Newbie to mead making

[HoldTheHeathenHammerHigh]

I started a 5 gallon open ferment mead on March 18. I started with 6 pounds of honey, 2 honey crisp apples, a cara cara orange, about 30 strawberries and store bought bakers yeast from red star (here's where I'm feeling off). I used it out of sheer convenience. The past two days I've had dark brown foam on top prior to stirring. I'll aerate (I do this 5x a day for 5mins at a time) and it will look fine. After stirring today, I heard the chittering. I'm wondering if this heavy foam is just a natural by product of the ferment with bakers yeast or if I should be worried? I can post some photos if it helps. Help!

 

[bernardsmith]

You are observing the CO2 being expelled through the honey and OJ. Nothing to worry about... but your recipe seems to be a little peculiar - 5 strawberries per gallon? less than 1/2 an apple per gallon? A fifth of an orange? Not sure that these will provide very much flavor. Is the rest water? If so you are talking about a starting gravity of about 1.042 or a potential ABV of about 5.5 %

 

[HoldTheHeathenHammerHigh]

I guess I didn't put too much thought into ingredients per gallon, I also didn't follow any recipe whatsoever. I also know nothing about gravity or how to even conceive what a potential ABV. if I add more honey and fruit, would it make the potential go up? My goal was to make a strong brew (wanted to shoot for the sky with upwards of 20%). Any advice?

 

[thm57]

So.... first things first. I would suggest not shooting for the sky to start with. Without a very advanced understanding of mead fermentation it will likely take 2 years plus to get that high alcohol mead drinkable. Also it's not likely you'll get there with bread yeast as most bread yeast will start to die of alcohol poisoning around 12%.

Also, do you own a hydrometer? If you don't then I highly recommend one. I would say it's the most important tool you have in mead making after a bucket or jug to hold the mead.

You say you don't know what specific gravity is and how it relates to potental alcohol, so I will try to explain. Specific Gravity (SG) is a measure the density of a liquid. water is the baseline for this measurement at an SG of 1. As you dissolve honey into that water it gains density, so that if you dissolve 1 lb of honey into a gallon of water the gravity will increase from 1.000 to around 1.035. A hydrometer lets you measure the Specific Gravity.

How this relates to potential ABV is that yeast converts sugar to alcohol, and alcohol is closer to water in density. So if you measure Gravity before you ferment your mead, and then again after, you get a lower reading. the difference in these readings can let you find the ABV of mead, and the last reading will also give you an idea of how sweet your mead is.

So I guess my advice for now would be to re think you goal for this first batch, then let us know what that is, and we can help from there. I hope this was helpful.

I like your name by the way, great song.

 

[HoldTheHeathenHammerHigh]

My goal is to have my mead have more alcohol (at least double) than your average 5-6%-ers you see in stores while also holding a flavorful gulp every time you drink it. I like the taste of Viking Blód and hard ciders/ meads that tastes like ciders, was hoping for a healthy mix between the two.
I literally read a book about open ferments and dove face first into this with almost no plan. How much is a hydrometer?? A lot of my techniques are taken from the book and by the sounds of it, taken from ancient ways (Make Mead Like A Viking) with my own little twist to some. Help me make my Mead Of Poetry!

 

[Drewed]

Hydrometers are under $10.

 

[HoldTheHeathenHammerHigh]

Bought one 20 mins ago on amazon, ha.

 

[bernardsmith]

Think about your "plan". Cider is typically like beer when it comes to the amount of alcohol in the drink. In other words, a good hard cider - something that cider drinkers "quaff" will be around 6 % ABV (alcohol by volume). By "quaff" I mean that you drink this by the pint. Wines and meads which are often around 12 -14% ABV you don't "quaff". You drink by the glass - 4 or 6 oz. A drink that is closer to 20% ABV you won't drink by the wine glass but by the shot glass. Drink a pint of that and you won't be fit to string two sentences together... A mead that is closer to a cider in alcohol content may be ready for drinking in a few weeks or months. A mead that is closer to a scotch or gin may take a year or two.. One pound of honey when mixed with enough water to make a gallon has a specific gravity of 1.035. A specific gravity of 1.035 has a potential ABV of about 4.5 %. To produce a mead that potentially can produce 20% ABV you will need about 4.5 lbs for every gallon. That's about $25 -30 for the honey.

But more importantly, yeast are single cell creatures. They have physical limitations one of which is that if the concentration of sugar in the must (the liquid they are asked to ferment) is too high they simply cannot transport any of the liquid through their cell walls, which is one reason why the shelf life of honey is measured in decades - it cannot spoil because it is so concentrated. So you have to solve that problem.

Another problem is that honey unlike say, wine grapes, has no nutritional value for yeast. For yeast honey is like a diet of ice-cream. After a short while the yeast fed only honey will become sick because of malnutrition. You need to find some way to ensure that the yeast have enough nutrients in their diet.
A third problem is that when you are working with such high alcohol levels you really want to pitch (add) a very large and healthy colony of yeast whose tolerance for such levels of alcohol are suitable. Yeast can produce all kinds of alcohols including fusels, and when stressed yeast can produce all kinds of off flavors and chemicals (including hydrogen sulfide (smells like rotten eggs) and mercaptans (smells like burning rubber). You may want to spend some more time reading about mead making. Schramm is one well known (professional) mead maker and Piatz is another.

 

[Drewed]

To make what you are looking to do would require ( and these are about...)
23 lbs of honey
5ish oranges - zest and juice only/ no pith! I'd ditch the oranges all together.
5 gallons of apple cider - with no preservatives.
15 lbs of strawberries ( 5 in the primary and 10 in the secondary)
Rocket fuel yeast. Something like Lalvin EC-1118 - that will pretty much ferment asphalt. Even then it is only "good" to 18%, so you would need to make a starter, and feed it along the way with nutrients. You might even need to step feed the honey in.

This should need to sit quite awhile until it is drinkable. I'm thinking yearS.

Not saying what you want is a bad idea, but it is kind of like shooting a rocket to the moon with out learning how to fly first.

 

[HoldTheHeathenHammerHigh]

You guys have been beyond helpful. When should I rack this weird thing I got going? As far as my very first brew is going, that's exactly it, go with the flow. I have plenty of time to keep experimenting and learning along the way and into future batches. I love me some mead and if I can make it for the rest of my life, that's my plan.

How do you know if you can't fly to the moon if you don't try, amirite?

 

[Drewed]

Rack it over to the secondary when the SG (spicific gravity) hasn't changed for about a week.

 

[HoldTheHeathenHammerHigh]

The hydrometer is on the way. Thanks for the advice!

 

[bernardsmith]

My suggestion - and you can dismiss this if you like - is to begin with simple, traditional meads: about 2 - 2.5 lbs of honey, enough water to make a gallon, nutrient and a wine yeast such as 71B. Once you have mastered this (and this will give you an ABV of about 11% ) - and it is not so easy to master (no off flavors, no fusels, no stalled fermentations) you will have acquired a solid understanding of what it is to make a mead - THEN the world is your oyster: you can add all kinds of adjuncts; you can decide how much fruit (or juice ) you might add to keep the honey flavor forward or the fruit flavor forward. You can determine whether you want to experiment with "session" meads (hydromels, or low ABV meads) or meads with very high alcohol content (those need what are called step feeding otherwise you can kill the yeast)..

 

[HoldTheHeathenHammerHigh]

I think that's fair. I literally read a book and said I can do this. With no prior experience in brewing myself (had some friends dable in home made beers and my father in law has been making wine in his basement for years- if they can do it, I can, right?) I dove face first into just a mixture I had with high hopes. I'm glad you guys brought me back to reality. I don't plan on giving up anytime soon, so far I've been really enjoying the process and talking about it to everyone I meet!

 

[bernardsmith]

and you mead may taste right on the money! To make mead all you really need is honey, water and yeast. The yeast does all the work. To make a GOOD mead you need to practice. Practice in this context means understanding what obstacles there might be to prevent the yeast from making the mead that YOU want. YOU , not the yeast and learning what it takes to remove those obstacles. You need to take lots and lots of notes.

To CONSISTENTLY make a good mead ... you need to know all the obstacles there are and how best to remove them without creating other problems. That means lots and lots of practice and it means thoughtful reflection within a community such as this one.