A new adventure.

[BrewStooge]

Good evening all, just went down to check on my first batch of mead that was started last week and wanted to get some insights. The recipe was nothing complicated, just honey, water, some yeast food and yeast. OG was figured to be around 1.14. Anyhow, I noticed there wasn't any visible activity and investigated further. Checked gravity and smell, I notice it still smelled slightly like sulfur from the tablets with none of the normal CO2 that I'm accustomed to with beer. Gravity was still sitting as high as ever too.

The yeast was an 'activator' pack from Wyeast, 4184. I didn't really get a proper started done before pitching it but did give it a few hours to wake up and swell.

TL;DR, how long should a mead usually take to start up? Will there be as active a ferm as beer? If I potentially poisoned the yeast with campden tabs (it sat overnight first, but not a full 24+ hours as we've done with wine) would Montrachet yeast be a reasonable booster since we've got a bunch of that around?

 

[Zbay]

I am not an expert by any means, however I normally get airlock activity with in a few hours. All I do is rehydrate dried yeast and toss it into the mix. On my first batch I was freaking out because I didn't see any airlock activity but I check the lid of my fermentor bucket and it wasn't closed all the way. A few taps with the palm of my hand had that bad boy fixed and it went back to producing bubbles in my airlock. I'm not sure about the strain of yeast you are speaking about, so I can't really offer any advice there.
Good luck
Zbay

 

[StitchMySmile]

How big is your batch and how big is your fermenter? I used a six and a half gallon fermenter for my five gallon batch and, I'm assuming, because of the extra space I didn't see airlock activity for almost 36 hours. Now, three weeks later, my mead is sitting at 12 percent abv, and I expect another two percent due to the yeast I used. Lalvin 71b. I'm new myself but I thought this might be relevant.

 

[BrewStooge]

How big is your batch and how big is your fermenter?

Shouldn't be a factor here, 3 gal in a ~3.5gal carboy so there's not a lot of extra room.

 

[GinKings]

1.140 is a pretty high OG. Wyeast 4184 only ferments to 11ish% ABV, so your FG would be around 1.055, which is gonna be really, really sweet. You might want to consider pitching a different yeast to lower your FG. It should also help with the "why isn't my mead fermenting" issue.

1.140 is pretty high and can be stressful to the yeast. I'd make sure it's well oxygenated and has proper nutrients. What type of "yeast food" did you use? Did you pitch your yeast a day, or so, after you added the campden tablets? Temp?

 

[Fathand]

Mead fermentation is quite different than that of beer as others have said. So the management must be treated differently as well.

Honey does not have the proper nutrients that exist in wort so those nutrients must be added. Do a search for "staggered nutrients" here and on the GotMead site.

Also adding oxygen to the must is key. Which unlike beer can be added several days into fermentation without risk of oxidation.

 

[BrewStooge]

What type of "yeast food" did you use? Did you pitch your yeast a day, or so, after you added the campden tablets? Temp?

The food as it is was the 'energizer' and 'nutrient' from LD Carlson, I don't recall the exact amount (it's noted downstairs) but scaled it from a 1gallon recipe. The yeast was added about 20 hours or so after the capden, which is a bit shorter than I normally would, but didn't want to forget after work so I pitched it before. Temp has been in the low 60's, so far, trying to bump it up a couple degrees without going overboard.