Mead Making: The Profiling of Honey
Not too long ago, I was at a homebrew club meeting where I was the only mead maker in attendance. This was not for a lack of interest by the other members, they just hadn't made mead yet. When I presented my meads for tasting, I got a lot of questions and I continually stressed the importance of nutrients when making mead. The next meeting, a member came to me questioning why I would need to add nutrients to mead musts when honey already has so many nutrients in it. I stated that the nutrients present in honey are not the nutrients that yeast use, and certainly aren't at the level needed for a healthy fermentation.
From Flowers to Honey
You may know that bees go to flowers, bring the nectar back, puke it up, and honey is made. While this is partially right, there are a few more steps to it. The bee visits the flower and stores nectar inside of a separate stomach; they can hold their own weight in nectar before returning to the hive.
Once they have the nectar, it is regurgitated into a comb. At this point, it has a higher water percentage than the final product we are accustomed to. Worker bees then generate heat which evaporates the water and concentrates the sugar. This is similar to maple syrup production from maple sap. If you were to cook maple syrup down further it would turn to maple cream (which is sinfully delicious).
The Sugars of Honey
Now that you have your honey, what types of sugars are you providing your yeast when making mead (or adding honey to beer)? Honey's sugars are made up of fructose and glucose, both of which are monosaccharide sugars (simple "1 chain" sugar). Wine and beer yeast are both great at fermenting these sugars.
Types Of Honey
However, wine yeast can struggle with fermenting maltose (malt sugar). This is because wine yeast has been trained and selected to ferment grape wine musts. Grape wine musts are also made up of...guess what...glucose and fructose.
Beer yeast can ferment mead musts because it is capable of fermenting more complicated sugars, so glucose and fructose are easy pickings. However, in mixed sugar fermentations, like a beer wort with large amounts of sugar or honey added, the yeast can eat the simple sugars and become lazy. This doesn't always happen, but in high enough percentages of monosaccharides, you may see some stalled ferments.
The Nutrition of Mead Musts
It's a horse that has been beaten to a pulp, and then been beaten back into a horse. Staggered nutrient additions are a well known and widely used practice in both commercial and home mead making. Lallemand, which makes Fermaid K* and Fermaid O*, was kind enough to conduct fermentation experiments and graph the results comparing their products vs. no nutrients and competitors' nutrients. I've redrawn the chart to show the relevant data from the Fermaid K handout (the only place I've found a PDF for it is on the Morebeer site, on the Fermaid K page, under the documents tab).
*The K and O represent different types of nitrogen provided to your must. K is inorganic nitrogen and and O is organic nitrogen. This is not the same "organic" as organic food etc.
The Management of High Honey Musts
The gravity of honey is staggering, and when using high amounts of it in meads, (3 to 4 pounds per gallon) it should be carefully planned out to prevent stalled batches.
Fermentation Characteristics
Making an 18% mead is not as easy as 5 pounds of honey per gallon and some champagne yeast. Care must be taken that you are spreading your nutrient additions out as well as your sugar additions. This process is called step feeding and is crucial to squeezing extra alcohol into your batch without the risk of making syrup.
Restarting a high gravity ferment that stalled at 1.035, but already has 13% alcohol will be nearly impossible. It's too much for a new pitch of yeast to handle very reliably.
Instead, try starting with around 3 pounds per gallon, adding nutrients spread over two-three additions, and letting that ferment dry. Once fermented out, you can add a little more honey, let it ferment, and repeat until the yeast quits. You may even find your yeast exceeds its listed tolerance.
In Closing
Next time you're making a mead, remember that all those bees did a lot of work to get you your honey, and wasting it by not treating it properly would be a shame.
Sources: Fermaid K chart - http://www.morebeer.com/products/fermaid.html?site_id=5
Not too long ago, I was at a homebrew club meeting where I was the only mead maker in attendance. This was not for a lack of interest by the other members, they just hadn't made mead yet. When I presented my meads for tasting, I got a lot of questions and I continually stressed the importance of nutrients when making mead. The next meeting, a member came to me questioning why I would need to add nutrients to mead musts when honey already has so many nutrients in it. I stated that the nutrients present in honey are not the nutrients that yeast use, and certainly aren't at the level needed for a healthy fermentation.
From Flowers to Honey
You may know that bees go to flowers, bring the nectar back, puke it up, and honey is made. While this is partially right, there are a few more steps to it. The bee visits the flower and stores nectar inside of a separate stomach; they can hold their own weight in nectar before returning to the hive.
Once they have the nectar, it is regurgitated into a comb. At this point, it has a higher water percentage than the final product we are accustomed to. Worker bees then generate heat which evaporates the water and concentrates the sugar. This is similar to maple syrup production from maple sap. If you were to cook maple syrup down further it would turn to maple cream (which is sinfully delicious).
The Sugars of Honey
Now that you have your honey, what types of sugars are you providing your yeast when making mead (or adding honey to beer)? Honey's sugars are made up of fructose and glucose, both of which are monosaccharide sugars (simple "1 chain" sugar). Wine and beer yeast are both great at fermenting these sugars.
Types Of Honey
However, wine yeast can struggle with fermenting maltose (malt sugar). This is because wine yeast has been trained and selected to ferment grape wine musts. Grape wine musts are also made up of...guess what...glucose and fructose.
Beer yeast can ferment mead musts because it is capable of fermenting more complicated sugars, so glucose and fructose are easy pickings. However, in mixed sugar fermentations, like a beer wort with large amounts of sugar or honey added, the yeast can eat the simple sugars and become lazy. This doesn't always happen, but in high enough percentages of monosaccharides, you may see some stalled ferments.
The Nutrition of Mead Musts
It's a horse that has been beaten to a pulp, and then been beaten back into a horse. Staggered nutrient additions are a well known and widely used practice in both commercial and home mead making. Lallemand, which makes Fermaid K* and Fermaid O*, was kind enough to conduct fermentation experiments and graph the results comparing their products vs. no nutrients and competitors' nutrients. I've redrawn the chart to show the relevant data from the Fermaid K handout (the only place I've found a PDF for it is on the Morebeer site, on the Fermaid K page, under the documents tab).
*The K and O represent different types of nitrogen provided to your must. K is inorganic nitrogen and and O is organic nitrogen. This is not the same "organic" as organic food etc.
The Management of High Honey Musts
The gravity of honey is staggering, and when using high amounts of it in meads, (3 to 4 pounds per gallon) it should be carefully planned out to prevent stalled batches.
Fermentation Characteristics
Making an 18% mead is not as easy as 5 pounds of honey per gallon and some champagne yeast. Care must be taken that you are spreading your nutrient additions out as well as your sugar additions. This process is called step feeding and is crucial to squeezing extra alcohol into your batch without the risk of making syrup.
Restarting a high gravity ferment that stalled at 1.035, but already has 13% alcohol will be nearly impossible. It's too much for a new pitch of yeast to handle very reliably.
Instead, try starting with around 3 pounds per gallon, adding nutrients spread over two-three additions, and letting that ferment dry. Once fermented out, you can add a little more honey, let it ferment, and repeat until the yeast quits. You may even find your yeast exceeds its listed tolerance.
In Closing
Next time you're making a mead, remember that all those bees did a lot of work to get you your honey, and wasting it by not treating it properly would be a shame.
Sources: Fermaid K chart - http://www.morebeer.com/products/fermaid.html?site_id=5
