Beginning meadist.... possibly confused

[Adam Davis]

Hello!

I'm making my first mead and just need to know if someone can tell me if I'm on the right track. I got very limited help from the person at the homebrew store.

In a 6.5 gallon glass carboy, I mixed:

3.5 gallons of boiled water (tap)
18 lbs of honey

I was told to take a gravity reading at this point and it was 1.132

I hydrated 1 packet Lalvin D47 per the instruction on the package and pitched it. At this time, 2.5 tsp Fermaid K and 1.5 tsp yeast energizer were added per the advice of the shop owner.

Bubbles appeared after 15 hours and were approximately 13 seconds apart.

After 4 days, there was little to no bubbles. I took a gravity reading which was 1.120.

After getting advice from the same person, I added 1 tsp yeast Energizer and 1 tsp ferm K.

Bubbles reappeared at a frequency of every 15 seconds.

After 9 days, my gravity is reading at 1.110.

Does all of this seem to jive or am I over here making a big batch of nothing? Someone help. Please.

 

[CKuhns]

Hello Adam and welcome. 1.132 OG (Original Gravity) with D47 is certainly doable. But to be successful does require a lot of care and feeding. The yeast are likely stressed and struggling to chew through the sugar you gave them.

With that said 3.5 gallons water and 18 pounds of honey should have given you something near the 1.132 OG you mentioned. Assuming you have a total volume of 5 gallons. This is a "big" (high +17% ABV potential) mead if you ferment dry to 1.000.

Honey is naturally nutrient deficient and boiling the water sterilised it. You need to add some additional nutrients. You are nearing the point roughly 9% alcohol where nutrients will not help much, but not yet there. Look up and follow one of the SNA (Starggered Nutrient Additions) at this point in the process i would suggest TOSNA 2.0 is what i would suggest. Then add the approriate amount of additional nutrients and shake or stir the must. Also consider the temp your fermenting at. If not near 65 deg f then bring it to a room in the house that is near that. D47 will lag or slow a bit under 60 and can throw off flavors if over 68.

After the suggestions above, let it do its thing...

I suspect this ferment is going to require some time to complete. Probably another 6 to 8 weeks, then rack off the lees and let it "finish".

Unfortunately due to the start you had it will require a bit of age. Probably 12 months or more before that "hot" alcohol taste will mellow. You will know when you taste it, but dont be discouraged it will get better with time.

Good luck, let us know how it comes along.

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi Adam_Davis and welcome. Was there a reason that you used as much honey as that to make the volume of mead you selected? Potentially, you are asking the yeast to make you a mead at about 17% alcohol by volume (ABV). Most table wines are about 12 -14% (a beer or cider might be around 4-5% ABV, and liqueurs might be around 30-40%.). Is your mead intended to be sipped, or drunk by the glass?

With such a high concentration of alcohol your mead is likely to need a considerable amount of time to age to remove the sharp edges, so you won't know what you may have done right or wrong for a year or more. That said I would have thought that if this is the first mead you are making you would want to have considered making a mead that might be ready in a month or two so that you might use what you have learned to improve your technique with the next batch or two (or twenty), but a mead at 17% ABV might need to be set aside for considerably longer... (of course, a simple method to reduce the stress on the yeast might be to dilute the batch by adding enough water to double the volume or at least to increase the total volume so that you were fermenting the equivalent of about 3lbs of honey/gallon (total volume) and that would give you a nominal specific gravity at the start of 1.105 which translates into a potential ABV of about 13- 14%). But you can make a delicious mead using 1.5 lbs of honey to make 1 gallon (about 5% ABV) and you might then carbonate this as you bottle, and you might then ferment such a beer-like mead at higher temperatures to encourage the yeast to produce flavors that add complexity to the mead to make up for the lack of intense flavors due to the small volume of honey per gallon.

 

[Adam Davis]

Hello. There was no specific reason at the time for adding that much honey. I basically took the advice of the man at the homebrew store and he said to "add about 15 lbs of honey, more if you want it sweeter". I didn't learn about alcohol tolerances or a mead calculator or anything until after this batch had begun sadly. He made it seem so straight forward and easy that I was certain I knew what was gonna happen.

This batch has become a bit of a science experiment after some hands on help. The overload of honey caused my pH to be off. Also my temps dipped to under 52°F overnight, which effectively killed alot of my yeast.

The only yeast I had on hand was some Mangrove Jacks M05 so I pitched that and gave it a teaspoon of nutrients today.

Many many more bubbles now. Probably going to be some super dry stuff tho. Might be total junk.

Lesson learned. They have this stuff on the internet for a reason I guess.

 

[Miraculix]

Low temperatures don't kill yeast. It slows yeast down, but they will restart, once temperature is higher again.

You now mixed multiple yeast? Wasn't necessary.

Look up the bomm thread or follow the tosna 2.0 protocol for next time.

I suggest letting the current batch alone, just agitate the yeast on a daily basis if possible. It is most likely going to finish sweet, giving the slow start and lack of nutrients and the high og. Just let it finish, let it sediment, rack of the lees into a vessel with no headspace, taste some, and then forget about it for a year, before tasting again. Alternatively, you can bottle directly, if it has cleared completely, once finished.

 

[Adam Davis]

I did change brewing areas and now have a temp of 69-71°F so should be good. I hope

 

[bernardsmith]

I wonder if the fellow in your local home brew store assumed that you were going to make 5 gallons. And 15 lbs of honey to make 5 gallons is a very typical amount. Brewers have a fetish for 5 gallon batches, but you drink beer by the pint ...a good mead you might drink by the glass. And while brewers tend to invoke the mantra that it takes the same amount of time and effort to brew 5 gallons of beer as it does to brew 1, I would argue that for a novice mead maker, trying to swallow 5 gallons of poorly made mead (at the price of honey per pound) is a great deal harder than swallowing the same mead when the volume is a single gallon - AND if you make five single gallons sequentially you can learn a hell of a lot more about mead making than you can making the same 5 gallons once... But I am a strong advocate of micro batches rather than folk trying to replicate what commercial meaderies do (Heck! even those of us who grow our own vegetables imagine we are farmers and hoe rows large enough to feed a small village. Small is good.)

 

[Maylar]

(at the price of honey per pound)

This. Mead isn't cheap to make. A 12 lb gallon of quality honey can easily cost $100 US. I made 1 gallon batches for a long time before committing to a 5 gallon batch, and only did the big batch because I had Ryan Carlson (Squatchy) e-holding my hand.

 

[Miraculix]

I also strongly suggest to make smaller batches for the above reasons it's also more fun

My biggest batch was about 12 litres, that felt like a bathtub to me after all the 1g batches before

My next one will also possibly be small again, small bomm, stabilised and backseeetened.

 

[bernardsmith]

Totally agree with Maylar. Let's say that 15 pounds of honey costs $100 (that's about $6 or $7 a pound) and let's say you are making 5 gallons of a traditional mead (honey, yeast, nutrient and water) and you cork 20 bottles*, at $5 a bottle (I am ignoring the cost of equipment and the price of yeast and nutrients etc) that is not expensive but 20 bottles that are not good enough to give away as gifts to family or friends or good enough to share with others, well that ain't cheap and it is even more "costly" if you have another 4 or 5 bottles (see the asterisk - coz you might be able to squeeze 25 bottles from 5 gallons) you set aside to check every couple of months whether the batch has adequately aged) and you find that given your processes and the stresses the yeast underwent and the volatile alcohols the yeast produced because of those stresses that you cannot really enjoy your harvest for a year or more.

Now, wine (mead) improves with age and allowing a wine to age a year - or more - should never be an issue but it is one thing to age a good mead or wine so that with aging the flavors and aromas improve as all kinds of micro processes take place in the bottle but it is quite another to put aside a mead or wine that is not good to see if it might improve if left untouched. In my opinion a good mead improves with age, a poor mead simply gets older... In other words, if a mead is really not good to drink come time to bottle it won't be much better after 12 months. A pig's ear is a pig's ear. If a mead is fine to drink when you bottle after 12 months it will be so much better. True, there are surprising exceptions and some really awful meads and wines turn into beautiful swans after three or four years, but you don't bet on the hoof beats you hear belong to a unicorn...

 

[Adam Davis]

Thanks everyone for the recommendations and advice. Luckily for me, the bulk of my materials were free for this batch as a friend was going to throw it all away. The only real money wasted was the nutrients, as even the honey was supplied for me to take it off his hands. I brewed 5 gallons because the equipment given to me was adequate for 5 gallon batches. I didnt even think to do a smaller batch. I will certainly be purchasing new equipment and brewing in small batches going forward. Thanks for all the help again.

 

[Adam Davis]

And yes..... honey is expensive. However, in my search for ingredients to continue learning how to homebrew, I've learned that the honey supplied was not of the best quality either. Essentially just over here making junk mead with junk honey for now. Luckily it wasn't a waste of good honey.

 

[Adam Davis]

Hello all,

So this disastrous batch has been a major learning experience (new 1 gallon batch started and going very well)..... However, I am determined to see this chaos through to the end even if only for practice.

TOSNA 2.0 was followed until 1/3 sugar depletion upon restart of the stalled fermentation. Fermentation is ongoing but very slow it seems.

The gravity is dropping very slowly still and I am wondering if I should rerack it to another vessel so that I can avoid as much bad flavor from the lees and sediment as possible. What is the recommendation surrounding this? Will fermentation continue if it has not finished? I predict this fermentation to last 2-3 months sadly. The starting gravity was 1.132. SG after 28 days is 1.077.

 

[CKuhns]

I would not be too concerned about the lees, in fact some yeast and the associated lees produce some desirable flavors. But typically is only noted after a number of months on them.

The idea of racking from the lees is a pretty good one. It has helped a few i had "kickstart" a slow ferment. Alternately certainly wouldnt hurt to stir the lees to get them suspended again once in a while.

 

[Maylar]

One meadmaker I know says racking too early is like taking the majority of your yeast army out of the fight. Stir the lees daily and keep the little buggers in suspension where they can do their job.

 

[Seamonkey84]

One meadmaker I know says racking too early is like taking the majority of your yeast army out of the fight. Stir the lees daily and keep the little buggers in suspension where they can do their job.

+1
I start everything in buckets, then I stir and transfer everything (except fruit bag or solids) to a large carboy before it’s completely done. Then I don’t rack off the lees until it’s done and completely clear. Then let it age and clear again in “secondary”.

 

[videojunkie1208]

Hello all,

So this disastrous batch has been a major learning experience (new 1 gallon batch started and going very well)..... However, I am determined to see this chaos through to the end even if only for practice.

TOSNA 2.0 was followed until 1/3 sugar depletion upon restart of the stalled fermentation. Fermentation is ongoing but very slow it seems.

The gravity is dropping very slowly still and I am wondering if I should rerack it to another vessel so that I can avoid as much bad flavor from the lees and sediment as possible. What is the recommendation surrounding this? Will fermentation continue if it has not finished? I predict this fermentation to last 2-3 months sadly. The starting gravity was 1.132. SG after 28 days is 1.077.

My advice? put this on a shelf somewhere, and leave it there for about 3-6 months (checking the airlock regularly). Then come back to it. the yeast will have had time to work their way slowly through the honey. I used to make 2.5 gallon batches once a year by doing almost exactly as you describe (before learning about nutrients and the science of mead making). Some years were better than others, but it almost always made a tasty product at then end.

 

[dwhite60]

I recommend HIGHLY, Ken Schramm's book, "The Complete Mead Maker".
It's thorough but enjoyable to read. Ken has won many awards for his meads.