Mead fermented faster than expected

[dosowski]

Hi,

I'm fairly new to making mead - I started the easy way of just dumping everything, including the nutrients, together at the beginning and just letting it do its thing. Recently I decided to give staggered nutrient addition a try on a small batch. I used the batch builder at meadmakr.com to come up with the plan...

First, some info:
* 3.5 pounds clover+wildflower honey
* 1 gallon spring water
* 6 grams go-ferm
* 2 grams Fermaid K (staggered - 4 additions of .5 grams each)
* 4 grams DAP (staggered - 4 additions of 1 gram each)
* Lalvin K1-V1116 yeast
* Original gravity: 1.095
* Original pH: 4.0

Quick rundown of my steps:
1. Mixed honey and water (no boil - just warmed up the honey in a bit of hot tap water to make it pour easier)
2. Rehydrated yeast with go-ferm using the instructions from meadmakr.com, and tempered to within 10 degrees F of the must before pitching.
3. Degassed/aerated twice a day and added nutrients every day for the next four days. Nice steady bubbling throughout. I hadn't started taking gravity readings yet (other than the original) - I figured I'd give it a few days and continue aerating for the first 7 days, as I've seen recommended.
4. On the fifth day, the airlock seemed to abruptly stop. I was initially concerned about a stuck fermentation, but then I noticed that it looked like it was starting to clear. Interesting, so I took a measurement. 1.002. pH 3.4.
5. I gave it another day and a thick layer of sediment piled up on the bottom. I'm going for a raspberry melomel, so I went ahead and racked onto some raspberries (about 1.5 pounds) and pectic enzyme. I'd like to have the remaining active yeast munch away at the raspberries.

I'll be honest - seeing it hit 1.002 after only 5 days caught me a bit by surprise. More than that, I'm a bit concerned that I was aerating it right up until the day I noticed the air lock come to a halt, and was planning to keep aerating it for another two days until I noticed the change in activity. Will this potentially be an oxidation concern? Does the addition of fruit make the situation any better or worse? Will the fermentation of the raspberries help drive out the added oxygen, or will the fruit be more likely to oxidize due to the extra oxygen present?

Obviously I'm going to just keep moving forward with this, and whatever I get I get. But I'm curious what others have to say about it. My big lesson from this is to start measuring gravity sooner, particularly when using this method (as opposed to the dump-it-and-forget-it method).

Thanks for any feedback.

 

[mredge73]

It is a concern, I guess it will be a while before you see if you really caused any damage.
The yeast will scrub the oxygen if they have enough time, however you already racked so there isn't much yeast left.

4 day fermention is common if the yeast is happy and healthy. Degassing isn't necessary unless you are trying to turn it around quickly.
Never aerate after pitching yeast again and allow it to stay in the primary for at least 2 weeks instead of racking early.
Yeast will cleanup after themselves if they are given enough time; fusels will be reduced and oxygen will be scrubbed out.
After 3 weeks they start to die so this is a good time to transfer to secondary. Mead is a long game, don't rush it.

 

[landsknechte]

You did rack a little early, however, the yeast remaining should be okay to ferment your raspberries. It may take a bit longer though being as there are likely a lot less yeast cells floating around. As the above poster said, yeast cleans up after itself once the oxygen and sugar is gone.

Adding a small amount of yeast would probably not hurt. Especially if you goal was to, say, carbonate it. A little champagne yeast would work wonders in that respect but it would come out bone-dry.

Fruit adds nutrients as well as sugars. It helps ferment the mead along more smoothly if you don't have nutrients/Diammonium Phosphate according to my limited experience.

 

[dosowski]

Thanks for the feedback.

I'm certainly not trying to rush it. I almost felt like the mead was trying to rush me more than the other way around. I was expecting to not rack for another week or two.

I based my decision to rack on some reading I've done where people have said to rack onto the fruit when the fermentation is almost done. My understanding of this is that it leaves some active yeast in play for two purposes: to "eat" the fruit and to help fill the headspace with CO2 while there is still some life left in it. Based on what both of you have said, it would seem that you'd also want a healthy number of active yeast in secondary to do that "cleanup" after racking, too. But maybe I'm not quite understanding the whole process quite right.

1.002 seemed like "almost done" to me, so I went for it. If I were to wait another week or two to rack, wouldn't I be left with even less yeast in secondary to ferment the raspberries and push out the oxygen introduced during racking?

I think at this point I'm going to avoid messing with it too much and consider it an experimental batch (which it really was anyway). If anything I may see what effect this mistake had on the batch.

However, I'm interested in learning for the next batch. It sounds to me like the recommendation "next time" would be to just let it sit in primary until after it is very done, and then rack onto the fruit, although I'm not sure how that gets reconciled with the other things I mentioned above.

Oh, and on degassing... That seemed to be recommended before adding nutrients to prevent an explosion of mead as well as to keep the yeast happier (something about them not liking carbonic acid or some such thing).

Uh oh... Suddenly I feel ashamed. I think I may have confused aeration with degassing for some reason. Looking back through some stuff while typing up this reply, I think the recommendation I got was to degas for the first week, not aerate for the first week. I was just doing a combined degas/aeration (sloppily stirring with a sanitized spoon with plenty of splashing). Sigh... Learning, learning, learning... This is why I went with a 1-gallon batch instead of a full 5 gallons I guess. Not much lost (if it turns out bad, that is), but plenty of experience gained.

 

[dosowski]

So anyway, as a followup question to this... When fermentation goes this quickly, it kind of messes up the nutrient schedule. If you're planning nutrient additions at 24 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours, and 7 days (or 1/3 break), the fermentation could be effectively done before the final nutrient addition, or even possibly the 3rd addition.

So, is it best to just follow the pre-determined nutrient schedule regardless of the speed of fermentation, or just stop feeding nutrients when you hit the 1/3 sugar break, or accelerate the timeline so you're feeding it every 12 hours instead of every 24 hours (as an example) to match the speed of the fermentation (in other words, add nutrients when you hit certain gravity milestones instead of at specific times)?

 

[bernardsmith]

I generally don't use Tosna or other regimens but feed my yeast very soon after the lag phase has ended and that's it. But rather than use a clock or a calendar to decide when to feed the yeast I would go with the changes in the gravity. So, if your aim is to feed at the 1/3 break then based on starting gravity I would feed the yeast when the gravity has dropped 1/3 If that is 24 hours then so be it - but if that is 2 hours then the babies are hungry..