Mead Starter. How much honey?

[govain]

When making a mead starter, how much honey and yeast nutrient would you use? I'm using a Whitelabs Champagne yeast and Wyeast wine nutrient blend.

I used probably about 1 lb of honey, and 1/4 tsp nutrient (1/8 at start, then for giggles tossed in another 1/8 several hours later) and made only about 800mg of starter. Had it on the stirplate for a bit over 48 hours and then cold crashed it because my brew day got postponed. After the crash it doesn't look like there's all that much yeast sediment in there. Thinking I may have been light on the honey. (didn't check the gravity)

I now have a 2L flask and was thinking of just repitching the old starter into a new starter and starting it over. Thoughts? How much honey would you recommend in the new starter?

 

[summersolstice]

I use $.99 dry wine yeast, either hydrated with warm water for 15 minutes or simply sprinkled on the must, and after dozens of meads over the past 8-9 years I've never had a fermentation failure.

 

[biochemedic]

We can argue about the benefits of starters in another thread...personally, I agree that you should make a starter with liquid yeasts to increase your cell count...it will definitely reduce your lag time. I also use more than one packet when I use dry yeast...my last dry yeast batch was pitched with 3 packets of rehydrated 71B and my lag time was 3 HRS!

Anyway, to answer the OP's question, I think you had TOO MUCH honey in your first starter... I'm assuming your volume was 800 ML which is about 0.211 gallons. putting 1 LB of honey in this volume is equivalent to a ratio of 4.75 lbs honey per gallon! This give you an estimated OG of 1.199!!!!

Almost any yeast will have a pretty hard time starting in that gravity...it's a huge osmotic shock. Generally, starters should be a pretty low OG...for beer/ale yeast, I use about 1.040, and for mead, I make starters between 1.040-1.060.

I usually make 2 quart (a little under 2 liters) starters, and 0.5 lbs honey in that volume gets you estimated 1.042, 0.75 lbs gets you 1.063...I usually add somewhere between 0.5 - 0.75 lbs to 2 quarts.

If you were to put your entire starter into a new flask and dilute to 2 liters, you should be able to get your gravity down below 1.100, and have a better hope of getting that yeast started properly...

 

[govain]

Thanks. I've got some 71B and D47 for other batches, I just wanted a starter for the Whitelabs as it was a liquid yeast.

I didn't realize I was being too generous and 'drowning' the poor yeasties in sugar. I think I'll stir up the small flask, repitch into the 2L diluted and just roll with it. Next time I think I'll also measure a bit more accurately for the starter. I was just winging it and stirred in a bit under 1/3 of a 3lb bottle of honey.
I'm in the process of reorganizing my brew setup so with the exception of cleaning and sanitation, this batch has been a bit slap-dash. Probably a good thing that it got postponed.