, then make any recipe adjustments you think you would like later on.

 

[Matrix4b]

I made my first mead patterned off of "Complete Guide to Mead Making"'s sweet mead recipie. No Moss, No acid blend. Just simple honey, water, yeast, yeast nutrient, yeast energizer. Turned out great. Only reason why I have a bottle of it left is that I purposely kept it as a landmark of my first mead.

That being said. I think that the best advice that I have seen is sanitation. I have rigoursly kept good sanitation and never had a brew with an off flavor or an infection. Also, It is never too late to fiddle a bit with the flavor. You see, in my first batch, It tasted like something you would clean a wound with at bottling. 6 months later it had bite but was good, 1 year after bottling, YUM. 2 years after still YUM but a bit more YUM to it. Not very noticable.

Never judge the flavor until after you let it age a bit. I say at least a year.

This all said. I find that I favor fruit flavors by adding fruit juice, juiced myself from the fruit, to the secondary. Not only is it easier to get a better flavor but cleaner when you use the juice. Treated with pectin enzyme before addition.

I have found that you need not fiddle with it.

Oh, and 3 weeks of oak chips helps quicken the aging process IMO. It only makes it taste smoother and yummyer in traditional meads. I haven't done so on the other meads yet.

So +1 to Oaking, +1 to adding fruit juice in secondary.

SMALL amount of spices are OK to. For a 5 gal batch only 1-2 whole cloves if you use cloves, or 1-2 sticks if cinnamon. Not much is needed.

Oh, Back Sweetening is a good thing too but it WILL take longer to clear after you do so.

Welcome to Mead Making. You brew and then wait a year after it is bottled. This is also why I usually ONLY do 5 gal or 6 gal batches. It goes too quick.

 

[Reverie]

Alright, so I racked into the carboy with a sg of 1.031 at 4 weeks. It tastes improved already, and luckily I don't think the moss (at least yet) comes through. There's a bit of a sharpness from the acid blend, though nothing heartburning. Not sure if that would change after a few glasses or a full one...

But since I wasn't planning ahead by making a batch larger than 3g, and since I've done a few hydrometer tests (and on top of that, said "pfft racking cane? I don't need one of those" and spilled on the transfer)... long story shot I've got significant head space in my carboy.. Larger than mere marbles, and I've already added oak. I'd say half a gallon probably. I have an idea, though it could be devastating so I wanted to run it by the experts:

I figure I've already reincorporated a lot of oxygen in my sloppy transfer, and my sg is pretty high for a mead I estimated to be dry. How dumb of a move would it be if I were to top this off with a mixture of honey and water and maybe more nutrient, trying to treat it as a stuck fermentation and get the yeast working another two weeks or so before racking again? As long as it doesn't give the mead a "tired" taste or something like that from having so much active fermentation time, it could be a chance to try to dilute that acid blend I foolishly added, and maybe add a wildflower honey for some subtleties?

 

[Kauai_Kahuna]

I would read the FAQ portion on attempting to restart a stuck fermentation. In short you would want to extract some of the current must and mix it with the yeast, etc to start a healthy population.
You may still have enough yeast currently since yeast are pretty much present throughout the must during active fermentation, they just may have been stunned for a few days due to the racking.
I would wait four days at least and see what happens, then look at restarting a stuck fermentation.

Also, Wow WayneB, that was a nice dissertation.