Batch Aging?

[eyebrau]

This will be my third mead, but I sort of Forrest Gumped my way into making the first two decent. This one will be more delicate I think, though (first was a roasted malt braggot, second was a melomel), and I want to do it right. So I have some questions.

Ok, it seems like there have been some revelations in mead making over the last few years based on reading current posts (and things like BOMM) versus searching and reading posts from a few years back, so I'm a little confused. Within the next couple weeks I'm going to make a 2 gallon batch of Earl Grey mead, using 5 lbs of clover honey, Nottingham yeast that I have on hand, and 8oz of strongly brewed Earl Grey tea (about 6 tsp of loose tea leaves in a tea ball steeped in hot water for 5 minutes) added into secondary.

Now, I'm a very patient dude with brewing. As an example, I had made a 5 gal batch of old ale that I managed to not crack a bottle of for 3 years; it's been 4.5 years now and I still have plenty of bottles. So I'm in no hurry on this mead.

I plan on using gallon bottles of purified/RO water. I know about adding nutrient at must creation, 2/3, and 1/3 break. I know I need to aerate heavily during the first 1/3 break of fermentation, then I understand I leave it alone until it's done fermenting, and then degas by stirring a couple times daily for a few days. Then I would rack to secondary. Does that sound right?

My questions are, what from there? Do I still need to rack multiple times through the aging process? Or is that not really necessary anymore? How long should I bulk age, how long should I bottle age? I'd like to carbonate (provided the ABV doesn't pass 12%, which I understand to be Notty's limit), will there be any yeast in suspension after however long I need to bulk age? Or do I need to add more yeast at bottling to carb? Any help or advice would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

 

[bernardsmith]

Never used RO water but yeast prefer /need minerals in the water. Always better to use spring water rather than engineered water. Mead and wine making is rather more organic than brewing's engineering approach.

The higher the starting gravity (and so the potential ABV) the longer the aging. Looks like you are looking for a mead with an ABV of about 11% . That will take longer to age than a mead at say, 5.5% ABV...

Regarding the tea - your call, of course, but I would brew a pot of tea so that the flavor is rich at two gallons. How much tea is that? Not sure but if a cup (8 oz) uses about 2 grams and there are 16 cups in a gallon, then 2 gallons requires not less than about 64 grams or about 2.25 oz which is significantly more than your 6 teaspoons.. but again , this is your call: you may only want a hint of the Early Grey flavor. In any event, I would use whatever protocol you use when making tea - boiling for the indicated time might be better than simply steeping the tea leaves ..

Racking? I would rack every two- three months and when I rack I would rack onto K-meta (this to minimize the effects of oxidation).

Murphy's Law states that if you need there to be viable yeast at the end of aging there won't be and if you really don't want any, there will be a large colony. You can always take a sample and add some sugar to see if this starts to ferment... Otherwise this is the kind of situation when you might consider adding some champagne yeast.

Insofar as you are making a metheglyn with the Earl Grey tea have you decided what honey might be enhanced with that flavor. EG tea has bergamot oil which comes from a variety of orange (I think)... Perhaps a good choice of honey might be orange blossom?

Good luck!

 

[eyebrau]

Meant tbsp not tsp, but you're right, that would probably not be nearly enough. I'll have to think on that. I want the bergamot to be evident, but not kick me in the face. And I don't want it to be too astringent either. I'll think on that.

Yeah, orange blossom honey would probably work really well. Unfortunately I'm in a budget for this one and have a source for some inexpensive clover honey. I know it's super mild and makes a super mild mead, but I figured that would allow the Earl Grey to shine through.

I'll do a bit more thinking on how much tea to use. Thanks!

 

[eyebrau]

Re: water, my tap water I believe is pretty hard, and certainly treated with chloramine (and I believe chlorine). What effect, if any, would this have on mead? I know it takes some maneuvering with beer brewing, but perhaps without the mash it's not important? Should I treat with campden like I would brewing to kill the chloramine?

Also, don't think I'm familiar with K-meta... what exactly does that do? Assuming I can find it at LHBS?

Thanks again!

 

[eyebrau]

Ok, so I took out the EG tea that I have, the box actually says 1 tsp per serving, so it must be pretty strong. Brewed a quick cup using that volume, and its quite good. So I mathed a bit... if it's 1 tsp per 8oz, and there are 256oz in 2gal, means there are 32 tsp needed for 2gal of tea. I definitely don't want it to be that strong (and astringent), so I want to cut it at least in half, so maybe 16 tsp? Could put it in a hop sack with a couple marbles to weight it down, and maybe brew 16oz of tea to put in secondary?

Basically I'm fermenting in two 1gal fermenters, leaving headspace for fermentation. I plan to rack to secondary (eventually) in other 1gal fermenters and want to essentially fill the headspace with tea and maybe water depending on how much I need. I realize it will lower my ABV a bit, but I want to make 2 full gallons of finished product and am more concerned about the taste than the ABV. Thoughts on any of this?

 

[bernardsmith]

If you brew beer you may have a fermenting bucket... and I would use that as my primary. And in the same sort of way that if you aim to bottle X gallons of beer you start with X+Y gallons where Y is the volume that you know will evaporate off + the volume that will be lost to trub + the volume lost when racking so with wine/mead making you start with (in this case 2 + gallons of water so that when you rack the first time you have 2 gallons plus a little more for racking a second time...

Now , this is just me and many others on this forum will snort at this idea but there really is no good reason that mead needs to compete with wine (or spirits ) in terms of the ABV. I routinely make session meads - I aim for an ABV of about 5 or 6% and that means I use only about 1.5 lbs of honey per gallon. That would be 3 lbs in 2 gallons (or perhaps 3.25 for the purposes of the volume I spoke of above) -and 3 lbs of honey is a wee bit less expensive than 5 lbs - especially if you are not sure that your recipe will produce the flavors you are looking for.

Tap water is for me not a first choice. Can you get spring water from your supermarket or perhaps your locale has free spring water (Our state park here in Saratoga has state sealed spring water which is IMO - incredible for both brewing and wine making - and for coffee too, but that, as they say, is another story.

 

[eyebrau]

I intended to get gallon jugs of "drinking water", but these all tend to say somewhere on them "produced using reverse osmosis" or something to that effect. I'll look closer at all my options.

Fair call on the strength... the honey opportunity I have that is meeting the budget is in a 5lb container. So maybe I do 3 gallons? That would be 1.67lb per gallon... I'm good with a session mead, for sure. So maybe I start with 3.25 gallons or so, using the 5 lbs of honey, and assume I'll lose a bit to racking. When I move to secondary there should be enough room to add tea. To which I'd need to add another 50% tea leaves, so I'd be at 24tsp. Does this make sense to you? Am I mathing all of this correctly?

Once again, thank you for your help!

Edit to add: if this is now around 7% ABV like I'm calculating (I guess that's not really a session), how long should I age for do you think?

 

[bernardsmith]

Aging is a matter of taste it and see. Depends on lots of factors - ambient temperature, the viability of the yeast, the nutrients, control (if needed ) of the pH (with honey it CAN drop very low- low enough to stall the fermentation.. ). But I guess I am a contrarian. Brewers all talk about the good sense of brewing 5 gallons rather than 1 gallon because you get so much more for the same effort, whereas I see making five 1 gallon batches as being relatively effortless in the world of mead and you get to hone your skills five times rather than botch a 5 gallon batch of mead that you will swallow rather than toss because of the price of the ingredients. Just sayin'..

Mead ain't beer and mead making ain't brewing. There is no necessity of such a thing as a "brew day" in mead making. In the last five days before I left for work at 8.00 AM I was able to start a gallon of nettle mead, an elderflower wine, a lapsang souchong mead, a gruit mead, a marshmallow mead. and a ginger beer...They all should be ready to enjoy at the start of August... If I think any are meh.. I have lost a gallon (actually, mead changes over time and after a year or two the tastes may be very different) and if I made a winner then I keep notes and I can make another gallon just as easily as I can bake another loaf of bread...And if it ain't so bad but ain't so good I can simply tweak what I did and try again.. Fifteen minutes to half an hour is all it takes to santize my tools and equipment, assemble and prepare all the ingredients, boil water for the teas, dissolve and aerate the honey, pitch the yeast at the optimum temperature to the clean up... Less is more, and more, in my opinion, is often less...

 

[eyebrau]

That is a pretty good point. I am planning on still using 1gal fermenters for secondary (I don't have a 3gal fermenter and obviously won't bulk age with airspace), so I could quite easily turn it into 3 different meads... maybe one Earl Grey, one straight mead (though the honey varietal is admittedly very light for this) and something else... maybe some fruit or something... hmm. You've given me more to think about. Thanks again for all your input!

 

[bernardsmith]

You are very welcome... but note , that I am a contrarian and others on this forum may have very different approaches. If you want some really interesting ideas about session meads I would really recommend you visit Groennfell Meadery's website. They publish their recipes - the secret is always the quality of the ingredients, not process or equipment or some hidden ingredient - and their meadmaker hosts an amusing 5 minute video segment on mead making (more than 80 short videos) on youtube. Their niche is session meads - to be quaffed like beer , not sipped like wine and for commercial reasons they work to go from honey to sales in 4-6 weeks.

 

[eyebrau]

I'm no purist. Honestly, I like the idea of session meads, particularly when I'm experimenting. Why wait to find out if something was a failure? I decided to do 1gal of Earl Grey mead, 1gal of chamomile mead, and 1gal of dandelion mead, through making tea of each and adding to secondary. I figure I can experiment easily with 1gal batches without too much loss, and adjust as necessary with future 3gal batches split similarly.

 

[bernardsmith]

I wonder if there are significant differences when you add a cuppa tea (as it were) to the secondary vs make a full volume tea and use that liquor to dilute the honey. Does the yeast create flavors when it transports the must through their cell walls to metabolize the sugars in the primary that are different from the alcohol acting as a solvent in the secondary, extracting flavors? More complexity, perhaps? That certainly is the case when you add oak, for example to the secondary vs adding oak to the primary... If this were me I would boil the flowers , make a tea and use that tea to dilute the honey. If this were me, I would blend the tea and the honey in a blender to aerate the must as boiling water removes all the O2 and yeast need O2 during the "lag stage".

 

[eyebrau]

I guess my thinking has been based on the idea that fermentation will blow the delicate aromas and flavors right out the airlock. I could be wrong, but that was where my head was at. Plus I don't want to overdo the tea flavors and, in the case of the Earl Grey, tea astringency. I want them to compliment, not dominate. But maybe I find out you're right? I dunno. For the base mead, at least, I want to keep it fairly simple.

 

[bernardsmith]

I say go for it...You are always free to experiment changing your protocol at a later time... Nothing is cast in iron or carved in stone.

 

[eyebrau]

Bernardsmith - quick question, asking you not just because of all your previous help, but your specific noting of doing lower ABV meads. I'm not sure how long is ok to leave a hydromel like this on the lees. This has been in primary for 14 days today. I pulled a sample and got a hydrometer reading of 1.000 and I'm going to check again in a couple days. I calculated about 7% ABV. Assuming the gravity doesn't change in the next couple days, should I rack off the lees? Or should I wait a bit? I'll be out of town next weekend, but the following weekend I could rack it, that would be 4 weeks total. Is that reasonable? Note that this is in a 6gal plastic bucket, and volume is about 3.25gal. Pulled the sample from a spigot, so no (or minimal, I guess) oxygen added. Secondary will be 3 separate 1gal fermenters, so no head space. Should I wait or rack it this week? Again, assuming fermentation is done.

Thanks!

 

[madscientist451]

A week or two on the yeast in a bucket won't make much of a difference.
I've left white wine on the original yeast for 6+ months with no issues.
Having said that, if you have time, and its done, I'd go ahead and rack it to another vessel.

 

[madscientist451]

My questions are, what from there? Do I still need to rack multiple times through the aging process? Or is that not really necessary anymore? How long should I bulk age, how long should I bottle age? I'd like to carbonate (provided the ABV doesn't pass 12%, which I understand to be Notty's limit),
Thanks in advance!

Let taste be your guide. When its drinkable, drink it. If you think it would benefit from some aging, let it sit. The tea is being used as a flavor ingredient; when the base mead is acceptable to your taste, perform some blending trials with the tea to see how much to add to get the flavor profile you are looking for.

 

[eyebrau]

It definitely tastes young, and it certainly needs some more time, I was just concerned that there may be diminishing returns, or even straight up negatives, in keeping it in primary. If two more weeks isn't going to end the world, I'm probably just going to wait it out and rack then. Thanks for the input.

 

[bernardsmith]

I think those who talk about "off flavors" because of lees are making commercial amounts of wine or mead where the weight of the mead on the dead yeast cells is enough to burst them open; AND, where those wine /mead makers adopt a more passive approach to their wine making: what you want to do perhaps is stir those lees up into the body of the mead. The living yeast cells will take the opportunity to clean up the chemical messes they have made. Rather than produce off flavors, you are likely to find that sur lie (allowing wine to age on lees) results in more desirable complex flavors... but one month or perhaps two at the very outside is enough..

 

[eyebrau]

Alright, that makes sense. I'll stir up the lees today then. Thanks again for your help!