Am I doing this right?

[TotalMeadNoob]

Hi guys,
So this is my first post on this website.
First brew ever, not a fan of beers except for Belgian double or triple bock, and I love honey so I thought I'd make a Mead.
Some things you should know about me:
-I don't use any chemicals like tablets, I prefer to make traditional if possible (ancient folks did it without tablets too right?)
-I don't have a hydrometer (yet) so I didn't count when I made the mixture but I don't care much about the alcohol content I'm fine with lower as well.

Now, my ingredients are a sachet basic Bread yeast, 250 ml of honey (not sure what kind the label is Greek, bought in Athens), and basic tap water (a sin, I know now ...)
I filled a 1litre top flip bottle with it till the neck (left some space) without any heating, and I've shaken it vigorously for about 5 mins, then degassed it every 2-3 hours to avoid bottle bomb.
That was three days ago (4th December).
Its been bubbling away happily since and
I've now put a small amount of nutrients (mix of 3 spoons honey, pinch cinnamon and 1 teaspoon fresh Mandarin juice) to keep the yeast going.
So I'm planning to rack it a few times on the 18th (after about two weeks of fermenting) and infuse another mixture of honey/cinnamon, and bottle it two days after.

Any suggestions or advice if I'm doing something wrong here? The smell is already pretty good from today (already an alcohol smell) so I think I'm doing it correct?
Should this be drinkable by Xmas? New years? 😮
I'll follow whatever advice is the most fool-proof, and I'm already thinking about making more batches in the future. 😀
Sorry for any retarded questions but I'm a quick learner and any advice on what to do next is welcome!

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi TotalMeadNoob - and welcome.
While I try to avoid making meads and wines without the benefit of what we now know , and while the historical record would show that wines and meads made in the past were often abject failures because of the lack of underlying knowledge that those making the wines and meads possessed, I don't see any real problem with your project. Doing a quick and dirty conversion in my head it looks like your mead is going to have a potential ABV of about 4 or 5%.. But that said,

My one concern is your assumption that honey and cinnamon and citric acid (from the mandarin juice) will act as "nutrient" for the honey... Honey is notoriously nutrient poor when it comes to providing the sterols that yeast require.. Yeast need nitrogen and amino acids and vitamin B... and if you don't want to provide your must with a well balanced amalgam of those missing elements you should then consider boiling some bread yeast in water and feeding the dead yeast cells to the yeast. Dead yeast cells contain the key ingredients that living yeast need to repair their own cells, bud (reproduce) and enable sugars to be transported through their cell walls.

Honey also has no chemical buffers to prevent the acidity from rising through the roof during fermentation, so you really don't want to further stress the yeast by adding citric acid (mandarin juice) before the yeast has converted all the available sugars to CO2 and alcohol.

Will your mead be ready to drink in 2 or 3 weeks... If you are asking will most or all the sugars be converted to alcohol in 3 weeks, depending on the temperature, the amount of nutrient the yeast have and the viability of the yeast, the answer is probably, yes. If you are asking will your mead be lip-smackingly wonderful.. It will be drinkable... Bread yeast is cultivated to produce CO2 under anaerobic conditions to make dough rise... and it is cultivated with the idea that after 2 -24 hours it is going to be killed in the oven. Wine yeasts are cultivated to highlight or diminish certain flavors and aromas in the sugars and fruits and they are grown to produce alcohol for pleasurable drinking - so to offer a metaphor using bread yeast to make a mead is a little like using nails to make a drawer...rather than dovetail joints. Can you make a drawer using nails? Sure... Would you want to use that drawer? Probably if you had no other option... But if dovetailed joints are easily available, why would you choose to use nails... Wine yeast are nicely chiseled dovetail joints.. Bread yeast are 1 inch nails...

 

[GHBWNY]

-I don't have a hydrometer (yet) so I didn't count when I made the mixture but I don't care much about the alcohol content I'm fine with lower as well.

Everyone else can comment on process since I've never done a mead, but I'll say one thing about a hydrometer: the sooner you get one, the better. It's not just for measuring alcohol content; it's main purpose is to help you determine when your fermentation is done. You take an OG (orig. gravity) reading just before pitching yeast. Then, anywhere from 10 days - 2 weeks, you take an FG (final gravity) reading to determine how far along fermentation is. This (lower) reading should be noted, and in a few days, you take another reading and if it is the same as the first FG, then your active fermentation is done and you can consider bottling without the fear of bottle bombs. I let mine sit in primary even longer and take a 3rd FG reading a few days after the 2nd just to make sure the numbers are stable. For most beers, sitting in primary for this long is beneficial to cleaning up the yeast and helping the beer clear.

 

[TotalMeadNoob]

Thanks for the quick answers, I'll add some dead yeast then, see what happens.
How much should I add?

 

[Vex3521]

Will it be drinkable, possibly.. but the finish on it is up in the air as others have noted. To arguing bread yeast, you can get a good mead with it so honestly I wouldn't worry about its use on your mead. One of the more popular recipes I know uses it, https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=49106&highlight=ancient+orange So really I think it's fine to work with in some cases. Some meads I might not use it but I think it does depend on the results you're looking for as well. I have a gallon of the JAOM running right now and honestly can't picture deviating from recipe so bread yeast it is! And it's doing a great job.

If it's as clear as you want then I would bottle if it isn't I would hold out before bottling but that's a personal for me.

 

[CanadianJesus]

I am also a Total Mead Noob so this is just my 2 cents. Brewing equipment is actually not very expensive at all and you really don't need that much. The bulk of the cost is in glass carboys. Wine yeast costs about what bread yeast costs. The honey itself proved the most difficult for me to procure and cost nearly what I paid for all of my equipment.

Do a google search in your area for Homebrew Supply stores, Make Your Own Wine stores and such. If you can't find anything that you're able to get to yourself all of this stuff is available online.

Good luck with your brew, even if it doesn't taste like champagne the educational experience will still make it worthwhile!

 

[TotalMeadNoob]

The bulk of the cost is in glass carboys.

Hmm.. I honestly believe only Americans use those glass carboys, here in Europe we use wine barrels and I could get a barrel for about 80 euros, not bad, and I'd be able to just let it sit without worrying if my mead will paint the walls..
Actually I might have seen one of those "carboys" you speak of but it was more like an oversized carafe, not even a gallon like your standard ones.
I'd be better off buying a barrel no?
Would it affect the quality of the mead too much?
To be honest I've never tasted mead before so I'm really not gonna be picky about quality at the moment, I might make the investment in a few months though.
Anyway thanks for sharing your thoughts Jesus, cheers. 🍻

 

[TotalMeadNoob]

Vex, thanks for the link that recipe is perfect for my next batch!
For now I'll have to do with dividing the must to 1l top flips but if it works why not, this recipe seems to be low maintenance so it'll do fine.
I could start experimenting with different Bread yeasts and *gasp* chocolate... Strawberry... Banana...
While I'm at it, let's make a cookie Mead!

 

[bernardsmith]

The thing about barrels is that they are not always very easy to sanitize; they need to be kept filled and yet the loss of wine to evaporation is not small; they maintain the flavors of their fermentation history - which may or may not be something you want and maintenance can be a problem because if they dry out they may leak.. For the home -winemaker barrels are a luxury and we might use oak chips and cubes and the like to add to our wines rather than add our wines to oak barrels. In Europe too, however, I think glass carboys are pretty ubiquitous from 4 L to 23 L and larger... In fact I have seen beautifully shaped demijohns (carboys) whereas here ours are more functional than attractive...

 

[Vex3521]

Vex, thanks for the link that recipe is perfect for my next batch!
For now I'll have to do with dividing the must to 1l top flips but if it works why not, this recipe seems to be low maintenance so it'll do fine.
I could start experimenting with different Bread yeasts and *gasp* chocolate... Strawberry... Banana...
While I'm at it, let's make a cookie Mead!

Glad to help! Can't wait to hear how experiments go also and yes it's really low maintenance so I think it's a good one to work with, besides It's awesome so bonus!

 

[TotalMeadNoob]

Just today I was strolling in the neighborhood and came across a wineshop that supposedly specializes in homebrews.
All excited I walked in with my head up asking for yeast, wine yeast, beer yeast, any type she could offer me.
She then looked at me like I have a screw loose and said " if you need yeast, try the supermarkets"...
Well gosh why didn't I think of that sooner?!
The dumbest people open shops around here.
At least she had those fancy 700ml glass bottles I like so I didn't leave empty handed. 😀