Newbie on second brew with a few dumb questions!

[Kemsley]

Hello guys, I have gotten into mead making recently because it seemed a nice way to make Christmas gifts for people and I'm rather enjoying it so intend to continue as a hobby. The first batch went surprisingly well despite being ignorant of a few basic steps such as secondary fermentation and pasteurising the mead. I made and Apple Mead and a Cherry Mead and my first questions is why do people use actual fruit pieces when they add flavours? I have a farmers market near my work and bought high quality Apple and Cherry juices and simply used these almost as a replacement for water in the initial fermentation. Using juice seemed like the logical and obvious way to do this and I have since used Lemon juice in another Mead, why would I instead put things like Lemon peel or fruit pieces in and usually on the second fermentation? Many folks seem to do this and I'm wondering if there are advantages to that?

Next a sort of mini rant/question, my first brew went well but I didn't understand how the hydrometer worked and bought one after I had begun thus missing the opportunity to take an original SG reading. Because of this the Meads ABV is going to remain a mystery despite it being delicious, no biggie ill do better on the next one I thought. The second time around I have carefully taken my gravity/temp readings and have just racked two of the three batches into an attempted secondary fermentation vessel, I had frozen small batches of the original mixture to use for backsweetening which I added after I took a second SG/temp reading and intend to do a third reading in a few weeks. When it came to calculating my ABV I input my data into an online calculator and the result was waaay lower than I expected (About 13.65%) but there was an option for an "Alternative calculation" which was almost exactly what I expect (17.38%). The large difference has totally baffled me and after googling and watching videos of people talking about it I have become very confused about how vague and imprecise the whole process is and I feel like its impossible to actually know the answer if various formulas give such dramatically different results. What annoys me about the confusion on this issue is the fact that industry professionals can use a process called "Gas Chromatography" to find the exact ABV of a sample so why has no one done this and worked out definitively which formulas give the most accurate results.

I am assuming that because I have backsweetened with a frozen sample of the original mixture that was fermented this will have no impact on my SG readings accuracy with regards to ABV%, is this assumption sound?

I intend to age my Mead in its 5l (just over 1 gallon for you Yanks) Demijohn with a cork stopper on top for about 1 year, is this wise? Will the cork stopper keep it from spoiling for a year?

Finally a dumb question that is bothering me. Why does Wine go off in less than a week when you open the cork, I know this is oxidisation but the product is exposed to the air multiple times in its production including when bottled and originally corked so why does it suddenly decay when the end user briefly opens it? When I think about aging and bottling my Mead this question keeps niggling at me.

Thanks for your time!
Kemsley.

 

[CKuhns]

As to why fruit or other additions.
The objective forme is to ballance the flavors. My intent is to make a mead that allows the subtle flavors of the honey to come through while adding enough flavor from the ftuit to be present. The fruit, spice, chilis etc is added as an enhancement to the flavor of the honey. I do use juice on occasion when I want more of a traditional full bodied wine like flavor.

Specifiv Gravity is for the most part the density of your liquid at a given temperature. In this case it measures the amount of sugar in your liquid. Honey is roughly 80% sugars plus or minus 1% or so and the renaining is water with perhaps a small amount of solids. Adding additional honey to sweeten adds sugars and changes your specific gravity. More honey more gravity less honey or diluting with water or as you have done with a fermented beverage will reduce your gravity. There is a way to calculate your specific gravity without a hydrometer. But it is an estimate and not exact.

One pound of honey in enough water to achieve a total volume of one gallon gives you between 32 and 38 gravity points (0.032 to 0.038). The variable is the honey as some honey has more or less water and as such sugar. Clean water at 68 deg F is always 1.000. As a result after mixing your honey into the water you will have roughly a 1.035 gravity. Typically that is what the calculaters use.

Juice adds sugars as well and they vary wildly depending on the juice. But again, can be estimated as the juice container should indicate the amount of sugars present. On-line calculators typically will take all of these into consideration.

To age and stopper the mead in a demijon you must ensure fermentation is complete and or the yeast are killed, inhibited or removed. If you stopper and have some sugar present (in essence anything over about 0.998) and viable yeast then you risk of the yeast eating the sugars creating CO2. This builds pressure in your now cl9sed vessel and at best overpressuring the vessel pushing the stopper out or worse violently breaking the bottle. Use an airlock instead and monitor the liquid in the airlock to ensure it remains sealed. Yes, a stopper or maintaines airlock will keep it from turning to vinegar and or letting some bacteria in to cause spoilage.

During production (Fermentation) C02 is produced. CO2 is heavier than air and blankets the mead / wine from the oxygen in the air. Effectively forming a seal. A very limited exposure during bottling or racking does not impact it. Once a mead / wine is aged or degassed the CO2 that was in suspension has come out of the liquid and makes the mead / wine susceptible to the oxygen in the air. Causing the it to oxidize.

 

[Kemsley]

Thanks for the reply, I feel like using juices simplifies things alot but the Cherry one did have a slight wine like quality I would like to remove. I want it to taste of Cherries and Honey, the Apple one was outstanding however.

You are miss understanding my confusion, I understand what Specific Gravity is and how to take my readings and found calculators to work out my ABV. I mixed my Juice, Water and Honey together and in the case of my Apple Mead the result was an initial SG of 1166 (A little high I know) and after the fermentation seemed to have run its course (EC118 yeast) I took a second reading at 1062 both adjusted for temperature according to the chart that came with my hydrometer. So far so good but when I put my results into an online calculator (Alcohol By Volume ABV Calculator | Brewer's Friend) I had a disappointing 13.65% Alcohol but you will notice a setting marked "Alternate equation" which when clicked gives a more reasonable 17.38%. My question is which is correct? After watching a few you tube videos and reading abit there seems to be a lot of confusion about exactly how to calculate this with alot of debate on the topic. This makes me more confused because surely all debate could be settled immediately by using Gas Chromatography to check the result and I feel like someone somewhere must have done this. How can I know the ABV if there are multiple ways to calculate that have such dramatically different results?

I intend to pasteurise my mead before sealing it with a stopper for aging, I was just wondering if a cork stopper in a Demijohn will be safe for 1year aging as I'm not sure cork is 100% airtight.

 

[CKuhns]

I apologize many "newer" members are less familiar with these things.

Easy one 1st. Cork is fine. Mead is corked like wine for long term storage in the same bottles as wine. Just be sure its nice and snug.

Unfortunately I cant speak to how all the calculators work. I personally dont use them. I use this one and know that many of the on line calculators do too.

1.166 minus 1.062 = 0.104
0.104 x 131.25 = 13.65 ABV

EC 1118 has a very high alcohol tolerance and I would have expected it to do better than 13.65%.

NOTE:
A few years back I had reponsibility for 7 ethanol plants and a Research and Development lab (As well as others). I had some of my mead tested via ASTM Test Method D5501 by gas chromatography. Using the calculation above it came just under 2 tenths at 9% and just over 3 tenths at 14%. The GC was not calibrated for that low of an alcohol content and the 14% peak was a bit skewed. But did get a good injection and a peak that we were able to integrate and calculate. Neither were a result i would bet the farm on but did give me confidence this calculation is pretty close.

I pasteurize as well or keg if extra sugars. Tried filtering and didnt care for it and will not use the sulphur compounds to inhibit the yeast.

 

[Kemsley]

Thanks this is interesting but im still very unsure about what the ABV actually is .

Its fairly cold here in London right now but the fermentation went fine for 4-5 weeks with a lot of foam and bubbling constantly for that whole time but then a couple of weeks ago a cold snap hit us and both the Apple and Cherry meads I'm doing came to a halt. They had already dramatically slowed down by this point so I was unsure if it was the cold weather or not so I set up a little electric heater in my kitchen to run overnight and keep them warm (This is all being done on my kitchen counter for now). This did in fact get the get bubbles going again and some air in the airlock but VERY slow and tiny amounts, this situation has continued for a week (Using an ungodly amount of electricity fighting the cold weather!) up until the 6 weeks of fermentation mark this weekend. On Friday I decided to rack, test and backsweeten (with samples of the original must I froze for this purpose) the Cherry and Apple Meads expecting them to be basically done and have been totally discombobulated by my ABV results.

Now I don't know what to do next, if its 13.65% I will have dropped that to around 12.5% with my backsweetening and feel like I will want to try to restart the fermentation (They are still, when kept warm, VERY SLOWLY pushing air through the airlock but no visible bubbles now) and eat the electricity costs of keeping my kitchen constantly warmed to get the ABV where I want. On the other hand if the ABV is indeed 17.38% and I have sweetened it down to around 16% this is exactly the sort of numbers I was aiming for and I am ready to pasteurise and store the demijohns somewhere cool and dark until next year.

Just to add to my general confusion the 3rd batch is a sort of Lemon mead with a starting gravity way up at 1174 (My first batchs were a bit dry and I have over corrected in my recipes), it was a lot of honey and some Lemon juice. I had a lot of trouble initially with this one getting it to start and had to add more yeast and nutrient so it was about a week behind the other two before it really started to ferment but has been doing just fine ever since. It did noticeably slowdown when the cold weather hit but has never come to a stop like the other two, it has constantly had visible bubbles and is even now producing an air bubble every 10 seconds with plenty of visible bubbles rising through the mix.

I pasteurize as well or keg if extra sugars. Tried filtering and didnt care for it and will not use the sulphur compounds to inhibit the yeast.

I agree, I don't want to use any chemicals ect and plan to simply place the whole Demijohn into a pot of hot water on my oven top then gently raise the temperature to 75 degrees Celsius.

 

[Graham H]

Shouldn’t you stabilize (pasteurize) before backsweetening?

 

[CKuhns]

From what you told us your mead is likely just North of 13% with residual sugars that still could be consumed.

Warming your fermentation does sometines help if the ferment has stalled or is slow.

A starting gravity of 1.166 and 1.174 is extremely high and difficult at best to ferment to the level you want.

A gravity drop of 0.125 would give you about 16.5% alcohol.

I would suggest as long as its still working see where it ends up.

 

[CKuhns]

@Graham H Pasteurization can be done either before or after sweetening. Just be sure if after and you want a "still" mead to do it right away.

I typically only pasteurize if there are residual sugars present when bottling.

 

[Kemsley]

Would adding more yeast and fermaid o to restart the fermentation be wise at this point to you think? Or would this result in off flavours? If I am likely to spoil the batch I could just accept it as it is and finish the fermentation.

Shouldn’t you stabilize (pasteurize) before backsweetening?

I feel like its wiser to sterilise the final solution to ensure you kill everything, there could be traces of wild yeasts or bacteria in whatever you are using to backsweeten so why not just do it right before bottling to be sure you have totally sterilized the entire mixture.

 

[CKuhns]

Adding nutrients after about 9% alcohol is not a good idea. Yeast can not take advantage of them at higher alcohol content. The nutrient may impart some off flavors.

Stressed yeast cause off flavors and your environment is already pretty hostile to yeast.

 

[Graham H]

Would adding more yeast and fermaid o to restart the fermentation be wise at this point to you think? Or would this result in off flavours? If I am likely to spoil the batch I could just accept it as it is and finish the fermentation.



I feel like its wiser to sterilise the final solution to ensure you kill everything, there could be traces of wild yeasts or bacteria in whatever you are using to backsweeten so why not just do it right before bottling to be sure you have totally sterilized the entire mixture.

Your mention of possibly restarting fermentation after the backsweetening step left me confused.
Are you taking SG readings to determine when fermentation is complete, or going with a schedule?

 

[Kemsley]

Adding nutrients after about 9% alcohol is not a good idea. Yeast can not take advantage of them at higher alcohol content. The nutrient may impart some off flavors.

Stressed yeast cause off flavors and your environment is already pretty hostile to yeast.

This is frustrating news, my theory about what has gone wrong is it ran out of nutrients and thats why its struggling to restart. Its odd that the Lemon one has continued to go strong and is even now bubbling away nicely despite sitting next to the others on the counter and presumably having less nutrients since its basically just honey and a small amount of lemon juice (I'm assuming apple and cheery juice have some nutritional value). I did use a second sachet of EC118 on it a week in because I struggled to get it that one going, if the yeast has some nutrient's of its own that could explain everything?

The only issue is the cold and I'm willing to keep using my electric heater to counter that, do you think putting some fresh yeast in at this point would be wise or just call it quits as it is?

Your mention of possibly restarting fermentation after the backsweetening step left me confused.
Are you taking SG readings to determine when fermentation is complete, or going with a schedule?

I did have a plan but its all gotten abit confused now. I had frozen about 1l of each batch to use at the end for back sweetening mostly because the plan is to age them in the same sized demijohn and after racking there would be to much space for air up top. In hindsight the initial gravity was so high that they probably dont need to be back sweetened at all especially since I have failed to reach 18% so I am considering maybe restarting the fermentation with more yeast and then racking and aging in bottles.

The idea was to ferment to 18% then rack and top up with the frozen must ending at about 17% the pasteurising and aging in the Demijohn, I felt like this plan would create a delicious sweet high ABV mead that has strong Cherry/Apple/Lemon flavours.

 

[CKuhns]

Yes apple juice etc. Has some nutrients in the juice itself. Honey alone is pretty nutrient deficient.

Your call to add additional yeast. (I would not without doing some or all of the suggestions below.) If you do, start the yeast in some of your mead to see if they can handle it. Let them go for 24 hours if active.

Consider giving up a bit of your target alcohol. Add some water to dilute it a bit. Check the pH and adjust if below 3.0. Bring the pH up to between 3.5 and 4.0. Keep it warm. Rack off the lees. Then add your started yeast.

 

[Kemsley]

So i guess no just dumping another pack of yeast in and hoping for the best?

Why do you think the Lemon one hasn't suffered the same fate as the Apple and Cherry? I haven't took a reading yet as its still happily bubbling away but I'm growing very confident that it will indeed hit 18% despite struggling to get started in the first place. Its been exposed to all the same environmental conditions as the others and had the highest starting gravity a 1175.

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi Kemsley and welcome. Here's my take.
An hydrometer is more useful when you are in the middle of making a mead or wine than when you begin. For most mead (and for country wines - that is wines made from fruit other than grape wines, you can make two fairly reasonable assumptions.
1. One pound of honey dissolved in water to make 1 US gallon of must will raise the gravity of the water by 35 points (to 1.035) , Two pounds in water to make the same total volume will raise the gravity by 70 points. If you know the weight of the honey and you know the total volume, you know by calculation the starting gravity.
2. Most table fruit and its juice will have approximately 1 lb of fructose in every US gallon of juice. That is going to give you a gravity of between 1.040 and 1.055 depending on the fruit but I will assume a gravity of 1.050 (if you add honey to this juice and you added 1 lb and the total volume of the must is 1 US gallon the total starting gravity = 1.035 + .050 = 1.085
Here's my working assumption for ABV. It's not very accurate as far as our tax office is concerned but we make wine and mead for private consumption and in the US it is against state and federal laws to sell our wine or mead and so precise levels of alcohol are not important. But that said, a starting gravity of say 1.090 that finishes at 1.000 has produced 90 points of alcohol. I multiply that 90 by 131 ( a more precise multiplier is 131.25 but ignore the numbers after the decimal point) and 131* .090 = 11.79 which is bout 12%

 

[Kemsley]

Thanks I think you are probably right and the ABV% is about 13.5% for the Apple and 14% for the Cherry, now I am just deciding what to do next.

1. Try to restart the fermentation with more Yeast
2. Accept it as it is and Pasteurise it somehow then age it.

If I just leave it as it is I'm thinking about getting a Sous Vide machine to cleanly pasteurise it but I am also thinking that if I was to age it for a whole year in its Demijohn surely if its going to come back to life it would do over the summer and I can just bottle it with confidence next year safely either way?

The final mystery is why has the 3rd Lemon batch, which had the highest starting gravity at 1175, seemingly not had this problem?

 

[SoCalPlumber]

Thanks I think you are probably right and the ABV% is about 13.5% for the Apple and 14% for the Cherry, now I am just deciding what to do next.

1. Try to restart the fermentation with more Yeast
2. Accept it as it is and Pasteurise it somehow then age it.

If I just leave it as it is I'm thinking about getting a Sous Vide machine to cleanly pasteurise it but I am also thinking that if I was to age it for a whole year in its Demijohn surely if its going to come back to life it would do over the summer and I can just bottle it with confidence next year safely either way?

The final mystery is why has the 3rd Lemon batch, which had the highest starting gravity at 1175, seemingly not had this problem?

Would love an update. I'm currently brewing cider and apple wine in somewhat cold (1-4C overnights about 16C during most days).