Heather Mead -- Fermentation finished?

[RipVan]

Hello and thanks for any thoughts on the following.

I wanted to try and make a Heather Mead that was similar to Pictish descriptions I have read.

Steeped 1/2 cup heather flowers in 1 quart water overnight. Next day realized miscalculated and steeped another 1 cup of heather flowers with 2 quarts water for 3 hours and added to honey and water below.

Added 1.5 lbs Scottish Heather Honey (bought off Amazon from Scotland -- very expensive!) and 1.5 lbs local raw honey. Figured 3lbs honey to 1 gallon is a semi-sweet mead.

Heated honey and water to 130 degrees.

Added 1/2 tsp yeast nutrient (Northern Brewer Yeast Energizer) and 1/2 cup of black tea and juice of 1 lemon (per Zimmerman, Make Mead Like a Viking)

This is then poured through a funnel lined with 1 cup of heather flowers.

Red Star Premier Blanc (Pasteur Blanc)

O.G. = 1.108

Two weeks later F.G. = 1.003 (ABV = 11%)

Removed one pint and steeped with 1/2 cup heather flowers (after Buhner's recipe) and returned to fermenter.

Taste strongly of petroleum (a taste I find in a lot of commercial meads -- not pleasant -- but minimal in previous meads with lower honey content).

Added two more pounds of local raw honey and transferred to a secondary. (Realize in retrospect this is probably backsweetening.)

One week later remained well distributed with evidence of fermentation and new sediment.

At 4 weeks, S.G. = 1.045 (did not recalculate O.G. after adding honey at two weeks). According to meadmaker batchbuilder, this would make the O.G. 1.175 (5 pounds of honey in one gallon).

After two more weeks (6 weeks total), there is a slight petroleum taste but good honey as well.

At 4 months, still not clear, S.G. = 1.038 (ABV = 14.39%). Taste is good, piney, buttery, sweet.

At 5 months, S.G. is unchanged. Added 3 grams of yeast ghosts. But still not increasing fermentation. Appearance is still very cloudy, though taste is very nice, smoky but smooth.

SO, should I wait longer for this to clear, or is this what it is and I should just bottle now.

THANKS!

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi RipVan - and welcome. Heather mead is one of my favorites. Coming from Scotland I grew up with heather honey. And I recently made a batch of heather mead using heather tips and heather honey.

Not clear whether you boiled the heather in the water or steeped it at room temperature. I would have made a tea. Also unclear whether you added nutrient to feed the yeast or your plan was to feed the yeast only sugar from the honey. You say you added energizer but energizer is not the same as nutrient. (a poor metaphor, perhaps - but nutrient is the equivalent of carbs, fats and protein , energizer is the equivalent of caffeine)... Honey is a desert when it comes to organic nutrients and minerals - and a lack of these compounds stresses the yeast and the yeast when stressed produce fusels - amongst other things - hence the taste of petroleum.

To back sweeten you need to stabilize the mead to prevent yeast from treating added sugars as stuff for them to ferment.
And you cannot assume in any simple way that 3 lbs of honey will result in a semi sweet mead - Three pounds of honey mixed with water to make 1 gallon will have an approximate SG of about 1.105 and there is virtually no wine or ale yeast that cannot ferment that amount of sugar bone dry.
OK - so basically you have 5 lbs of honey mixed with water to make a volume of about 1 gallon? That is a total SG of 5 (lbs)* .035 (SG of 1 lb in 1 gallon of water) = 1.175 or a potential ABV of about 23% . That is rocket fuel - and no yeast - to the best of my knowledge - can tolerate that amount of alcohol... so if the SG is currently down to 1.034 count that as fortunate... and either add some more water to reduce the overall gravity (1.175) and kick start the yeast again or call it quits and bottle this.

 

[RipVan]

Thanks Bernard (and Happy New Year). I am excited that someone else has made this as it was hard to find any information. Curious where you got your heather honey? (And if it is the heather that actually has the fogg on it that apparently is only in Scotland.)

Sorry for the missed detail -- yes I did as you say make a tea (boiled and then let sit overnight). The "Energizer" is the product I used from LD Carlson. Looking at package now, it contains diammonium phosphate, springcell (?), and magnesium sulphate. Thanks for the clarification about energizer vs actual nutrient. I had not realized there was a distinction but it makes sense. While on the subject, how does the tannin and acid play in? Is that helpful to the yeast at all or just for flavor?

Very glad to hear too that the petroleum taste was not just my palate, but I do taste it in a lot of meads that are on the market -- is it possible these "professionals" are not adding appropriate nutrient?

Yes it looks like I had wrong information about the 3 lbs = semi-sweet. It was bone dry. The backsweetening, that wasn't really my intent; I added more honey because the mead tasted too strong of alcohol (though maybe that was lack of nutrient) It did ferment more and smooth out with that addition.

How do you determine the potential ABV? If I use F.G. = 1.0 I get 18% but I guess the alcohol would make a F.G. less than 1.0 ...

Interesting to add water, had not thought of that. Any thought on whether the yeast hulls (ghosts) would help and how long to kickstart again if so?

I guess my ultimate question is about the mead being cloudy. I can't get clear (no pun intended) about whether a finished mead should be clear or not, or whether clarity is optional and esthetic, rather than about finished fermentation.

THANKS!!

 

[bernardsmith]

Again ... ask 5 people and you are likely to get 7 answers.. but here is my understanding. Yeast has no need for acidity - Yeast make their own which is how yeast create an environment that suits the specific strain of yeast and disfavors all others and even bacterial problems. In fact too much acidity (adding acids) can stall the fermentation. You want to add acids ONLY if the taste warrants this and taste may warrant this only just before you bottle.
You can calculate (close enough) the ABV with the following formula (SG - FG) * 131. You can make that even more simple by taking the starting gravity and multiplying that by 131 (assuming your final gravity is close enough to 1.000)- so a starting gravity of say 1.100 has a potential ABV of about (.100 * 131 = ) 13%. assuming the mead finishes dry.

Cloudiness is really more a matter of aesthetics. Mead can be clear bright and I would argue it should be... The cloudiness MAY be because of suspended yeast and other particulates and they may be suspended because there is still CO2 saturating the mead. You could try and degas by stirring the mead very vigorously (don't aerate it) , or by pulling a vacuum through it (you will need about 22 inches of vacuum) or by adding nucleation points to help the gas gather and rush out the fermenter (silicone beads or food grade sand would work to nucleate the CO2).
I was visiting family in Wales and picked up some Scottish heather honey but you are not going to find any fogg. That might be in the heather itself - not the honey and the tips I get I get from my LHBS and these are dried and sold commercially... I am sure that the likelihood of finding even microscopic traces of this hallucinogenic is about the same as finding hallucinogenics in the rye flour you buy from your local supermarket. No reports of tarantismo that I have heard about in NY... that's for sure. But I could be wrong...

 

[RipVan]

Ah you're in Saratoga Springs -- not far. Grahamsville NY, near Ellenville here.

The formula I got from Papazian was the difference of OG and FG multiplied by 105, which got me the 14%. Now rereading, I see that is for alcohol by weight, not volume. Thanks again!

I have tried shaking the (one gallon) carboy a few times over the last few weeks and it hasn't cleared. Another batch I have done that with yields a clear CO2 blow off but this batch hasn't. I have bottled cloudy mead that then cleared very well in the bottle. I think I will just give it a few more weeks and see what happens. Maybe add a clarifying agent at that point. Thanks for the food grade sand idea.

Not trying to get a "trip" out of this, more ethnobotanical curiosity. I understand whatever is in the fogg does make it into the honey, but it is definitely more on the flower tips themselves.

Curious how much heather honey you used when you made yours?

 

[RipVan]

btw, did decide to add some water just to see what happens -- now calculating ABV is getting complicated ... not that I'm obsessed with needing to know, just interesting to see what happens

 

[bernardsmith]

Basic datum is 1 lb of honey mixed in water to make 1 gallon will raise the gravity of the water by 35 points (1.035) so if you know how much water you have used and how much honey is in your mead the nominal starting gravity (by calculation) is really simple arithmetic (double the volume of water and you half the SG (1.0175) add 1 pint to the water and you have 9 pints (or 1.125 gallons) so you divide the 35 points (or 70 points or 105 points (2, or 3 lbs etc etc) by 1.125 rather than 1.. It's guid Scottish arithmetic..

 

[madscientist451]

Hello and thanks for any thoughts on the following.


Heated honey and water to 130 degrees.


O.G. = 1.108

Two weeks later F.G. = 1.003 (ABV = 11%)

Taste strongly of petroleum (a taste I find in a lot of commercial meads -- not pleasant -- but minimal in previous meads with lower honey content).


THANKS!

So you made an 11% mead with minimal nutrient additions and after a few weeks it had a flavor you didn't like? What were you expecting?
A mead like that needs to sit for a year or two to mellow out.
Or, you can do staggered nutrient additions, de-gassing, pitch an adequate amount of yeast be careful with your fermentation temps and maybe you'll get a drinkable mead much sooner.
If you haven't already, I would suggest taking the time to listen to the Basic Brewing Podcast "Best mead practices", its well worth it.

http://hwcdn.libsyn.com/p/2/8/2/282...14861284&hwt=958c03c0a48a3e1c9a987fd4abe231b8

 

[RipVan]

Scottish arithmetic -- haha.

Problem is that I have probably pulled out at least a pint of the wort over 4 months of sampling, which would not be a big deal if it were a 5 gallon batch but it's only a gallon. FWIW, the new SG is 1.026 probably meaningless.

madscientist451 -- who said I was expecting anything? It's an experiment, and if it's not obvious, I am very new to this.

Appreciate the podcast link. Will definitely listen.

 

[bernardsmith]

A reading of 1.026 is not "meaningless". It says that there is slightly more than about 4 oz of sugar/ gallon still in the mead and that the mead will taste sweet at this time.. as to your apparent frustration regarding the volume... I frequently make single quarts of mead to experiment with the flavors of honey varietals. I am not going to buy 15 lbs of a honey that costs a mortgage and a half only to find that I don't like how it tastes when fermented. And if I can find a jar of 12 oz of an exotic honey I can mix that with enough water to make a quart and the SG will be 1.105 (or the equivalent of 3 lbs of honey in one gallon), but that also means that I can use 12 oz of honey to make a mead with half that ABV (that is about 7%) and use up some of the remaining honey to backsweeten or carbonate this quart. Bottom line - there is no law of nature that requires that every batch be 5 gallons or even 1 gallon.