Background (may skip, not too important but some detail)
I'm helping my old man with his mead making, and I finally managed to talk him into making a batch with some awesome honey (he'd previously been using the cheapest one he could find).
And as usual, he ignored half my advice and didn't get any nutrients and no starter... so the fermentation was REALLY slow. Hardly any fermentation after a few weeks, so we moved it into a slightly warmer room and decided to forget about it. Until yesterday, when we were gonna check the gravity. 1.005 - time to add more honey (started at 1.050). It was also pretty darn clear.
Problem: we noticed one of the cats had chewed off the airlock!
We tasted it, while IMO the oxidation wasn't that bad (I've had WAY worse). We had also lost the flavor of it all. I've used honey from the same beekeepers, and the end result in a dry mead should me magical - but there was almost nothing, except the light oxidation taste.
The plan was to add the same amout of honey again and keep fermenting it until the yeast died.
What do we do now? Cut our loss and toss it? Take a gamble and add more honey, maybe add some fruits/berries or spices to try and mask the off-flavor?
Don't have any high hopes, but it's always a shame to toss mead.
I'm helping my old man with his mead making, and I finally managed to talk him into making a batch with some awesome honey (he'd previously been using the cheapest one he could find).
And as usual, he ignored half my advice and didn't get any nutrients and no starter... so the fermentation was REALLY slow. Hardly any fermentation after a few weeks, so we moved it into a slightly warmer room and decided to forget about it. Until yesterday, when we were gonna check the gravity. 1.005 - time to add more honey (started at 1.050). It was also pretty darn clear.
Problem: we noticed one of the cats had chewed off the airlock!
We tasted it, while IMO the oxidation wasn't that bad (I've had WAY worse). We had also lost the flavor of it all. I've used honey from the same beekeepers, and the end result in a dry mead should me magical - but there was almost nothing, except the light oxidation taste.
The plan was to add the same amout of honey again and keep fermenting it until the yeast died.
What do we do now? Cut our loss and toss it? Take a gamble and add more honey, maybe add some fruits/berries or spices to try and mask the off-flavor?
Don't have any high hopes, but it's always a shame to toss mead.