First attempt at mead

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stamasd

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Hi there! I've been brewing for a few years, very sparsely, beer and wine. Never tried a mead before. Been reading these threads here for a few days and decided to give it a try. Starting with a basic mead recipe from http://meadist.com/making-mead/mead-recipes/traditional-mead/ with a few twists.

So basically I used:
15lbs honey (generic local, nothing fancy)
4.5 gal water - using spring water as for my beer
1lb strawberries, cleaned, sliced, simmered for 10 minutes
2 packets Lalvin D47, hydrated for 30 minutes in a cup of water with a teaspoon of brown sugar, was widely awake when I pitched it
1 teaspoon Fermax yeast nutrient

Put that in my 6gal fermenter with airlock yesterday morning. This morning it's bubbling healthily, about 1 bubble every 3 seconds.

Picture attached of the fermenter just before I put the lid on yesterday.

20170906_103613.jpg
 
Very cool, I'm looking to try my hand at mead making as well. I've got a couple carboys that aren't currently doing anything. Looks awesome with the strawberries!
 
Thank you for your kind words.

As a final twist, once I rack it to secondary I will add some extra honey because the lady of the house likes her wines sweet. I'm thinking mesquite honey. Will probably campdenize at that point too, I have to think about this one.
 
stamasd said:
Thank you for your kind words.

As a final twist, once I rack it to secondary I will add some extra honey because the lady of the house likes her wines sweet. I'm thinking mesquite honey. Will probably campdenize at that point too, I have to think about this one.
Click to expand...

Adding honey to the secondary will not guarantee that the "lady of the house" will get a sweet mead. All she'll get is a higher ABV mead. The only way to ensure that is to first stabilize the mead and then add more honey. simply adding more honey provides the D47 with more sugar and the yeast don't care what the "lady of the house", or you prefer. You provide the sugar, without first ensuring that the yeast cannot ferment it, and that sugar is ethanol + CO2. :mug:
 
One other suggestion if I may - If you are looking for a strawberry flavor, you'll need to add a lot more fruit to the secondary. Usually 1 pound per gallon is required at a minimum in the secondary if you want to get a taste of the fruit. One pound in a 5 gallon primary will give you a very light color, but I'd be surprised if there was anything of a strawberry flavor (maybe a very slight "essence") once the yeasties get done...
 
The best approach in wine making is the same as in cooking -taste it. And taste it again and again. You can taste the wine from the minute you pour it into the primary fermenter it to the moment before you bottle it. It won't make you ill and you are not going to spoil anything if you sanitize your wine thief and anything else that touches the mead or wine. Mead ain't beer. It does not spoil when you look at it and it won't oxidize in an instant. Don't be afraid to taste it. It will tell you if you have not added enough fruit. And it WILL tell you.
 
Thanks for the feedback.
The strawberries are not there for flavor (at least not much), but mostly as a source of yeast nutrient.
And I apologize that I wasn't clearer. By "campdenize" I meant using metabisulfite and sorbate to stop the fermentation. That is the method that I use to sweeten wines - I reserve around 10% of the grape juice which I boil and then freeze; let the fermentation complete, add sorbate and metabisulfite then add back the sweet juice. It works quite well. I'm hoping that it will work for mead too.
 
stamasd said:
Hi there! I've been brewing for a few years, very sparsely, beer and wine. Never tried a mead before. Been reading these threads here for a few days and decided to give it a try. Starting with a basic mead recipe from http://meadist.com/making-mead/mead-recipes/traditional-mead/ with a few twists.

So basically I used:
15lbs honey (generic local, nothing fancy)
4.5 gal water - using spring water as for my beer
1lb strawberries, cleaned, sliced, simmered for 10 minutes
2 packets Lalvin D47, hydrated for 30 minutes in a cup of water with a teaspoon of brown sugar, was widely awake when I pitched it
1 teaspoon Fermax yeast nutrient

Put that in my 6gal fermenter with airlock yesterday morning. This morning it's bubbling healthily, about 1 bubble every 3 seconds.

Picture attached of the fermenter just before I put the lid on yesterday.
Click to expand...


Very nice I love strawberry meads. Looks good, let us know how it turns out.
 
stamasd said:
Thank you for your kind words.

As a final twist, once I rack it to secondary I will add some extra honey because the lady of the house likes her wines sweet. I'm thinking mesquite honey. Will probably campdenize at that point too, I have to think about this one.
Click to expand...

One cup (8oz) of honey works well. You can camp or not camp. I have done both and no issues either .if you decide not to camp then make sure you top off the carboy, and then just let it age.
 
voltron said:
One cup (8oz) of honey works well. You can camp or not camp. I have done both and no issues either .if you decide not to camp then make sure you top off the carboy, and then just let it age.
Click to expand...

I have revised my plan a little bit. 2 weeks before it's time to bottle I will campdenize (see definition in my preceding post), let it sit for 1 week, back-sweeten, let sit for another week, taste it, then bottle. I was thinking 1lb honey, but I'll add 8oz first and see how sweet that gets it before adding more.
I'll rack it to a carboy in 6-8 weeks from now, top off, and let it sit in the secondary another month before bottling (with the back-sweetening above in the middle of that).
 
As you see I have a quite large fermenter... been brewing beer for several years in it, never had a problem. I plan on adding small amounts of nutrient every week, only if it looks like it needs it. So far the fermentation rate has been a steady 1 bubble every 3 seconds in the airlock for the past 4 days. When it's done (by taste and by hygrometer) I'll let it stand for another week or two, degas, add Ksorb and Kmeta, let it stand, degas, add extra honey, let stand, degas, rack to carboy (I use 6-gal Better Bottles) and fill. Mature, bottle, mature more. I'm not in a hurry by any means. Sounds like a good plan?
 
stamasd said:
I plan on adding small amounts of nutrient every week, only if it looks like it needs it. Sounds like a good plan?
Click to expand...
It might work, but the staggered nutrient additions are usually based on gravity readings, like 1/3 complete, 2/3 complete and not when it "looks like it needs it".
 
Checked the fermenter today, at 1 week still bubbling at same rate. Checked pH, it's 3.2, left it alone. Tastes good, no off flavors. No point checking density today, will do when fermentation rate slows down. Gave it a good stir. No pictures, it's the typical yeasty mess of a fermenting bucket.
 
Do strawberries have good nutrient content? I always thought raisins were the most common to use for that purpose.

madscientist451 said:
It might work, but the staggered nutrient additions are usually based on gravity readings, like 1/3 complete, 2/3 complete and not when it "looks like it needs it".
Click to expand...

I did this with LD Carlson yeast nutrient last time and it works great. Very happy with it so far. Just left my hydrometer floating in the carboy the entire time. Watched it drop and added as necessary.
 
Baabaad00 said:
Do strawberries have good nutrient content? I always thought raisins were the most common to use for that purpose.
Click to expand...

I would not have thought that strawberries have sufficient nutrients and most mead makers today snort at the idea of using raisins to supply nutrient for the yeast. What is the number of raisins you add and how many billions of yeast cells in what volume of must? If you don't have access to lab produced nutrient you could worse than boiling a tablespoon or so of bread yeast and feeding the solution to the yeast.
 
Exactly why I asked bernard. It was more a polite way to say that adding fruit seemed mostly pointless as far as I know. It's why I add yeast nutrient unless directed for a specific recipe, like JAOM.
 
+1 - A pound of strawberries in 5 gallons won't add flavor or even any significant color and I think it may even be a drain on nutrients (increasing the demand for minerals) rather than a nutrient sink.
 
IMHO, the strawberries I added have more nutrient than no strawberries at all. Note that I don't intend them to be the main source of nutrient, which is why I'm talking about nutrient additions. I put some Fermax at the beginning, and plan on adding more. My intention is that, if nutrient levels get low the fermentation will not stall but just slow down with the fruit there, and it'll buy me some time before I can add more Fermax. That's because this week and the next will be very busy for me at work and I don't know how often I'll be able to check on the fermenter. I may even not be able to come home several days in a row.
 
Update 9/20/17
Fermentation rate has slowed down to 1 bubble every 5-6 seconds.
Added yeast nutrient today (3rd addition)
SG=1.010
Tastes fairly rough but there's plenty of ABV. There is a very faint hint of strawberries. I can't detect any sweetness of all, very dry. It will need to mature quite a bit to make it a pleasant drink.
Will let it go for at least another week or two in the primary.
 
An SG of 1.010 has about 4 oz of sugar in every gallon. That is not "dry" but if the mead is quite acidic and if the ABV is high and the tannins are excessive then the sweetness you perceive may be nil. It's always all about balance.
 
Correct. It's about mouthfeel, it has no sweetness. I know it still has sugars, or else it would have stopped fermenting. But it's very harsh. pH is 3.5 so not terribly acidic.
 
But TA is more important than the pH when it comes to bitterness. pH measures only the strength of the acids in your wine. They can be weak but there can be so much of the weak acid that the wine is undrinkable. Or they can be strong but so little that you cannot detect them when you drink the wine. You want a TA of about .65% (+/- .05) . If the gravity is 1.010 and the wine tastes "dry" then either the TA is too high or the amount of tannin in the wine is drying your mouth..

A gravity of 1.010 is equivalent to about 28 teaspoons of sugar in each gallon. A gallon is 8 pints or 16 cups.. so that is a scant 2 teaspoons per cup. If you added 2 t of sugar to a cup of coffee or tea , THAT is how sweet your wine is... That you don't perceive it as sweet has nothing to do with there being no sugar in the wine. Of course, if you need to add 3 or 4 or more teaspoons of sugar to your tea or coffee then a cup with only 2 might taste terrible...
 
I have no idea where tannins would come from, this is a mead... honey and a tiny bit of strawberries. Nothing tannin-containing at all.
Also if you read back at the beginning of the thread, I plan to backsweeten later on. I don't mind that now it tastes harsh and dry. I'm not planning on consuming it until it has matured properly, 8-12 months. I don't mind waiting.
 
So a few days later, the bucket still bubbles but it has slowed down to about 1 every 10 seconds. From this point on I will let it go at least another week (or more) undisturbed before I consider adding k-meta and k-sorb and later backsweetening.
The question I have though is: should I put the additives in the primary, let it sit there then rack, or should I rack to a secondary first and then add them? I tend to favor the latter. Inquiring minds want to know.
 
Update 10/2/17: fermentation has stopped for the past 3-4 days. Will give it probably another week in the primary then rack to secondary.
 
10/5 decided to rack this week. SG is just below 1. I put an airlock on the secondary and will watch to see if there's any more fermentation going for the next few days after it's been aerated a bit during the transfer. I didn't add anything to it yet. The secondary is now in my garage where the temperature is lower, now in the low 60s. Tastes definitely mellower than last time, but still has a long way to go.

20171005_102312-mead.jpg
 
Update 10/23/17.

I have decided to add metabisulfite and sorbate today, and backsweeten next week. The secondary has been very very still in my garage for 3 weeks now, no gas evolving (temperature average about 60F). It has become very clear, I can read a newspaper through it (and that's a 6gal container). Almost no lees on the bottom. No bubbles in the airlock.

I'm a little unclear on the dosage of the sorbate for mead. Most places that talk about it (such as http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/measures.asp - not specifically for mead, but I've seen the same dosage in other places) say 1/2 teaspoon or 1.25g per gallon. However when I pulled my bag of K-sorb, I realized that the printed instructions on it say 1/4 teaspoon per gallon, or half the dose I have found online. IIRC the last time I used sorbate (a few years ago) I dosed it at 1/4 tsp per gallon to backsweeten a wine. It worked pretty well, but after some time I did get a bit of extra fermentation in a few of the bottles, not enough to cause problems though.

So what is your opinion, should I use 1/2 or 1/4 teaspoon per gallon (1.25 or 0.625 g/gal)? I would prefer to have as little impact on the taste from the additions as possible.

While awaiting for an opinion I will go for the lower dose, I can always add more later.
 
The container I buy has directions on it. I'd just follow what the container says. I did that with LD carlson & it tastes fine IMHO.
 
Update 11/3/17
No bubbles either in the airlock or the fermenter for 10 days. SG is 0.996.
I added 1/2 jar of Trader Joe's Turkish honey (approx 340g/12oz) and one and a half bottles (3 pints total) of Trader Joe's natural cherry juice. So now I've turned it into a sort of melomel. Put a stopper tightly on and rolled the bottle around the house for about 15 minutes until everything inside is uniformly pink and well mixed, and no more honey can be seen on the bottom. Then moved it to the garage where it's 55-60 degrees now. Placed airlock back on. Will watch what happens in the next few days.
If nothing happens, then I plan to "forget" about it for a few months - will check on it again sometime next spring.

11/4/17 (next day) update: no fermentation at all after 24h. That is encouraging.
 

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