Question about off-taste

[seasonsofstrange]

Hi,

I'm brewing my 2nd cyser and I'm worried about an off taste. I pitched the yeast for a 4 gallon batch (Pasteur Red) about 10 days ago. Original gravity was 1.075, now down to 1.020. I racked today because there seemed to be a lot of lees, and the fermentation has slowed a lot, though maybe I did it too early. Anyway, I tasted some of the stuff at the bottom that didnt get racked, and it has a bitter taste to it. The same thing happened to the last cider I did, but I didnt notice the taste was off till bottling and it was worse. I assumed the problem was that I had left it on the lees too long (one month in secondary). Am I having the same issue now?

 

[cimirie]

I'm not an expert on cysers, but I have never had an off taste come from ciders or beers by leaving it on the yeast for a month. My guess is, if the off taste was bitter, it probably wasn't the lees - you would notice a very distinct "yeasty" taste.

Beyond that, unfortunately, I can't help you too much.

As a course of business, I wouldn't want to rack anything to secondary until primary was completely done - regardless of timeframe. Give it time. I'm sure the flavor will mellow (if I remember correctly, the timeframe aging/fermenting for meads of all types is somewhat greater than for beer or wine. In most cases, months.)

 

[Kauai_Kahuna]

Usually I wait till I get down to a SG 1.010, but I have racked at SG 1.020 before. But for such a low OG it is surprising it took a month to drop that little.
You may look at the SNA process in the stickies in the mead forum.
If the yeast are stressed and fermenting slowly, it can also produce some off flavours that you may be detecting.
Hope this helps, and best of luck.