Hey guys, thought this might interest some of you. I just racked a gallon of mead today, started it up back in January as an experiment. I built myself a stir plate and have had this mead on it for basically the entire time; I figured the stir plate was easier than degassing with a pump (I already had all the crap to build it), and should be almost as good. Anyway, long story short, the experiment was a success. This is the dryest mead I've ever made - it went all the way down to 1.000 from 1.110, and in 46 days, which makes it also the fastest mead I've ever made. That's without any nutrient or energizer, I just mixed it up, shook it up to aerate, and let it go on the stir plate. I'm going to have to try this again and check it out sooner to see how quickly it ferments to dry.
Mead on a stir plate
- Thread starter svenalope
- Start date
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I'd kinda always wondered about doing this. I'll be interested to hear your tasting notes.
I turned off the stir plate for a couple days to clear, and also clearing in secondary because I like to get greedy with my siphoning. I was a little premature in my reporting though, I just racked the other gallon, same mead (almost) but no stir plate. Both are at 1.000 now, so the experiment is inconclusive I guess. As far as tasting, they're really nothing special. The only interesting thing is the spicing, one had a vanilla bean and the other had 1 tsp ginger. I'd have liked them to have a little residual sweetness (I don't believe in backsweetening); I think they would both be much better. As it is, the vanilla one came out alright, I was surprised that the vanilla wasn't totally overwhelming. The ginger one isn't very nice, it's just too gingery and spicy, needs cut with some sugar. I guess it is worth noting that both of them seem to be very clean in terms of alcohol - they taste almost watery and not hot at all, but the alcohol content should be around 13.5%. One other interesting thing - the stir-plate mead was pretty damn bubbly when I racked it, but the other one was more or less still. So, gonna have to try this out again, but for now I'm gonna chalk up the fast ferment to aeration, which I just learned about a couple months ago when I started making beer.
