CanadianJesus
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So I decided to take up home brewing. I chose a traditional style mead as my first project simply because mead is so appealing to me. I did not choose to follow a specific recipe and instead opted to follow basic techniques and methods to brew my mead. The main issue I ran into following this path is that there are so many different methods out there and so many good posts that clash with other equally informative posts that I may have done things out of order.
First off I sanitized everything that came into contact with my must. Buckets, pots, utensils... First with bleach and then with potassium metabisulphite.
I brought 18L of spring water to a boil and allowed it to start cooling. My package of nutrient (which is Dibasic Ammonium Phosphate) says to "dissolve 5mL/4.5L while making up the must" so I added 20mL before adding the honey. While I deemed the water still sufficiently warm I added my honey. I added honey while the water was still warm because the honey in one of my 3Kg buckets was crystallized. So for honey, I added a total of 7Kg of local wildflower honey. I allowed the honey to completely dissolve and poured the must into my primary fermentation pail for cooling. I added just under 1tsp of Potassium Metabisulphite to sterilize my must. Instructions on the box state "FOR STERILIZING MUSTS: Dissolve 1 teaspoon into 23 litres of must prior to fermentation". So I did just that.
It took a few hours for the temperature of the must to come down to 25*C (room temp is 20*C) which is when I pitched my yeast. I think this is where I may have messed up. I used a Lalvin Wine Yeast, I forgot to note the exact strain. The instructions on the packet were extremely vague and only consisted of a little diagram which was a little hard to comprehend. I interpreted it as to heat water for 15 minutes at 40*C-43*C and add yeast when the water comes to temperature. What I ended up doing was to hold the yeast at 40*C for the whole 15 minutes. I'm not sure if I killed most of it or not. So after the 15 minutes was up I pitched the yeast into my must and gave it a gentle stir. I added the lid with the airlock and waited...
It has been 68 hours exactly since I pitched the yeast and not a single bubble or gurgle in the airlock. Holding a light to the side of my bucked I can see that the must is bubbling like a glass of soda pop. Not very vigorously but is it certainly fermenting to some degree. There is a lot of empty space in my pail. My must is at the 18L mark (I took 1L for sampling before pitching yeast) and there is about 6-8 inches of empty space. Does the CO2 need to fill this space before escaping through the airlock? Did I harm the yeast with heat and it's not fermenting properly? Do I need to add more yeast and possibly some yeast energizer?
I took a hydrometer sample before pitching yeast and SG is 1.125. The must tasted quite sweet and the taste was difficult to tell apart from straight honey (the honey I used is delicious BTW. Local stuff, very high quality).
Sorry for the long winded post but I'm pretty worried about my mead here and I tried to exclude nothing as to how I made it.
First off I sanitized everything that came into contact with my must. Buckets, pots, utensils... First with bleach and then with potassium metabisulphite.
I brought 18L of spring water to a boil and allowed it to start cooling. My package of nutrient (which is Dibasic Ammonium Phosphate) says to "dissolve 5mL/4.5L while making up the must" so I added 20mL before adding the honey. While I deemed the water still sufficiently warm I added my honey. I added honey while the water was still warm because the honey in one of my 3Kg buckets was crystallized. So for honey, I added a total of 7Kg of local wildflower honey. I allowed the honey to completely dissolve and poured the must into my primary fermentation pail for cooling. I added just under 1tsp of Potassium Metabisulphite to sterilize my must. Instructions on the box state "FOR STERILIZING MUSTS: Dissolve 1 teaspoon into 23 litres of must prior to fermentation". So I did just that.
It took a few hours for the temperature of the must to come down to 25*C (room temp is 20*C) which is when I pitched my yeast. I think this is where I may have messed up. I used a Lalvin Wine Yeast, I forgot to note the exact strain. The instructions on the packet were extremely vague and only consisted of a little diagram which was a little hard to comprehend. I interpreted it as to heat water for 15 minutes at 40*C-43*C and add yeast when the water comes to temperature. What I ended up doing was to hold the yeast at 40*C for the whole 15 minutes. I'm not sure if I killed most of it or not. So after the 15 minutes was up I pitched the yeast into my must and gave it a gentle stir. I added the lid with the airlock and waited...
It has been 68 hours exactly since I pitched the yeast and not a single bubble or gurgle in the airlock. Holding a light to the side of my bucked I can see that the must is bubbling like a glass of soda pop. Not very vigorously but is it certainly fermenting to some degree. There is a lot of empty space in my pail. My must is at the 18L mark (I took 1L for sampling before pitching yeast) and there is about 6-8 inches of empty space. Does the CO2 need to fill this space before escaping through the airlock? Did I harm the yeast with heat and it's not fermenting properly? Do I need to add more yeast and possibly some yeast energizer?
I took a hydrometer sample before pitching yeast and SG is 1.125. The must tasted quite sweet and the taste was difficult to tell apart from straight honey (the honey I used is delicious BTW. Local stuff, very high quality).
Sorry for the long winded post but I'm pretty worried about my mead here and I tried to exclude nothing as to how I made it.