My first run!

[RVAgaffer]

Hello Everyone,

So I am taking the plunge into brewing my first mead (well my first anything). The following are 3 recipes I am planing to start with, any feedback would be appreciated.

1- Simple Mead:
2.5 lb Orange Blossom Honey
Spring water to 1 gal
Go ferm for rehydration
Fermaid K
Lalvin Champagne Yeast EC-1118 (I also have 71B-1122 coming but I've seen a lot of suggestions for EC-1118)

2- Simple Cyser:
1 Gallon Local Cider (pasteurized) less 2-3 cups for honey room
1.5 lb Alfalfa Honey
Go ferm for rehydration
Fermaid K
Lalvin Champagne Yeast EC-1118
I may add some cinnamon or other spices when I rack it if it seems plain.

3- The Wild Card Melomel:
64oz store brand Pineapple Juice
32oz Organic Pear Juice
16oz Local Apple Cider
1.5 lb Alfalfa Honey
Go ferm for rehydration
Fermaid K
Lalvin 71B-1122 (since this has a lower alcohol tolerance I am leaning towards it for this one to hopefully not get 'rocket fuel' as a lot of people mention with pineapple)

I figure the first 2 are rather safe bets. The 3rd I figure can go probably one of 2 ways... great or an expensive way to clean out my drain as it goes down the sink.

Is my yeast choice logical for my melomel?

I am not sure which one(s) I will do this weekend because I also have a beer kit and another wine in my queue to get started and I don't want to have all my fun at one time.

 

[valverij]

Pineapple juice is pretty acidic (pH ~3.5), so I would add 1/4 - 1/2 tsp of either potassium carbonate (K2CO3) or potassium bicarbonate (KHCO3) to buffer the pH in that one. Even though 71B is a pretty hearty yeast and eats malic acid pretty well, I think the acid in pineapples is mostly citric and ascorbic.

It's quite possible the "rocket fuel" people mention when using pineapple comes from fusels produced by yeast under stress, due to a failure to properly manage/buffer the pH.

 

[RVAgaffer]

Pineapple juice is pretty acidic (pH ~3.5), so I would add 1/4 - 1/2 tsp of either potassium carbonate (K2CO3) or potassium bicarbonate (KHCO3) to buffer the pH in that one. Even though 71B is a pretty hearty yeast and eats malic acid pretty well, I think the acid in pineapples is mostly citric and ascorbic.

It's quite possible the "rocket fuel" people mention when using pineapple comes from fusels produced by yeast under stress, due to a failure to properly manage/buffer the pH.

Thanks for the suggestion! I just ordered a small thing of it from amazon (oh how i love prime)

I did get a pack of Ph strips to test with my big order coming tomorrow too just to get some exact measurements so I can get repeatable results.

 

[DungMonster]

Pineapple juice is fine... people fret too much. If the mix is too 'hot' just cut it with juice when you pour it. It is easier to make things very alcoholic and then mellow it than to try and get you weak stuff stronger. If it is your first time just start a basic mead for a few runs to master the process then you can get fancy and experiment with other fruits and pull off your own basic knowledge base. If you start out with fancy things and something happens you wont know if it was the process or the brew and you will be scouring the internet asking people thier thoughts. Then you will get 50 people telling you 75 differing opinions and ways to do it better. Lol
As for honey choices I would recomend just using a basic wildflower honey from a local apiary to start. I laugh everytime I see people buying fancy honies like orange blossom and such. I don't really feel like explaining why atm but just know that no honey is 'purely' anything unless they call it wildflower honey Maybe we can crack one of my hives open and ask the queen later lol.
On your juices buy all natural, no preservatives type even if it costs slightly more as honey is a natural preservative and it will reduce the amount of chemicals you are ingestimg since it looks like you already plan on adding some 'safe' ones to your brew.
Yeast wise, I have used lalvin d47 yeast in every mead I made for years now and really am pleased with its performance. It also always seems to break its 14ish% abv cap unless I cut back the honey and make it dry. Anyways Good luck.

 

[RVAgaffer]

I was going to wait until tomorrow but I got impatient and started the orange blossom mead tonight.

I may have used more fermaid k than is correct because i was estimating with a spoon and i did not estimate the head space in the jug correctly and only got half of the yeast starter in before it got too full... o well I will see how it works out. I guess I will know tomorrow.

It was pretty hard to get a good reading on the hydrometer with the foam but I think i am around 11% potential alcohol so I expect this to be very dry but that is what I am going for (even though i normally like sweeter wines, the only commercial meads I've tried were on the sweeter side so I want to see what a dry mead is all about).

 

[RVAgaffer]

Got the other 2 started this morning. I am surprised how high the PH was on the pineapple one after I mixed it, the strip looked like it was around 4.

The pineapple blend ended up being a little light on honey since I ran out of the alfalfa but not by much (about 1.42 lbs).

Both of them looked to be about 12-13% potential alcohol. I had to top them off with a touch of spring water thought cause there was a little more head space than i wanted after I added the yeast.

The orange blossom honey mead is chugging along well already... and I am already feeling impatient haha.

I still have a beer kit to get going today and then will probably do a couple more meads/wines next weekend.

 

[RVAgaffer]

The pineapple blend took off like a rocket and blew through the air lock twice so I tossed a blow off tube on it this morning and am still getting more than one bubble per second out of the blow off tube. So i guess its just time to wait...

 

[RVAgaffer]

Update, I racked the orange blossom mead and apple cyser yesterday.

Busy day yesterday started of by bottling a batch of beer and then intended to rack the 3 batches of mead.

Orange blossom mead is coming along and has a nice flavor already but its lighter and drier than i expected it to be. It tastes VERY similar to a commercial mead I have just lighter and drier so I suspect they are using orange blossom.

I am noticing a weird underlying flavor I don't remember from other meads I've tried though, I could almost describe it as cherry. I think this could do well as a sparkling mead. It is all but done fermenting and is reading 0 on the potential alcohol reading. I will have to figure out what i want to do with it. I think my next straight mead I will either do 4-5 lbs honey with EC1118 or 3.5-4lbs honey with with 71B yeast.

They cyser, well time will tell. It is very dry, i probably should not have used EC1118, it does have some off tastes as well but it is only a few weeks in so hopefully that dissipates.

And that my friends was the point in time when i broke my only hydrometer... of course the one batch (the pineapple) that really needs to be racked is the one I can't test to figure out what is going on before adding things. It has a huge amount of lees in the bottom and has pretty much stopped active fermentation. I need to add a lot of something to it since i will leave a lot of stuff behind. I am not optimistic about this batch but we will see. I think I am going to add apple juice or cider to it to top off when I get my replacement hydrometers.

I might just see if i can get a super high ABV with EC1118 and 5lbs honey in one gallon. Figure that will get me right at 20% (if the yeast holds out) with a little residual sweetness.

 

[NyQuil]

Remember, EC-1118 can ferment up to 18% since its a champagne yeast so anything you use it in will be very dry without back-sweetening.

I have never had a cherry flavor with orange blossom honey but I have also never fermented a traditional show mead with it.

 

[RVAgaffer]

Yeah i knew it would be dry but wow lol. The dryness in the mead is nice (i think mead may be the only alcohol I like on the drier side haha).

With taste being so subjective others may not taste what i am tasting as cherry but thats the closest thing I can relate the taste too, its more of a candy/artificial cherry note than a natural cherry flavor.

 

[AkTom]

Some meads take at least, at least 6 months to be drinkable. So start some beer already and be patient even with that. Keep the 1 gallon batches of mead going cause at 6 plus months it'll be a while before you are drinking much.

 

[RVAgaffer]

Some meads take at least, at least 6 months to be drinkable. So start some beer already and be patient even with that. Keep the 1 gallon batches of mead going cause at 6 plus months it'll be a while before you are drinking much.

haha yeah, I am planing to brew up a batch of beer this coming weekend if the USPS will deliver my grains (the whole Gluten Free thing throws a few wrenches in procuring ingredients easily ) I think the orange blossom mead being rather light and dry will be drinkable in 3 months from start to bottle. I suspect I will be making a batch or 2 of beer (5 gal) a month and probably start a 1 gal batch of mead/wine every month until i find some good recipes.

I may get another straight mead going while I am waiting for the 2 hour mash time (yeah 2 hours for gf grains).

Now something that i noticed earlier, there is a noticeable amount of sediment on the freshly racked batches. I know i probably picked up a ~little~ sediment but nowhere near the amount I am seeing now. Is that just normal when you rack to get some quick clarifying at first?