ALRIGHT!!!!! So, it was finally time to test the mead, being it had sat for two weeks.... Since then it has been racked to secondary twice in order to keep it off the settled yeast.... I did this as after six days the mead/must developed a slight tartness.... I asked a few people if that was normal, but no one got back to me, so I continued to let it sit and kept trying to tend to it so that it wouldn't spoil.
My taste test, to the best of my descriptive ability:::
It has a light creamy flavor from the vanilla, a decent sweetness from the honey, and an underlying tartness that happened during fermentation.
When left to linger in the mouth the tartness sorta lingers and gives a strange blend with the sweetness. Sorta like a mild fruity sourness. It also has a slight tingly/prickly feeling to the tip of my tongue.
I have taken three sips so far, and find that while sweet, that tartness is still quite noticeable. It's somewhat like the skin of a plum, while the flesh of the plum is sweet, that skin holds a slightly bitter tartness...
Overall, though it's been a while since I've had mead of any kind, I would say it is fairly decent. Not sure if it came out good or bad.
Ok, so, initially, fruit can supply some nutrient, but honey is very, very low in natural nutrients, so fruit is unlikely to give enough. Yes, there's "show" meads with just honey, water and yeast, but that makes for long, very slow (torturous IMO) fermentations that are prone to problems, that can't always be sorted out with only natural ingredients.
As for "it's time to taste" ? After two weeks ? Absolutely no chance of having anything that's in a position for evaluation.
It's unlikely to have finished the ferment. It's unlikely to have cleared enough of the lees to be able to give you something to judge the actual taste of i.e. there's likely to be still too much yeast in suspension, not to have some sort of bread/dough/yeast flavour. Etc etc etc.
Yes, some recipes will ferment quickly, but that's usually properly managed ferments with accurately calculated levels of YAN and other micronutrients, with staggered nutrient addition, daily or twice daily aeration down to the 1/3rd sugar break, etc etc etc.
Between what you'd have got there for tasting and a properly finished mead, it's two entirely different things. They're "poles apart".
Sorry if that's burst the "enthusiasm bubble", but that's the way it is. There's plenty of info, ideas, guidance etc etc out there for "normal" methods, let alone something that's rather experimental. If you haven't made lots of meads, then it's unlikely that you can make an accurate comparison - even if you've tasted lots of "commercial" meads (which tend to be on the sweet side i.e. that the marketers believe because it's a "wine" made from honey, then it should be like watered down honey that happens to have some alcohol in it - they're wrong, there's so many different types to be made/tried).
Keep up your efforts though, mead is good s**t, so IMO it's worth taking the time and effort to make it well.
regards
fatbloke
