1st Attempt Batch

[xsentinelx]

Hey all, I am looking for advice from those who know better. This was my first ever attempted batch, and I more or less jumped into the brewing process blindly. I received sanitation advice from the supply store, and luckily it looks like I have no issues. My batch has been fermenting for just over 4 months, and I racked it once two months in. Im at the point I think I need to rack it again, but should I do anything else to my batch? ...like adding campden tablets?

Unfortunately I ignorantly didn't take any initial readings of my mead like I have read about in this forum. So I won't be able to answer those questions.

My recipe was made with 3lbs of honey in a 5 gallon cardboy. I can also see slow but sparse bubbling still happening in the slightly murky batch when I shine light through it... which is why I think I need to add something and rerack at this point. Im afraid to bottle because I think it needs more time, and I don't want to accidentally make mead bottle bombs. Thoughts anyone?

 

[HB_in_Subic]

3lbs of honey for a 5 gallon batch is pretty light. I typically use 3lbs per gallon.

Using this tool http://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/calculator/ 3lbs of honey in 5 gallons will give you a starting gravity of 1.025 which amounts to an ABV of 3.275% (if it's at 1.0) or 4.6% (if it's at .990). As long as you don't add any sweetener (Honey, Sugar, Fruit) to it, you most likely won't have to worry about bottle bombs.

I would take a taste test to see if you like it the way it is. If it's too thin, rack it off to another carboy leaving behind the lees. Then add some more honey to it and maybe a handful of raisins (for nutrients). This will kick off the fermentation again but you could end up with a much better result. You could probably keep feeding honey to this batch until the yeast peter out (reaches their ABV tolerance limit).

If you like the taste the way that it is, then rack it over to another carboy on top of a solution using bentonite or sparkalloid. Leaving the lees on the bottom behind. I have used Sparkalloid to clear out wines/meads before and it usually takes about a week to get crystal clear.

 

[Sourz4life]

Yea, that is a bit low on the honey. Although I do a line of meads that is 1.5 pounds of honey per gallon which comes in at 6%. So if you plan to add more honey you may want to also add some nutrients such as Fermaid O or Fermaid K + DAP. Also something very important I didn't look into when first starting brewing, which was actually mead is nutrient additions. Honey doesn't have the nutrients yeast needs to thrive in, unlike malts for beer which has all those nutrients. Without it you'll get fermentation lags, off tastes, and less then ideal environment for the yeast. Its not to say that honey and water won't make mead, it just won't taste amazing. But I let me meads sit in primary for 2-3 months, but I take readings to make sure its done. I'll rack into secondary, and if its a fruit mead I'll rack into tertiary. I cold crash it during these stages as well to clear it up without using any additives.

 

[xsentinelx]

Thanks for the advice. Now that I am thinking about it, I did used closer to 9 lbs of honey. When I typed this out before, I was looking at a single 48oz jug of raw honey... I used three.

I will rack again to kick off a bit more fermentation before I even thing about bottling. Thanks for the calculator above too, I saved that!

 

[bernardsmith]

Three pounds of honey will give you a potential ABV of about 14% (starting gravity would have been about 1.105 or a little higher.