Mead on top of beer

[mooney]

Any one had much luck with dumping honey and water on top of the dregs of a batch of beer? I have recently got back into beer after brewing exclusively mead and have decided to dump 8 kg of honey dissolved in 23l of water into the yeast and hops mess at the bottom of the bucket. I might add fruit or flavour at a later date but I have an empty 23l carboy. The beer was a festival beers razorback IPA.

 

[BrewYork]

Hey Mooney! I haven't tried that myself, but as a fellow brewer of both beer and mead I feel like you'd be ok. If it were me, I'd add some yeast nutrient and make sure to aerate. Hope to hear how it goes!

 

[Mainer]

Sounds fun. Just make sure you're using a beer yeast with a high alcohol tolerance.

 

[jmaessen]

I have had excellent results fermenting mead on the yeast cake of a beer. I basically just racked it right in after bottling the corresponding beer. I suspect you don't want a lot of hop residue or trub in the fermenter when you do this – I've always done it after a low- to mid-gravity non-hoppy ale. Generally used an English yeast – I think I tried with WLP001 once and wasn't very happy with the results.

Note that this was for a fairly sweet, quick-fermenting mead. I suspect the yeast cake and huge over-pitch are what makes this work so well; I didn't use staggered nutrient additions or similar techniques.

I have a 14th-century recipe that recommends pretty much this exact technique.

 

[hendenburg2]

I have had excellent results fermenting mead on the yeast cake of a beer. I basically just racked it right in after bottling the corresponding beer. I suspect you don't want a lot of hop residue or trub in the fermenter when you do this – I've always done it after a low- to mid-gravity non-hoppy ale. Generally used an English yeast – I think I tried with WLP001 once and wasn't very happy with the results.

Note that this was for a fairly sweet, quick-fermenting mead. I suspect the yeast cake and huge over-pitch are what makes this work so well; I didn't use staggered nutrient additions or similar techniques.

I have a 14th-century recipe that recommends pretty much this exact technique.

Yeah, basically what's happening is since you are really over-pitching, the yeast don't have to go through the reproduction phase and can spend more time on respiration - producing EtOH. I also imagine that the nutrients from dead yeast would act like adding yeast hulls and make it a more hospitable environment, which could reduce higher-order alcohol production.

 

[MrFancyPlants]

I think you may get some off flavors from the hops left in your yeast cake esp since it is an IPA. Just a little hops goes a long ways in something with a lower final gravity like mead or cider. On the plus side I think you won't have to wait forever for the yeast to finish up because of the over pitch. I say go for it, give it a taste, report back and add that fruit or flavor to help cover up the flaws.

 

[csurowiec]

FWIW I brewed a cyser using 1lb of honey per gallon of apple juice using slurry from a batch of porter that was brewed with WLP013. It turned out great. I used about a pint of slurry in 3 gallons of juice.

 

[mooney]

Just a quick update on how this mead is clearing up. Might bottle soon but I'm a bit short on wine bottles so it might need to wait another year.

 

[mooney]

Just an update. This mead was tasting a little odd. So i chucked another 25g of challenger hops in then left it 6 more months to clear. It is a little odd now. Not terrible but not great. I think if i had chucked honey water and bread yeast together and left it 3 years it would have worked out better.

 

[MrFancyPlants]

Maybe some crystal malt and lactose could help round up the body?