wreboot
Member
So I am going to tell you about my first batch of mead and ask for help. I have no idea what I did wrong...
1st Sanitized everything with bleach and rinsed thoroughly.
1 gallon Carboy #1: 1 lbs each of Raw Mesquite Honey, Texas Wildflower Honey, and Raw Mexican Desert Honey. Boiled the bottled spring water (tap water here is crap) in a stock pot before adding the honey (and turned off heat before adding honey). Made sure everything was combined and cooled properly before adding to Carboy, adding yeast nutrient, aerating, pitching yeast (lalvin d47), and attaching airlocks.
1 gallon Carboy #2: 2.1 lbs of raw Texas Wildflower Honey, 1 lbs of strawberries. Boiled water, added honey. Cooled just like before, chopped strawberries into halves and quarters just so they'd fit into carboy. Finally, adding the yeast nutrient, aerating, pitching yeast(lalvin d47), and attaching airlocks.
Fermenting activity seem to start immediately like under an hour immediately.
Carboy #2 had multiple blowouts of the next few days. I had not left any space at all. Carboy #1 only had one. Each time I washed and sanitized the airlocks.
I live in Texas so my apartment temperature is kept around 70-76 degrees and I keep this in a dark, cool room. No direct sunlight.
After 3 weeks activity stopped in carboy 2 after another week carboy 1 stopped. So we racked the mead and had our first taste. Um...yuck. It tasted like alcohol mixed with alcohol. Smelled great. Tasted like nothing (except alcohol). It was both meads and it was very strong.
Two weeks later (last night) we racked again because that much sediment had built up. This time I cold shocked it before racking as well as degassed the mead a few days beforehand. Still tastes mostly of alcohol however I get a slightly meadish after taste to them now.
Is this normal? I see videos on youtube and read forum posts and blogs about people drinking their mead green all the time. Are they CrayCray? I had 3 other people taste it other than myself and I wasn't the only one saying it. The only thing I think I am doing different from post people is using bleach because I didn't want to by star-san in addition to everything else I was buying.
Let me know what you think at this point I am at a loss and feel very defeated.
1st Sanitized everything with bleach and rinsed thoroughly.
1 gallon Carboy #1: 1 lbs each of Raw Mesquite Honey, Texas Wildflower Honey, and Raw Mexican Desert Honey. Boiled the bottled spring water (tap water here is crap) in a stock pot before adding the honey (and turned off heat before adding honey). Made sure everything was combined and cooled properly before adding to Carboy, adding yeast nutrient, aerating, pitching yeast (lalvin d47), and attaching airlocks.
1 gallon Carboy #2: 2.1 lbs of raw Texas Wildflower Honey, 1 lbs of strawberries. Boiled water, added honey. Cooled just like before, chopped strawberries into halves and quarters just so they'd fit into carboy. Finally, adding the yeast nutrient, aerating, pitching yeast(lalvin d47), and attaching airlocks.
Fermenting activity seem to start immediately like under an hour immediately.
Carboy #2 had multiple blowouts of the next few days. I had not left any space at all. Carboy #1 only had one. Each time I washed and sanitized the airlocks.
I live in Texas so my apartment temperature is kept around 70-76 degrees and I keep this in a dark, cool room. No direct sunlight.
After 3 weeks activity stopped in carboy 2 after another week carboy 1 stopped. So we racked the mead and had our first taste. Um...yuck. It tasted like alcohol mixed with alcohol. Smelled great. Tasted like nothing (except alcohol). It was both meads and it was very strong.
Two weeks later (last night) we racked again because that much sediment had built up. This time I cold shocked it before racking as well as degassed the mead a few days beforehand. Still tastes mostly of alcohol however I get a slightly meadish after taste to them now.
Is this normal? I see videos on youtube and read forum posts and blogs about people drinking their mead green all the time. Are they CrayCray? I had 3 other people taste it other than myself and I wasn't the only one saying it. The only thing I think I am doing different from post people is using bleach because I didn't want to by star-san in addition to everything else I was buying.
Let me know what you think at this point I am at a loss and feel very defeated.
