My first mead attempt...

[scarpozzi]

I started off with 4.5 gallons of water and 10 lbs of honey from Sam's Club... I used some dry wine yeast and yeast nutrient. The mead is very dry and smells like a dry wine with little fruit on the nose and moderately low alcohol...about 10.5%.

I've siphoned it twice now...once after the first week and a half and the last time was last night into a second carboy. I plan on back-sweetening to make a holiday mead and have considered the vanilla bean/cinnamon recipes that I've seen everywhere. I'm still learning, so can someone give me advice on where to go from here and how much honey I'll want to add to get a generally acceptable mead sweetness. I've only tasted mead once, so I vaguely remember what it should be like.

I figure I'll need to zap the yeast before I add honey to keep fermentation from kicking off again, but I'm curious whether sweetening with honey will cloud up the finished product. Is there a better sweetener to use? It's only been going for about 6 weeks at this point and is already getting pretty clear...but I have plenty of time to get my ducks in a row before sweetening or adding spices.

Any advice?

Thanks.

 

[fatbloke]

I started off with 4.5 gallons of water and 10 lbs of honey from Sam's Club... I used some dry wine yeast and yeast nutrient. The mead is very dry and smells like a dry wine with little fruit on the nose and moderately low alcohol...about 10.5%.

I've siphoned it twice now...once after the first week and a half and the last time was last night into a second carboy. I plan on back-sweetening to make a holiday mead and have considered the vanilla bean/cinnamon recipes that I've seen everywhere. I'm still learning, so can someone give me advice on where to go from here and how much honey I'll want to add to get a generally acceptable mead sweetness. I've only tasted mead once, so I vaguely remember what it should be like.

I figure I'll need to zap the yeast before I add honey to keep fermentation from kicking off again, but I'm curious whether sweetening with honey will cloud up the finished product. Is there a better sweetener to use? It's only been going for about 6 weeks at this point and is already getting pretty clear...but I have plenty of time to get my ducks in a row before sweetening or adding spices.

Any advice?

Thanks.

Well, for "normal" recipes in the 5 gallon region, you'd normally use something like 3lb per gallon or 15lb made up to 5 gallons, let it do it's thing and then sort out about whether it needs any back sweetening or not.

As for "knowing" what it should taste like ? To that, I'd say, absolutley no. There's no set standard. Here, with the limited market, the few commercially available meads tend to be very, very sweet, with very high final gravity (about 1040 - which I'd consider a stuck ferment, but they're labelled as 14% ABV). Stuff like that is probably fermented dry and then back sweetened.

Hence for your batch, I'd suggest adding more honey (maybe 3lb), let it ferment dry, clear it, then back sweeten it to the level you like, then think about ageing it with maybe a vanilla pod etc etc...

regards

fatbloke

 

[MedsenFey]

I figure I'll need to zap the yeast before I add honey to keep fermentation from kicking off again, but I'm curious whether sweetening with honey will cloud up the finished product. Is there a better sweetener to use? It's only been going for about 6 weeks at this point and is already getting pretty clear...but I have plenty of time to get my ducks in a row before sweetening or adding spices.

Any advice?

Let it clear and age a few months before you decide to do anything. Over time the perceived sweetness will increase a little as the yeasty bitterness fades.

If you do sweeten, you'll need to add sulfite/sorbate in combination to prevent the added sugar from being fermented by the yeast. When you sweeten with honey, it will add some haze that will take a good while to clear.

Medsen

 

[scarpozzi]

I knew I had started with less honey than I should. I was initially trying to be cheap and didn't want to end up with a whole lot of a really sweet product.

I'm tempted to give it a little more honey & fermax to raise the alcohol content, but make the fermentation quick....maybe a lb or two to start...then add the sulfite/sorbate before backsweetening with another lb or so to give it a few months to clear so it'll hopefully be ready to bottle in December.

 

[MedsenFey]

If you want to add more honey you certainly can. Adding more Fermax now will do little good. The yeast are already past the point where they can assimilate DAP (which makes up the majority of the nitrogen in Fermax), so any that you add now will either feed potential spoilage organisms, or hang around and possible affect the flavor.

If you want to give some nutrition to the yeast, you'll need to use something with amino nitrogen, not Fermax.

 

[scarpozzi]

If you want to add more honey you certainly can. Adding more Fermax now will do little good. The yeast are already past the point where they can assimilate DAP (which makes up the majority of the nitrogen in Fermax), so any that you add now will either feed potential spoilage organisms, or hang around and possible affect the flavor.

If you want to give some nutrition to the yeast, you'll need to use something with amino nitrogen, not Fermax.

Good to know. Thanks.