Thunder_Chicken
Well-Known Member
I made a 1 gallon mead, 3 lbs of honey and make-up water, described in this thread.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f30/high-og-mead-404633/
The FG leveled off at 1.006, leaving a nice hint of sweetness. Prior to bottling the samples were delicious though obviously young.
Come bottling day, anticipating that the mead would be in bottles for quite some time, I added a 1/2 campden tablet (I had added 1 full tablet a couple of weeks prior at racking) and 1/4 teaspoon of potassium sorbate (since there were residual sugars in the mead).
I bottled in clear 750 mL bottles and corked them, and then sampled some of the remainder - BLECH! The honey sweetness had morphed to a disgusting candy-like sickly sweet flavor with a chemical aftertaste, and there was no alcohol noticable at all. Not remotely drinkable.
I do not think this is due to the campden, as I added campden at the same dosage rate to a batch of dry apfelwein and it was quite delicious both before and after the dosing - no detectable off-flavors at all. The difference was that, as the apfelwein was dry, I did not add any potassium sorbate to it.
So my question is - did I screw up the dosing of the potassium sorbate? I followed the instructions on the bottle and double checked those instructions on the web, that dosage doesn't seem out of the norm. Is this taste normal and something that will age away? I was so amazed with the flavor of this mead and I'm afraid that I'll have to dump it because it is not reasonably drinkable now.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f30/high-og-mead-404633/
The FG leveled off at 1.006, leaving a nice hint of sweetness. Prior to bottling the samples were delicious though obviously young.
Come bottling day, anticipating that the mead would be in bottles for quite some time, I added a 1/2 campden tablet (I had added 1 full tablet a couple of weeks prior at racking) and 1/4 teaspoon of potassium sorbate (since there were residual sugars in the mead).
I bottled in clear 750 mL bottles and corked them, and then sampled some of the remainder - BLECH! The honey sweetness had morphed to a disgusting candy-like sickly sweet flavor with a chemical aftertaste, and there was no alcohol noticable at all. Not remotely drinkable.
I do not think this is due to the campden, as I added campden at the same dosage rate to a batch of dry apfelwein and it was quite delicious both before and after the dosing - no detectable off-flavors at all. The difference was that, as the apfelwein was dry, I did not add any potassium sorbate to it.
So my question is - did I screw up the dosing of the potassium sorbate? I followed the instructions on the bottle and double checked those instructions on the web, that dosage doesn't seem out of the norm. Is this taste normal and something that will age away? I was so amazed with the flavor of this mead and I'm afraid that I'll have to dump it because it is not reasonably drinkable now.