Braggot tastes like ASS!!!!

[Newsman]

Hey, all... I tried to make a cysee with 5 gallons of apple juice and about 3# of honey. I fermented it at 60* and used yeast energizer/nutrient about every other day for about two weeks before I ran out of nutrient/energizer. After about a month I brought the temp up to about 70* for a couple weeks and now have cold-crashed it. I took a sample the other day and it tastes NASTY. NO flavor, and no "rocket fuel" either. Just nasty.
Should I add a can of apple juice concentrate and/or honey for flavor or toss it or what??? This is my first attempt at anything "mead-like" and I hate to throw it out, but I don't think this is something that will age out.

 

[Maylar]

You neglected to mention malt. Is this a braggot or a cyser?

Yeast? OG? FG?

 

[Redlantern]

your title - is that a normal off flavor?

 

[soccerdad]

Who really knows what ass tastes like anyway? That's like the Styrofoam thing ... you know that rice cakes taste like Styrofoam ... because what? You eat Styrofoam?

 

[Newsman]

Sorry, its a cyser not a braggot, and I have no idea either starting or final gravity. I used EC 118 yeast, two packs

 

[Newsman]

your title - is that a normal off flavor?

Don't know. This is my first cyser

 

[bob1852]

Ec1118 will take 5g of apple juice and 3lbs of honey to Sahara desert dry...

If you add more sugar now, it'll still probably ferment out until you reach ~18+% abv.

Your best bet would be to stabilize with sorbate and campden and add honey or apple juice concentrate to taste...

 

[kh54s10]

your title - is that a normal off flavor?

Who really knows what ass tastes like anyway? That's like the Styrofoam thing ... you know that rice cakes taste like Styrofoam ... because what? You eat Styrofoam?

Don't know. This is my first cyser

This is getting hilarious!!!

I am sure that there are some who know what that particular off flavor tastes like......

 

[Maylar]

Well, 3 lbs of honey in 5 gallons won't amount to much honey flavor. You should have doubled that. And if you fed a low gravity cyser with a ton of nutrients you could have overfed the yeast. Without gravity readings it's impossible to know, but I'd bet your ferment was done in just a few days. You could be tasting the extra nutrients you added that the yeast didn't use. And EC1118 will take cyser totally dry, and a fast ferment blows flavors out the airlock - the combination won't be nice.

 

[hotwatermusic]

This is getting hilarious!!!

I am sure that there are some who know what that particular off flavor tastes like......

Man would I like to jump in but I don't want to get this thread shut down before the guy gets his help...
I'll be back

 

[fossilcat]

I agree with Maylar, although I would have added 5x the amount of honey you did. You should really get a hydrometer - it's the only way you'll know there's activity for sure. Keep the temp at 70, add a couple pounds of honey, measure the SG, wait a couple of days, measure the SG again. If the hydrometer drops, then you still have a viable ferment. You might have to wait a few more days for the drop, and hope that it does drop. Reduce your temp to 65. As the hydrometer approaches 1.000, consider adding more honey. In my opinion, you'll need a couple more installments of a few more lbs of honey each to eat up all that nutrient. Don't add any more nutrient.

1118 is hardy stuff. It is one of the strains recommended to restart stuck fermentations so hopefully you still have potential in your must. Also, all that nutrient with so little alcohol production creates a pretty good incubator for raising nasties. Let's hope that hasn't happened.

The first couple cysers I made tasted pretty bad initially, but after a year they tasted quite good.

 

[Newsman]

Thanks guys. I'll give that a shot adding more honey that is. I do have a hydrometer but I've gotten into the habit of not bothering because I normally make cider and it is pretty good easy to know when it's done I've done it so much. I don't really care about the alcohol content, I just want something tasty.

 

[Maylar]

With a cyser I typically like to split the sugar between honey and cider. About 1.5 lbs of honey per gallon, initial gravity about 1.100.

 

[bernardsmith]

With a cyser I typically like to split the sugar between honey and cider. About 1.5 lbs of honey per gallon, initial gravity about 1.100.

Adding 3 lbs of honey to 5 gallons of apple juice (juice pressed for cider or juice sold to be drunk as a soft drink?) means that you are not really making a cyser which I think technically must have at least half the sugars coming from honey but in your recipe only 20 points of the total (about 70 points , since 50 points of the sugar is coming from the juice) is from the honey - so you are chaptalizing the juice to increase it's SG and not in fact making a true cyser.
But that said, assuming the yeast has plowed through the sugars and your wine is dry what you are tasting is the flavor of apples and honey absent every last molecule of sugar. The question is whether you really like a dry apple wine with an ABV of about 9% which may have a very low pH given how honey behaves when it is fermented and given the acidity of apple juice made for the soft drink market. What you may want to try doing is back sweetening your wine. The sweetness may help balance the alcohol (and acidity). But to bottle back sweetened wines you need to stabilize them to prevent the yeast from treating the sugar you are adding as more food for them. To stabilize you need to add K-meta AND K-sorbate and then add the sweetener. This added sweetner may help bring forward the flavors you are looking for...

 

[Newsman]

Thanks. I'm going to add more honey and raise the temp back to about 70 F. I have a hydrometer sitting in the fermemter, so we'll see what happens.

 

[RevKev]

Thanks. I'm going to add more honey and raise the temp back to about 70 F. I have a hydrometer sitting in the fermemter, so we'll see what happens.

I would personally pull of samples into a graduated cylinder rather than risk putting the hydrometer into the fermenting vessel. If you cleaned and sanitized this may be a non issue but still you're risking contamination and if it breaks... Well you get the picture...

On the note of the off flavor if you can do your best to describe it rather than ASS. It could help us maybe discern a cause.. nasty can mean a lot of things.

 

[Newsman]

Yeah. I cleaned and sanitized it before I put it in. Not really sure how to describe the taste.

 

[GeneDaniels1963]

Sometimes you just have to man-up and dump the mess. Based on your ingredients and taste description, I think you are throwing good money after bad by trying to fix it. If it is no where close to "fit to drink" now, I doubt it will improve that much no matter what you do.

my two-cents worth

 

[bernardsmith]

Sometimes you just have to man-up and dump the mess. Based on your ingredients and taste description, I think you are throwing good money after bad by trying to fix it. If it is no where close to "fit to drink" now, I doubt it will improve that much no matter what you do.

my two-cents worth

Sorry . I gotta disagree. IMO, the only time you want to dump a batch is if it is so badly made that it is not salvageable. This batch may be very salvageable. We have no idea what the problem is or what "NASTY" might mean ... So suggesting that the OP dumps down the drain 5 gallons of what may be a perfectly good apple wine may not be the best approach. Pouring a glass and tasting with different additions of sugar should surely be the first thing to try, No? There is no reason why "NASTY" should suggest that the cider has been infected in ways that make it undrinkable... Even a Brett infected cider can be delicious.

 

[JJack887]

Dry anything requires at least a year of aging.

 

[Newsman]

I put another 46 or so ounces of wildflower honey in it yesterday. I'll see about getting another jar of honey this weekend after I get paid

 

[bernardsmith]

Okay - but what you are doing by adding honey to the carboy is two things - 1 you are increasing the honey flavor - NOT the sweetness because the yeast are likely able to ferment all that honey, and 2 because the yeast will ferment all that honey you are increasing the ABV of your cyser. Neither may make the cyser taste any better IF IF the problem is that it is too dry for what you prefer. My suggestion was to pour a glass or two and add sugar (or honey) to sweeten the contents of the glass and drink those samples to see if a sweeter mead will make that nasty flavor disappear. The yeast will not have time to ferment the honey you add to those glasses. IF IF the problem is that the mead is too dry then you need to stabilize the mead (cold crash, rack, repeat, repeat and then add both K-meta and k-sorbate) and then add honey or sugar to sweeten the mead. IF the problem is that the mead is too dry for you then you want to bench test the mead to determine precisely how much sugar you need to add to the 5 gallons...

 

[passedpawn]

Ec1118 will take 5g of apple juice and 3lbs of honey to Sahara desert dry...

If you add more sugar now, it'll still probably ferment out until you reach ~18+% abv.

Your best bet would be to stabilize with sorbate and campden and add honey or apple juice concentrate to taste...

This seemed like the most sensible solution.

 

[phendog]

Just blew home brew out of my nose reading the thread title. Sorry, no wisdom to offer here.

 

[fossilcat]

So, Newsman added some nutrients:

used yeast energizer/nutrient about every other day for about two weeks

But while this statement does not tell us how much, it does give me the feeling that it's waaaay too much for 1.050 apple + 3 lbs of honey to use. It's possible that the nutrient in solution is contributing to the bad taste.

It's also possible that the additional honey will improve the taste through further fermentation by processing the excess nutrient. But while you'd need a significant amount of honey to effectively influence the taste (under the assumption that the excess nutrient is contributing to the bad taste), I think that 46 oz is quite a bit more than you needed - that's a little less than 9 lbs. What's that? another 8% alcohol if it ferments out? Plus the original 6 or 7%? Yikes.

Hopefully, Newsman, you took a hydrometer reading when you added it? You should know for sure whether or not your must is fermentable.

The alcohol/CO2 smell of a happy must can sometimes be overwhelmingly bad if you don't expect it. Stressed yeast give out off tastes. Everything we do from rehydration, temp control, pH control, SNA, degassing, etc... we do to reduce stress. Happy yeast yield a tasty mead sooner, others age to finally give a decent tasting mead. Maybe the smell you're smelling isn't as unusally bad for a mead as you may think. Maybe yours will just need to age. It'll take a while longer with all that alcohol you now have though. Wait for it to ferment out, rack, and plan on bulk aging. If 5 gallons seems like too much to babysit, save a couple gallons at least. It's a good learning experience. Taste test every couple of months with an eye dropper until it taste good or your tolerance gives out.

 

[Maylar]

So, Newsman added some nutrients:

But while this statement does not tell us how much, it does give me the feeling that it's waaaay too much for 1.050 apple + 3 lbs of honey to use. It's possible that the nutrient in solution is contributing to the bad taste.

Yuh, that's what I was thinking too. Should've been about 1.07 OG which with staggered nutrients probably fermented out in 4-5 days.

It's also possible that the additional honey will improve the taste through further fermentation by processing the excess nutrient. But while you'd need a significant amount of honey to effectively influence the taste (under the assumption that the excess nutrient is contributing to the bad taste), I think that 46 oz is quite a bit more than you needed - that's a little less than 9 lbs. What's that? another 8% alcohol if it ferments out? Plus the original 6 or 7%? Yikes.

46 oz is just under 3 lbs. Added to the 3 he already had plus 1.050 or so cider he'd be at about 1.090 total. I think that's a good place to be. Hopefully the yeast consumes those extra nutrients.

 

[fossilcat]

46 oz is just under 3 lbs. Added to the 3 he already had plus 1.050 or so cider he'd be at about 1.090 total. I think that's a good place to be. Hopefully the yeast consumes those extra nutrients.

Dang, you're right. I thought quart instead of pint when I was dividing by 16oz. I'm lost without my tables in front of me.

And I agree (now that the haze has cleared): he's in a much better place with adding just the <3 lbs.

 

[Newsman]

I bought another bottle of honey today. Costco,has (I think) 80 oz of clover honey for $13. Haven't added it. Yet. Thinking I,may give it a few more days. I Dint actually read the hydrometer, but not much was visible when I added the 48 oz of honey (weight, not volume)

 

[Maylar]

I would wait until what you've added already ferments out and see how it tastes.

 

[Newsman]

Yes. I put that honey in a few days ago. Hopefully its been transformed into alcohol by now. I'm going to get a taste now

 

[Newsman]

No real taste/flavor now, just slightly sour with a bit of alcohol heat.

 

[Newsman]

Should I add apple juice concentrate, honey or both?