First mead, some advice please

[TropicsMotel]

Hi all

Just want to start off with saying I have never tried mead before(almost bought a bottle of chauncers but the reviews put me off haha), but this brew is more for my brother for getting into Harvard (he said he tried it once at a friends place and liked it a lot), so I am planning on aging most of this until he finishes his grad program.

I will be doing a 5 gallon batch, using 15lbs of clover honey I picked up from costco, and going off of the recipe from Ken Schramm's book. The only difference is I will be using WLP720 for my yeast and my local home brew shop sold me some nutrient and recommended 2 grams per gallon ( 10 grams total). Plan on bottling it in beer and wine bottles.

This is where I need the most help. I plan on adding some fruit to the secondary, but I need some clarifications. Some people have told me I can bottle after leaving the fruit (planning on using berries, pineapple, and peaches) in the secondary until I bottle. Others have told me to leave the fruit for a month or so, rack once more, and then I can bottle after aging the mead/melomel (twice as long as I had it in the primary).

Thank you for helping out a newbie sort out his first mead!

 

[HB_in_Subic]

Check out this web site https://denardbrewing.com/ Bray has lots of recipes (to include melomels = mead + fruit). Using this calculator http://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/calculator/ your SG will be 1.126. Your yeast could easily have a FG of 1.010 (15%ABV) or lower if you have provided the best environment (nutrients, aeration/degassing and temperature control). If it finishes below 1.010 there is a good chance that when you add the fruit in secondary that there will be minimal fermentation of the fruit which will yield more fruit tastes and aromas in the final result. Freezing the fruit before hand and smashing then thawing also enables the yeast to get at the sugars in the fruit more easily (membranes broken). You might want to use some KCO3 (Potassium Carbonate) as a PH Buffer, again look at Bray's site on the additions.

Also read thru on the yeast nutrient additions that will greatly help the ferment go clean and quick.

Temperature control is something else to keep in line. WLP720 operates in 70-75F http://www.whitelabs.com/yeast/wlp720-sweet-mead-wine-yeast and it would be better to keep closer to 70F for the first couple of days (the exothermic phase).

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi TropicsMotel - and welcome - and congratulations on your brother getting into Harvard for a graduate degree. Not everyone on this forum will agree with me here but better than adding fruit to the secondary is to start a second fermentation - one that is all fruit. You can then blend the two wines (the mead and the fruit wine) together to obtain the best flavor profile rather than produce a flavor profile that may be far less interesting and desirable than you might produce by chance...

 

[Maylar]

Adding fruit to secondary will add more sugars and the fermentation will continue. When it gets to where you like the taste, I would rack it again and wait for it to clear before bottling. How long that takes is hard to predict.

 

[bmwr75]

Adding fruit to secondary is fine. You will need to rack off the fruit and let the mead clear before bottling. You can age it in tertiary or the bottle, as long as it is clear in the bottle. If there is residual sugar, final gravity > 1.000, you should consider stabilizing the mead with k-meta and k-sorbate. I've been able to get away with not stabilizing residual sugar meads, but racked them 4 or more times and they are clear as a bell when bottled.

 

[TropicsMotel]

Thanks for the replies!

Right now its the 12th day of my fermentation, bubbling is starting to slow down (I checked the gravity a few days ago, but I dont have my notes on me), and it is looking good so far.

The only thing is that it smells like sparking apple cider. Is this normal? I tried looking it up and mainly got stuff regarding beer (acetaldehyde), but some other places talked about it might be part of the honey's natural scents or w/e. Please advise.

Thanks