Did I suffocate my first mead?

[CrashFu]

Hello, just stumbled onto your forum here and I'm hoping you can help a home-brewing newbie with a concern..

First off, I should probably list everything I have used and done so far; for a 1-gallon batch of mead:

3lbs Arizona Desert Wildflower Honey
Crystal Geyser brand spring water
~1/2 packet Red Star Premier Cuvee yeast
~1.5 teaspoons Fermax yeast nutrient

I sanitized my glass carboy using very heavily diluted bleach (1 spoonful to 1 gallon tapwater), let dry, and then rinsed with boiling water.

filled carboy ~2/3rds with spring water, added honey, added yeast (that was allowed to sit in half-cup of warmed spring water for ~10 minutes) and shook vigorously for a few minutes, then filled to 1gal mark with more spring water. Stopper with bubble counter added.

The next morning, the mead-to-be was already bubbling extremely vigorously; the airlock bubbled at least once per second. This rate of bubbling continued for a full week, until this morning.

I did absolutely nothing to the mead during this time. I did not aerate it further in any way, I added nothing, I did not remove the stopper for even a second. I mistakenly believed the whole idea (with the airlocks and whatnot) was to allow as little air as possible to access the mead until the time someone is drinking it...

As I stated earlier, left alone and sealed like this it continued bubbling once-per-second for a full week, and then overnight it suddenly slowed to less than one-per-thirty-seconds.

I don't have the tool necessary to take gravity readings; is that really essential (and would it be too late to bother buying one to test this batch with at this point, anyways?)

As for pH .... I do have a kit meant for testing aquarium water, lol; should I take a reading with that?

I'm so inexperienced in homebrewing, I'm not sure what other relevant data I should (or have the means to) provide in this situation... room temperature has fluctuated a good amount lately, what with this crazy Ohio weather: probably ranged between 60 and 70 through this past week.

Is the week of intense bubbling and sudden dropoff normal? If not, is a mead that has been suffocated still salvageable, and if so, what do I need to do?

In general, should I begin aerating daily now, or adding any further of the Fermax or some other nutrient (raisins and or orange peel seem to get mentioned a lot)

I really hope that I'm either worrying for nothing or can still fix this somehow; that 3lb bottle of arizona desert wildflower honey set me back $25 and, in a tragic irony, I really WOULD need a drink if I found out I wasted it all by ruining the mead.

Thank you in advance for any knowledge or advice you can provide.

 

[Taiin]

I don't have the tool necessary to take gravity readings; is that really essential (and would it be too late to bother buying one to test this batch with at this point, anyways?)

I am pretty new myself, but I can tell you that a hydrometer is an indispensable tool when it comes to any brewing, plus a thermometer. With those two tools, you can easily determine the specific gravity, which can tell a lot about what your brew's potential is. It'll also let you know if fermentation has stalled, is done, etc. They're also not very expensive, very much worth the purchase cost.

The thermometer goes hand in hand with the hydrometer, since hydrometers work best at a certain temperature. If it is above or below said temperature, you need to add and subtract some values to know what the actual specific gravity is. The baseline temperature for most hydrometers are 60 or 68 degrees, the packaging will say which.

 

[CrashFu]

Hmm, alright, I'll hit up Amazon.com and invest in one.

... ... Also I just panicked and went and uncorked the carboy and swirled the mead around a bit.. not like, strenuously, so I probably didn't aerate it A LOT but it worked the bubbles up for a couple minutes so I guess I just degassed it.

I have no idea what I'm doing at this point and I should probably stop doing things altogether until someone tells me what I'm SUPPOSED to be doing.

 

[Yooper]

Hmm, alright, I'll hit up Amazon.com and invest in one.

... ... Also I just panicked and went and uncorked the carboy and swirled the mead around a bit.. not like, strenuously, so I probably didn't aerate it A LOT but it worked the bubbles up for a couple minutes so I guess I just degassed it.

I have no idea what I'm doing at this point and I should probably stop doing things altogether until someone tells me what I'm SUPPOSED to be doing.

The only thing to do is use a hydrometer and check the reading. Do not oxygenate, swirl, shake, etc. Just keep it out of light and in the 60s.

 

[CrashFu]

Alright, I obtained a hydrometer and, if I've used it correctly (spun off the bubbles, adjusted for current temperature of 66 degrees F based on chart)

The specific gravity of my mead is currently 0.999.

Does knowing this matter, since I have no reading from when it was started? Is there a rough estimate of the beginning SG of a mead with 3lb honey per gallon (and no additives other than yeast nutrient) or is the type of honey going to impact that?

I noticed it also had a very dry taste and a lot of acidity, and there's quite an accumulation of lees. I assume I should be racking this now?

 

[ACbrewer]

Alright, I obtained a hydrometer and, if I've used it correctly (spun off the bubbles, adjusted for current temperature of 66 degrees F based on chart)

The specific gravity of my mead is currently 0.999.

Does knowing this matter, since I have no reading from when it was started? Is there a rough estimate of the beginning SG of a mead with 3lb honey per gallon (and no additives other than yeast nutrient) or is the type of honey going to impact that?

I noticed it also had a very dry taste and a lot of acidity, and there's quite an accumulation of lees. I assume I should be racking this now?

we can make a good guess of your start being about 1.120 .. this is without looking up the exact referenced point per pound-gallon for honey... but honey typically will have about 40 points per pound in 1 gallon, you used 3 pounds in 1 gallon, so about 1.120.

This means your 0.999 is probably finished. If this were beer I'd tell you to check back in a few days, but since it is mead.... I'm not sure. if you have 1 other 1 gallon container, you could rack it to get it off the sediment. (rack = siphon from one container to another )

Typically 'dry' will be from .990 to .999 semi dry/sweet will be from 1.000 to 1.006 and above 1.006 will taste sweet - of course this is a matter of personal taste, I've seen two people eat the same food and one complain it was too bitter and the other too sweet (some 70% dark chocolate).

it also means your abv is in the 15 to 16% range.

 

[CrashFu]

Thanks for the info, ACbrewer! I'm certainly not opposed to a more dry beverage myself. Now that I'm home from work, I'll get the racking done shortly. I've got some clean tubes to siphon with, just have to make sure the spare carboy is nice and sanitary.

For future batches, would attaining a sweeter mead simply require using more honey than I did in this batch, or are there other ways I can make an impact on that? And if I wanted to shoot for an abv a few points higher next time (I understand meads are capable of reaching 20%) how would I make that happen?

 

[sheepcat]

For your higher ABV, it's best not to front-load with more honey. The yeast can only tolerate so much solute, whether it's sugar or alcohol.

Your best bet is to use a yeast that can tolerate ~18%, like EC-1118 or KV-1116, and gradually add more honey as the fermentation continues. Think of it as microevolution: when the mead hits 18%, there might still be a few yeast that can handle that amount alive. Adding a little honey will kill some more that can't handle it, but the ones that are left can keep on eating. Step feeding like this can push the final ABV up a bit, though it's more difficult to be precise. Don't add more than an ounce or so per gallon at a time, and keep measuring your SG. When it stops going down, you know all the yeast have given up.

As far as sweeter mead goes, you can either start with more honey than the yeast can metabolize, so that there's residual sugar left over, or you can add more honey after fermentation has finished. Again, be careful that you don't add too much. An okay method is to pour a glass of the unsweetened drink, add a bit of honey, pour a bit into a glass. Repeat until you've got a variety of sweetnesses, and then pick the one you want and scale it up.

 

[CrashFu]

Thank you for the tips, sheepcat!

I'll have to let you guys know how this first batch turns out, with the Arizona Desert Honey and the dryness and all that. To the best of my ability, at least; I'm not exactly an expert taster, so the answer might just be "good" or "ugh".

 

[On-target]

You might want your mead to age for at least a year before you start drinking it . Less time than that won't do it any justice. Higher alcohol meads can take quite a while to taste good. Good luck and welcome to the obsession

 

[ACbrewer]

You might want your mead to age for at least a year before you start drinking it . Less time than that won't do it any justice. Higher alcohol meads can take quite a while to taste good. Good luck and welcome to the obsession

This is very true. What it comes down to is that sweeter drinks mask unpleasant flavors. (spoon full of sugar and medicine something something to music)....

A higher ABV tends to taste harsher, but more residual sugars make it more palatable. One of the mead makers told how he made dogwood mead (all dogwood honey) and the honey was ok (sweet) but the mead was pretty aweful because dogwood isn't that nice a flavor. The sugar had masked that bad flavor.

 

[bernardsmith]

To make a sweet mead by adding more sugar after the fermentation has ended you need to make sure that there are virtually no active yeast cells in the mead. You do this in two ways. First, you want to rack the mead from one carboy to another every two or three months. This will also ensure that the mead is not standing on sediment and dead yeast for considerable lengths of time that CAN (not always, but sometimes) impart off flavors in your mead AND you want after two or three rackings to stabilize the mead with two chemicals - K-sorbate and K-meta. The K-meta sort of kind of knocks out the yeast and the sorbate prevents the yeast from reproducing. This only really works effectively if the yeast colony left is very very small but what it does is mean that you can add even fermentable sugar (more honey, for example) and the yeast will not be able to ferment that sugar.