Brett Lacto mead project need sugar help

[seth8530]

Holy moley of changes! I went into the fermentation room and noticed one of the funk meads necks had a ring of bubbels in it. I gave it a taste and the flavor profile is significantly different than it was yesterday. Instead of being a really hardcore barnyard flavor it is more cherry and tart with a more modest honey characteristic that taste like honey ( ie not horse poop). I sampled the other 2 carboys and they seem to be heading in the same direction, but to different degrees.. So, I am flabergasted about what is going on and how it could have happend so quickly, but I am very pleased all the same.

Perhaps, the brett woke back up and is converting percursors over into different things?

Any ideas or thoughts?

 

[seth8530]

Well, time has made the picture a bit more clear... Bubbles are coming up like crazy from all the carboys. Looks like fermentation has restarted once again!

 

[sweetcell]

what an adventure!

i was wondering if you hadn't hit the alcohol tolerance of the brett & other yeast. apparently not.

 

[seth8530]

Yeah, I am not quite sure what is going on. I heard from somewhere that even simple sugars can become unfermentable if you heat them long enough... So, I am wondering if it is possible that I created much more unfermentable sugars than I intended. I guess the story will be told if the gravity ends up being right next to the pre cherry juice gravity... But, right now it looks like the fermentation has a full head of steam on it. So, I ma very interested to see where it is going to end up at.

 

[seth8530]

And just to prove that it is really going.... A little messy but much better than when it was simply just sitting still.

 

[seth8530]

So, racked these guys today, FG looks to be 1.040.. However, I think that sugar is mostly unfermentatble. Or infact, not sugar at all but perhaps caramel. I did some reading, apperently, if you take simple sugars and heat them long enough they can turn to caramel which is not very fermentable. If you combine this with the fact that the sugar extract that I made from malt was made from malts with high levels of unfermentable sugar, I think it is possible I created a mostly unfermentable syrup for the mead.

It smells kind of atrocious, but I think I might have asked for that with brett and buckwheat. On the flavor, it taste like a very good kriek ( sour cherry beer) with some interesting funky honey notes going. It taste amazingly well balanced for having a SG of 1.040. I think I will let this guy sit for a year and taste again. As far as competitions go, I am not sure if this guy sits better in braggot land, or some exotic other category all by itself.

 

[seth8530]

I have 15 gallons of this mead. I went ahead and bottled 5 gallons of it. The FG appears to be 1.032. I am shooting for three volumes of CO2. If this one carbonates well, I will go ahead and bottle the other 10 gallons and get them carbonating too.

The taste starts off both sweet and sour taste reminiscent of chocolaty sweetened dark tart cherries. It has a very thick mouthfeel, but it does not taste too sweet surprisingly. It also has a strong floral funky kind of smell from buckwheat.. Surprise Surprise. A little ode de barnyard. It taste like this could be dangerously easy to drink. The abv, is god knows what. I plan on having it lab tested.