Second Mead, opinons and advice please

[Dorkusmalorkus]

Here is the recipe and steps I went through for my second experimental batch of Mead. Advice, opinons and comments appreciated

Ingredients:

A total of 1300g(2.866lbs) of honey
500g of that is wildflower honey, mainly clover. From a trusted relative who owns a few hives. This is unpasteurized raw honey.

The other 800g is from the supermarket and of unknown origin except that it is from Canada. No mention of pasteurization.

Approx 4L(1gal) Vanadium spring water.

5g package of LALVIN ec-1118 yeast.

15 organic California raisin.

I started by pouring a little water into the 1 gallon jug and then added all the honey. After vigorously shaking the jug, I added as much water as the jug could contain minus the head space and threw in the yeast and raisins before shaking again.

The batch is now sitting in the dark with the pricked balloon on the opening. It is slightly inflated, so all the signs of fermentation have begun.

 

[Dorkusmalorkus]

Questions are also welcome and will gladly provide additional details as this thread goes along.

 

[Maylar]

You need yeast nutrient too.

 

[Dorkusmalorkus]

I loosely followed a recipe I found on other online mead resources. According to those sites, adding the raisins was for nutrients and there was no mention of any other things added. What type of yeast nutrients are needed and is it too late to add them now?

 

[rlmiller10]

The nutrient you would want is DAP (diammonium phosphate) http://www.northernbrewer.com/yeast-nutrient

The other thing is oxygen. I shake and stir my mead to get oxygen in for the first couple of days as the yeast are still multiplying. They will take up the oxygen so you don't need to worry about oxygenating your mead.

 

[Maylar]

People think that raisins are adequate nutrients but they're not. There's only a little bit of nitrogen in them. DAP doesn't have the trace elements that yeast need, so either DAP + Fremaid-K or Fermaid-O (organic) is preferred.

 

[Dorkusmalorkus]

How will the mead be affected if the mentioned nutrient is not added?

So far the fermentation seems to be getting along fine. I give the jug a good swirl once or twice a day and the fizzling and little bubbles are steadily foaming.

 

[honeycon]

Their is a difference between will it work and optimal. Yours will work, bit will take a long time to mellow and have a great taste. Using a nutrient and aeration process will speed things up a lot and give you good mead in a matter of months. Sometimes in as little as one month (BOMM) TOSNA in 2-3 months, yours as currently brewing, a year or longer.

 

[Dorkusmalorkus]

Their is a difference between will it work and optimal. Yours will work, bit will take a long time to mellow and have a great taste. Using a nutrient and aeration process will speed things up a lot and give you good mead in a matter of months. Sometimes in as little as one month (BOMM) TOSNA in 2-3 months, yours as currently brewing, a year or longer.

Really? A year or longer to complete a one gallon batch with the recipe I used?

 

[fossilcat]

Really? A year or longer to complete a one gallon batch with the recipe I used?

Yup, you might be forced to make a couple more batches with appropriate SNA just to fill in the gap while the first one ages. I know this might be hard to hear, but as brewers, we've all had to make sacrifices. I'm thinking of making another sacrifice this weekend with a bochet.

 

[Baabaadoo]

Wow. Aeration and adding nutrient helps that much? Didn't know that.

 

[fossilcat]

If you underfeed a dog his whole life, he will (may) live, but he'll be under-sized and probably unhealthy. Yeast are the same way. They like to eat as do all living things.

 

[Dorkusmalorkus]

How long should I expect to wait for the first fermentation to finish and how long before it is "safe" to take off the balloon and rack it with a bubbler airlock cap? Is two weeks reasonable?

I'm a bit disappointed to have to wait so long for this batch to be ready. I was hoping to have some to enjoy with friends by the summer.

Looks like I'll have to stick to using bread yeast if I want anything ready by then.

 

[fossilcat]

Fermentation activity and it's completion is not decided by a clock. It's complete when the alcohol produced by the fermentation process exceeds the yeast's tolerance (and the yeast dies) or it runs out of sugar to ferment. The only way to truly determine when fermentation has ended is to measure the progress of sugar consumption with a hydrometer (there's other tools, but this is the one I'm more familiar with). When your reading stays the same for 3 or 4 days you're done (if your ferment is real slow you might measure up to a week or so). A reading of 1.000 (water reads 1.000) means no more sugar although your fermentation can stop anywhere depending on amount of honey you started with, yeast tolerance to alcohol, process (SNA, degassing, etc), and environmental factors such as temp and pH level.

If you're serious about making an excellent and unique alcoholic beverage to enjoy with friends and family, there are no short cuts. I'd recommend loveofrose's BOMM recipes: https://denardbrewing.com/blog/category/mead/ . Follow them exactly and you'll have an enjoyable drink in a month, and a delicious beverage by June. Read/study his articles and learn how to make mead the right way.

 

[Lefou]

A mead recipe can be modified.
Instead of using a highly attenuative champagne yeast like Lalvin EC-1118, change your yeast. Change your fermentables/water ratio and the ingredients. This will reduce your mead's starting gravity and the time and effort it takes to get your mead into the glass.

For example, use an ale yeast or other less vigorous yeast variety targeted specifically for mead. Reduce the amount of honey and increase water. This can reduces your potential alcohol level and may leave a bit more residual sugar in the must, if done correctly. Another alternative is to mix nutrient with liquid malt extract when "step feeding" yeast in your must. Some people may not use this method because introducing malt extract violates the perception of a "pure" mead - because you're using a beer ingredient.
Malt extract introduces maltose and a host of other nutrients and minerals - like potassium, magnesium, and plant proteins you won't find in honey and water. Distilled or reverse osmosis water lacks calcium, something yeast need to grow. Furthermore, it helps to pitch a strong starter of yeast into your must. If you're using a dry Fermentis yeast, it can simply be re-hydrated in water, a bit of nutrient, and liquid malt extract until it yields a foam, then pitched to your must. This reduces the time it takes for fermentation to start.
Reducing the specific gravity of your must to around 1.050 will give you a "doctored" mead of low ABV that will definitely be drinkable in less than a year, even sooner, but it's something you don't want to rush ... but you can speed it along with a few "tricks".
I would suggest learning how to brew ales and lager. Learn how to carbonate draft beer ... the skills can carry over to your mead. I tried to make mead before making ale. I wish it had been the other way around!

 

[Dorkusmalorkus]

I set out to brew a mead with something between 10-14%abv that would be neither too dry nor too sweet. I now realize that the yeast I used can potentially make up to 18%, which is quite strong as well as being more suited to sparkling/champagne wines.

I have since decided that the only thing left to do with this batch is to just leave it alone for as long as possible. I want to change the pin pricked ballon to a bubbler airlock but I am not sure I can do that yet without messing it up. It has been fermenting for 5days...

 

[honeycon]

You can change the airlock type whenever you want. Just keep every thing clean.

 

[Drewed]

You can change the airlock type whenever you want. Just keep every thing clean.

Agreed. I start with an 3 piece airlock, skipping the ballon totally.

 

[bernardsmith]

The thing is that the active fermentation will be done in about two weeks (sometimes less , sometimes longer). The better you treat the yeast (providing the minerals they need to produce the sterols they need to allow for the activities you want) the cleaner the alcohol the yeast will produce. The less well you treat the yeast the more likely it is that the yeast will suffer stress - and so produce all kinds of chemicals you are not likely to want, and the more likely it is that the yeast will produce fusels ("higher" alcohols) that can take months to mellow out.

In the past, meads generally took a year or two to offer a pleasurable drink. That was (IMO) because folk had a very poor understanding of the nutrient requirement of the yeast, the amount of viable yeast that is best to pitch, the optimum temperature for fermentation and the concentration of sugars and the amount of alcohol they were asking the yeast to happily "thrive" in. Today, there are folk making mead that bottle and sell their mead 4 -6 weeks after pitching the yeast. My suggestion, Dorkusmalorkus, would be to be prepared for a very long aging but there is not a thing to prevent you from tasting your mead today not to say from the moment you rack from the primary into a secondary and once a week after that to see when you think that it is ready for enjoying and sharing. That a strain of yeast can comfortably tolerate 18% ABV does not mean that you need to aim for such a high alcoholic drink. That mead is routinely viewed as a sipping wine does not mean that you are forced to ignore the possibility of making a mead to be drunk like a beer or cider (around 5 or6 % ABV), and that many mead makers routinely stress the bejesus out of their yeast and produce fusels up the wazoo does not mean that you must follow their cobbled "recipes".

 

[Dorkusmalorkus]

18% abv is much higher than what I wanted to get, but it is probably too late to try anything with this batch. I will change the airlock but I'm not sure I should be fiddling around with it 6 days into fermentation.

 

[fossilcat]

Unless you added more than the 2.866lbs of honey you said in your original post, your ferment will probably run out of sugar before it reaches 15%. EC1118 alcohol tolerance is 18% but the yeast has to have enough honey to eat to get there, your batch doesn't.

And don't worry so much about the airlock, whether you use a balloon or an airlock makes no difference. I don't even use an airlock, I don't even fasten down the lid, until the end of the ferment when the yeast slows to the point it can no longer sustain a CO2 cap over the mead.

 

[Kody_Wulfe]

Hey... yes. .its me again.. the pest.. HEEH

in regards to DAP + Fremaid-K or Fermaid-O..... can anyone give me a suggestion for how much in a gallon batch.. I know.. there are MANY answers.. and I understand that everyone has an opinion.. but there must be a slight standard somewhere...

Kody

 

[fossilcat]

Hey... yes. .its me again.. the pest.. HEEH

in regards to DAP + Fremaid-K or Fermaid-O..... can anyone give me a suggestion for how much in a gallon batch.. I know.. there are MANY answers.. and I understand that everyone has an opinion.. but there must be a slight standard somewhere...

Kody

Try this: http://www.meadmakr.com/batch-buildr/

I've used it on 4 batches so far and although it suggests way more than what I'm used to using, everything has come out real good so far. No residual taste from what I originally thought was too much.

 

[gratus fermentatio]

Try this: http://www.meadmakr.com/batch-buildr/

I've used it on 4 batches so far and although it suggests way more than what I'm used to using, everything has come out real good so far. No residual taste from what I originally thought was too much.

That's a handy calc, thanks for sharing!
Regards, GF.