First Big Mead, Process and Sanity Check

[kev211]

Alright guys. New Mead brewer here. Ive got probably 200+ beers under my belt at this point in time, so Im familiar with fermentation, but mead is a totally different beast. To this date Ive got +/- 3 one-gallon mead batches complete with varying degrees of success. So now that we've got qualifications out of the way...

Sunday I brewed (?), stirred, mixed, whatever its called my first 5 gallon batch of mead. Intending on it being a dry mead. I mixed 12.5lbs of clover honey with 2.5 gallons of 120 degree spring water and then topped off with 2.5 gallons of water and transferred all 6 gallons to my fermenter. Ran about 1 minute of O2 through my stone and pitched 2 packs of WLP715 yeast when it reached 80 degrees most recipes I read said to pitch yeast at 80, which seemed a bit warm from my brewing background but I did it anyways. I havent added any campden tablets (I read different theories on them, so I opted not to) and havent added any Fermaid-K, I was going to at 1/3 sugar break and 2/3 sugar break (5grams each time). Problem is, its going on 44 hours now and I have very little active fermentation, like maybe 1 bubble every 5 seconds. I know that new yeast on honey is supposed to be super vigorous, and this is not... I know active fermentation isnt going on cuz I have a tilt in there and its dropped 1 point from 1.084 to 1.083.

Any thoughts on this? Is 715 a slow starter (I know I probably should have made a starter, but I was impatient)? Did I zap the yeast with the 80 degree temp? Should I add yeast energizer or Fermaid-K now? Any help would be appreciated.


Cheers!

 

[NeverDie]

Adding some Fermaid K might help speed it up.
What temp was your yeast when you pitched it into the 80F must? If refrigerated, you may have shocked it.

 

[kev211]

It was room temp. It had been out of the fridge for 3 hours. I thought the dap in fermaid-k was toxic to the yeast before fermentation started and their cell walls had built up? That's why I held off adding it in the first place

 

[NeverDie]

It was room temp. It had been out of the fridge for 3 hours. I thought the dap in fermaid-k was toxic to the yeast before fermentation started and their cell walls had built up? That's why I held off adding it in the first place

AFAIK, not an issue for liquid yeast. For instance, BOMM uses Fermaid K up front.

 

[kev211]

AFAIK, not an issue for liquid yeast. For instance, BOMM uses Fermaid K up front.

Oh ok. Maybe I'll try giving it some tonight

 

[bernardsmith]

Not so much for this batch because you've started it but making mead isn't like brewing beer. With mead there is really no good reason to use heat. Period. And especially no good reason to heat honey unless you want to blow off the volatile aromatics and flavor molecules. (you brew beer, but ferment honey) But then you might save yourself a heap of money and use simple sugars. Honey isn't subject to lacto-bacterial souring (in fact it's likely your mead will have a pH of just over 3.00) and the very most you might want/need to warm honey is to make it more viscous so that you can pour it more easily.
If your concern is that honey is a host to a whole universe of wild yeast which are "dormant" in the honey only because of its lack of moisture and which will burst into life as soon as you mix the honey with water, then either you can rely on the fact that you are pitching billions of yeast cells all eager to start feeding on the sugars and which in a matter of a few hours will make the must very hospitable for themselves and quite inhospitable for any competitors or you can add K-meta (Campden tabs) and allow the SO2 to get rid of the yeast and other microbes for 24 hours (that is to allow the SO2 to dissipate into the room) and then pitch your yeast of choice. But in my opinion, there is often very real value in allowing the indigenous yeast to put their snouts under the tent to add additional complexity to the flavors your lab cultured yeast will enhance or produce.

 

[kev211]

Not so much for this batch because you've started it but making mead isn't like brewing beer. With mead there is really no good reason to use heat. Period. And especially no good reason to heat honey unless you want to blow off the volatile aromatics and flavor molecules. (you brew beer, but ferment honey) But then you might save yourself a heap of money and use simple sugars. Honey isn't subject to lacto-bacterial souring (in fact it's likely your mead will have a pH of just over 3.00) and the very most you might want/need to warm honey is to make it more viscous so that you can pour it more easily.
If your concern is that honey is a host to a whole universe of wild yeast which are "dormant" in the honey only because of its lack of moisture and which will burst into life as soon as you mix the honey with water, then either you can rely on the fact that you are pitching billions of yeast cells all eager to start feeding on the sugars and which in a matter of a few hours will make the must very hospitable for themselves and quite inhospitable for any competitors or you can add K-meta (Campden tabs) and allow the SO2 to get rid of the yeast and other microbes for 24 hours (that is to allow the SO2 to dissipate into the room) and then pitch your yeast of choice. But in my opinion, there is often very real value in allowing the indigenous yeast to put their snouts under the tent to add additional complexity to the flavors your lab cultured yeast will enhance or produce.

Interesting. To be fair, I only heated the water to help mix the honey in more readily. I had no idea about honey containing wild yeasts. I was under the impression that it did, not but I don't know why I thought that. Now that makes me nervous though for 2 reasons...

1. It's been 48 hours with very little activity and I didn't use campden tablets, so am I risking infection here? And how do I know that the little fermentation I have isn't the wild yeasties getting going? And...

2. I'm fermenting this in a chronical that I also ferment beer in. Am I gonna want to replace the o-rings, etc when I'm done with this? Or is the amount of wild yeast negligible?

 

[bernardsmith]

Whoa Nelly. Take a deep breath. Take another. Wild yeast - indigenous yeast - are not necessarily an "infection". We are not talking about spoilage bacteria here. We are talking about the yeasts that bees carry from and bring to flowers and then transport to their hives. Those yeast don't always create flavor profiles that mead makers actively seek out but some of us routinely try to encourage the indigenous yeast found in raw honey (if the honey is heat treated by the bee-k then there are no viable yeast in the batch. Would you have to change o-rings and gaskets if you pitched a saison yeast after making a lager? Same story here. There is a whole movement these days (natural wine) of commercial wine makers opting to use only the yeasts indigenous to the grapes they are pressing.

 

[NeverDie]

I think he's worried that his predictable outcome is slipping away, and what should he do to get it back. Worst case scenario: substitute "bacteria" for "wild yeasties." Short of pasteurizing the whole thing and starting over, what's his best course of action before it might spoil? Re-Pitch with fresh, verified viable yeast? Or, restart after nuking it with Camden tablets? The clock's ticking. It's go time.

 

[Maylar]

I doubt very much there's anything wild going on here. A starter would have been a good idea but 2 packs of WLP715 should be going strong by now. It's possible that the temperature of the yeast was too far from the must and they've been shocked. DAP is toxic to yeast when used in hot rehydration water with dry yeast but it's fine in the must at fermentation temps. I would add some nutrient now and hope the yeasties wake up.

White Labs says the ideal range of that yeast is 70-75 which is pretty narrow.

 

[NeverDie]

Some yeast, like Hornindal Kveik, seem to handle unpitching quite well, whereas others seem to have trouble taking off if they're underpitched. I concur with using the Fermaid K to hopefully get it going, but, in addition, there's no harm to also pitching more of the same yeast this early in the game.

 

[kev211]

Whoa Nelly. Take a deep breath. Take another. Wild yeast - indigenous yeast - are not necessarily an "infection". We are not talking about spoilage bacteria here. We are talking about the yeasts that bees carry from and bring to flowers and then transport to their hives. Those yeast don't always create flavor profiles that mead makers actively seek out but some of us routinely try to encourage the indigenous yeast found in raw honey (if the honey is heat treated by the bee-k then there are no viable yeast in the batch. Would you have to change o-rings and gaskets if you pitched a saison yeast after making a lager? Same story here. There is a whole movement these days (natural wine) of commercial wine makers opting to use only the yeasts indigenous to the grapes they are pressing.

Ok, that makes sense. The word wild just breeds the word infection, so I was worried I may be getting into something unwanted here. I added fermaid-k and yeast Energizer last night along with another 40 seconds of O2 and this morning I still have a lot less action than I'd expect. It's dropped a few points, but I'm worried I may not have enough viable yeast. May go buy 2 more packs after work today

 

[Badird]

I would add nutrient and re-pitch.

 

[bernardsmith]

I would add nutrient and re-pitch.

Repitching may be the intuitive solution but it is counter-intuitive to me. Here's why: If - IF - there is some systemic problem with the must then pitching a fresh colony of yeast may simply swamp these new guys in the miasma. What wine makers do (cannot speak about brewers) is they create a starter with the fresh pack of yeast and then slowly double and redouble the volume of the starter using the stuck batch. So if your starter was say 50 ccs you add 50 ccs from the problem batch and watch until you see that it has taken off like gangbusters. When it has you now add 100 ccs from the stuck batch and again you wait and watch and you repeat this process until all the stuck batch has been added to the starter. That way, if the problem is systemic you are using an ever increasing bio-mass of yeast to cut through the problem. But ..
I wonder if the honey has been properly mixed: looks like you have a volume of about 6 gallons (1 gallon of honey + 5 gallons of water) . If 1 pound of honey in water to make 1 gallon typically raises the gravity of that gallon by 35 points then we have 12.5 (lbs)* .035/ 6 gallons = .072 so I would have thought your starting gravity would have been closer to 1.072 and not 1.084. Of course the volume of honey is a little larger than a gallon (but not much) and it's possible your 5 gallons of H20 is scant.

 

[bernardsmith]

I think he's worried that his predictable outcome is slipping away, and what should he do to get it back. Worst case scenario: substitute "bacteria" for "wild yeasties." Short of pasteurizing the whole thing and starting over, what's his best course of action before it might spoil? Re-Pitch with fresh, verified viable yeast? Or, restart after nuking it with Camden tablets? The clock's ticking. It's go time.

What is there to create spoilage? What's the pH of the must - 4.00? 3.50? Lower? What bacteria are likely to thrive in that must? One of the problems of mead making is ensuring that the pH does not drop to the floor. Honey have no chemical buffers to prevent this happening and many mead makers routinely add a base to their must to increase the pH to make the yeast more comfortable, so if there are any wild yeast being active, the environment is going to be very unfit for just about any bacteria that may have been lurking.

 

[Maylar]

Repitching may be the intuitive solution but it is counter-intuitive to me. Here's why: If - IF - there is some systemic problem with the must then pitching a fresh colony of yeast may simply swamp these new guys in the miasma. What wine makers do (cannot speak about brewers) is they create a starter with the fresh pack of yeast and then slowly double and redouble the volume of the starter using the stuck batch.

This isn't a stuck ferment, it's a ferment that hasn't even started. It could be something as simple as the yeast were out of date or maybe damaged with high temperature (especially with liquid yeast). I wouldn't assume a systematic problem and opt for the full-up restart procedure until I had a known good yeast colony pitched. I've done this myself a few times.

A good starter pitched normally would be my recommendation.

 

[kev211]

This isn't a stuck ferment, it's a ferment that hasn't even started. It could be something as simple as the yeast were out of date or maybe damaged with high temperature (especially with liquid yeast). I wouldn't assume a systematic problem and opt for the full-up restart procedure until I had a known good yeast colony pitched. I've done this myself a few times.

A good starter pitched normally would be my recommendation.

Hindsight I should have done a starter, but live and learn I suppose. I think I may just try pitching new packs and see what happens, at this point Im just experimenting. My next mead Im doing with US-05

 

[CKuhns]

Ok, let's get back to the basics.

Bubble activity through an air lock is a imperfect way to understand how your ferment is going.

Fermenting beer although not similar for the prep and additions etc is similar enough that your experience should be able to tell you how it's going once in primary. If cloudy and foam or Krausen then your ok.

Check the gravity using a hydrometer. Is it less than your starting gravity? Has it stayed stable with no drop for more than a day? If not and is dropping then your ok, wait it out.

Nutrients and air early are a good thing and can only help.

If truly stuck warm it a few degrees, aerate, check pH and adjust and I agree if none of that works repitch with one of the suggestions above.

 

[kev211]

Ok, let's get back to the basics.

Bubble activity through an air lock is a imperfect way to understand how your ferment is going.

Fermenting beer although not similar for the prep and additions etc is similar enough that your experience should be able to tell you how it's going once in primary. If cloudy and foam or Krausen then your ok.

Check the gravity using a hydrometer. Is it less than your starting gravity? Has it stayed stable with no drop for more than a day? If not and is dropping then your ok, wait it out.

Nutrients and air early are a good thing and can only help.

If truly stuck warm it a few degrees, aerate, check pH and adjust and I agree if none of that works repitch with one of the suggestions above.

Sorry, I don't mean for this to sound rude, but I'm well aware that bubbling isn't an indicator of fermentation. That being said, it's in a chronical that I do pressure transfers with so bubbling is pretty accurate.

Also, I said I've got a tilt in there that's fully calibrated. I know when it's dropping...

That being said, I hit it with some fermaid-o and some yeast nutrient and it finally took off. So we'll see what happens

 

[bernardsmith]

When you write "chronical" do you mean "conical"? Chronicle - (spelled differently) means an accurate record of events. Chronic (as in illness) means continuing over a lengthy period, but I am not familiar with a vessel called a chronical, so perhaps bubbling is a good indicator of activity. In more typical fermenters that use standard airlocks the density of the solution, the amount of CO2 in solution, the density of the liquid in the airlock, the ambient temperature, the actual temperature of the fermentation, the air pressure that day and even the quality of the seals between fermenter and bung and bung and airlock would all have an impact on CO2 escaping through the "bubbler" . Sorry, I'll take my tongue out of my cheek. But no matter what vessel you use a bubbler is neither "accurate" nor "reliable".

 

[Maylar]

When you write "chronical" do you mean "conical"?

Ss Brewtech Chronical

https://www.northernbrewer.com/prod...sYo_kELSgsAaM4wgwaamBcU57dTKmNcsaAicZEALw_wcB

 

[bernardsmith]

I stand chrorrected.