Nottingham Yeast and Mead

[1Brotherbill]

Way back when I got into this hobby. (About a year ago). I wanted to make nothing but Meads. But since then I have gotten hooked on beers. So back to the start. I want to make a perfect Mead or at least one that doesn't taste like jet fuel and battery acid mixed together. So here goes. Can Nottingham Yeast work with making a good mead. Or should I go out and get a wine yeast? I used Montrachet yeast before and it was on the dry side/hot side for me.

 

[White_Stag]

I have not used that type of yeast, but we have had great results from Lalvin EC 1118. It has a high alc tolerance, I think 18%, and it's a well balanced flavor. We have been trying to make fairly dry melomels and it's been a good all around yeast. I hope that helps!

 

[fatbloke]

Way back when I got into this hobby. (About a year ago). I wanted to make nothing but Meads. But since then I have gotten hooked on beers. So back to the start. I want to make a perfect Mead or at least one that doesn't taste like jet fuel and battery acid mixed together. So here goes. Can Nottingham Yeast work with making a good mead. Or should I go out and get a wine yeast? I used Montrachet yeast before and it was on the dry side/hot side for me.

If you want something drinkable instantly, then it's gonna have to be low alcohol and sweet......

If you're prepared to be patient, then you will be able to work wonders. The higher the alcohol, the more likely it is to taste medicinal/mouth wash and consequently the longer it is likely to take to age.

An alcohol hot taste will mellow, but you're looking at, at least 6 months, probably a year plus.

I don't know if there's actually been any research done, but I've read that it will carry on improving for 6 to 7 years and afterwards it won't improve any further.

So it's up to you what it is that you want, and actually expect......

 

[malkore]

1 - use Narbonne 71-B yeast strain
2 - use staggered nutrient additions
3 - degas with a drill mounted whip 3 times a day for the first week of primary

Do this, and you can have a stellar mead that's drinkable 2 months after the pitch date, not 2 years. Items 2 and 3 above prevent yeast stress, which prevents the off-flavors that need to mellow for 12+ months.

I kid you not, the three above items are game changers, from someone who made his first mead at 17 with bread yeast, and is finally not an idiot after 16 years of mead making

 

[BierSnob]

1. Ale yeasts can be used to make meade. I have used Safale US-05 for a Cyser. If you are using a beer yeast find one with a neutral flavour profile. It should give you a sweeter meade with less honey.

2. What malkore said

 

[clayroc]

I just bottled my first mead, it's my own hybrid of joe's ancient mead. I used Nottingham and left it for 2 1/2 months in primary on the fruit and it tastes great. I built a cold room just for my brews and I am sure that helped as well.

 

[jayich]

1 - use Narbonne 71-B yeast strain
2 - use staggered nutrient additions
3 - degas with a drill mounted whip 3 times a day for the first week of primary

Do this, and you can have a stellar mead that's drinkable 2 months after the pitch date, not 2 years. Items 2 and 3 above prevent yeast stress, which prevents the off-flavors that need to mellow for 12+ months.

I kid you not, the three above items are game changers, from someone who made his first mead at 17 with bread yeast, and is finally not an idiot after 16 years of mead making

I agree with you on 2 and 3, but why do you like 71B so much? I have used it and it is a good yeast, but there are lot of good yeasts out there. What yeasts have you used to compare with 71B?

 

[biochemedic]

I agree w/ Malkore about 71B...it really does seem to make a mead that matures and loses off flavors *very* quickly compared to other yeasts.

In fairness to Jayich though, I agree there are other good yeasts, and my question to Malkore is this: is 71B your "house yeast?" IE, do you use it for ALL your meads? I've only used it for melomels (at the recommendation of Ken Schramm's book), and I've been extremely pleased with the melomel results (I like my recent iteration of cyser using 71B much better than my previous ones done with Wyeast Dry Mead strain), but I'd be tempted to use other yeasts for a show mead, or a metheglin...

While I really like 71B, I'd wonder whether or not your #2 and #3 are the more important points.....

 

[winstonofbeer]

1. Ale yeasts can be used to make meade. I have used Safale US-05 for a Cyser. If you are using a beer yeast find one with a neutral flavour profile. It should give you a sweeter meade with less honey.

2. What malkore said

I have a huge supply of us-05...I double pitch when i make a beer thats 10% and it has turned out good. Will this work just as well when making a lower %?

Wife wants a sweet mead, and i am going to do the JOAM mead first....

Also noob question, Whats a Cyser?

 

[jayich]

I have a huge supply of us-05...I double pitch when i make a beer thats 10% and it has turned out good. Will this work just as well when making a lower %?

Wife wants a sweet mead, and i am going to do the JOAM mead first....

Also noob question, Whats a Cyser?

A cyser is the name for an apple mead(melomel) which is made with apple juice and honey. It is similar to a hard cider but with higher alcohol due to honey. It is even closer to apple wine which uses only sugar to boost the alcohol. I also double pitch US-05 when I make imperial IPA's. It won't hurt double pitching for lower ABV's, but below about 6% you probably are'nt going to get much added benefit- but I have double -pitched in beers this low because I like to use a lot of yeast in beers and meads.

 

[MedsenFey]

Can Nottingham Yeast work with making a good mead. Or should I go out and get a wine yeast?

It can make a very nice mead and will usually keep the ABV around 12% (though I have seen it go to 13-14%). With a more modest ABV, it usually makes it drinkable fairly quickly, especially if you manage the fermentation well and keep the temp cool.

71B makes excellent, ready-to-drink-quickly meads, and is particularly good for berry batches. It tends to be very "estery", and if you want to just let the honey shine, sometimes other yeast may serve better. It just depends on what you want.

Medsen

 

[truckjohn]

Well... I gave it a try for a gallon to top up my JAOM 5-gallon batch that was made with D47....

Can you say stuck city! Even with a staged nutrient addition... No more Nottingham for things that are going to run higher than 8%..... 3 months later - very cloudy, stuck at about 1.08, and very soft, fluffy lees that would just never lay down.... Look at that bottle funny and the lees float up and out....

It makes great cider and beer.. but it's maybe not the best for other things....

Thanks

 

[Brew_Master]

Yeah beer yeast isn't good for anything over 8% ABV, the best mead yeasts are D47 & 71B

 

[fatbloke]

[/LEFT]Master;2929641]Yeah beer yeast isn't good for anything over 8% ABV, the best mead yeasts are D47 & 71B

Well I can't say about beer yeast, I don't make beers.

That said, in descending order, D21, K1V-1116, 71B..... I'm not a big fan of sweet, but medium at about a final gravity of 1.010 is good to me......

 

[3 Dog Brew]

So, thought I would find someplace appropriate to post this. I did a mead experiment with dry Nottingham Ale yeast and I wanted to share the results with you.

I had some honey that I purchased at the LHBS and forgot about in my wetbar area of the house. When I found it it had crystallized and become like a single solid mass. Trying to figure out what to do with it I decided to make a basic "show" mead with some dry Nottingham Ale yeast. Figuring out how much water to add by some dubious calculations, I made a starter for the yeast with DME and grew them up on the stir plate.

Bottom line is that with a proper pitching rate and controlling/driving the fermentation through temperature and mineral supplements, I got some of the best mead I have ever made from this Nottingham Ale yeast. If my guess is accurate, the trick is to pitch enough healthy yeast and to drive the fermentation by starting low (62F) and ratcheting that temperature up as fermentation slows down. I'm now waiting for it to clear before bottling.

Just as an aside, I made a gallon of mead with WLP002 that I had rinsed from a previous batch of beer and that mead made it to the second round at Dixie Cup. Just FYI.

 

[biochemedic]

Yeah beer yeast isn't good for anything over 8% ABV, the best mead yeasts are D47 & 71B

Kind of depends on the yeast...there are plenty of "beer yeasts" that will ferment well into double digits.

 

[Insomniac]

Indeed, I used s-04 on my cyser and had to cold crash it at 15%, I wasn't really expecting it to go that far either but it just kept going!

 

[1Brotherbill]

3 Dog might be right about pitching. I tried this and my end product is sweet. Also, fermentation takes about forever and a day to finish out. So in the future if I do this again. I would back off on the fermentables and try and pitch as much live yeast as possible. Probably would have been easier to just go to the store and get some wine yeast. Well you live and you learn.

 

[3 Dog Brew]

I guess one of the other points I would like to highlight is that prior to the understanding of micro-biology folks made Mead by leaving it out or using a fermenting stir-stick. So, using whatever yeast was around would have been common. I like the flavor and body produced by Nottingham yeast better than wine yeast. You just need to pay more attention to the fermentation.

 

[Twofox]

1 - use Narbonne 71-B yeast strain
2 - use staggered nutrient additions
3 - degas with a drill mounted whip 3 times a day for the first week of primary

Do this, and you can have a stellar mead that's drinkable 2 months after the pitch date, not 2 years. Items 2 and 3 above prevent yeast stress, which prevents the off-flavors that need to mellow for 12+ months.

I kid you not, the three above items are game changers, from someone who made his first mead at 17 with bread yeast, and is finally not an idiot after 16 years of mead making

Malkore, I had a frew questions on this. Does it have to be 71-B for the yeast for this to work? Do you think other yeasts might work as well, like Cote des blanc, or D-45? Also, what do you think of doing this with a melomel?

 

[RadicalEd]

Further proof that Nottingham is the end-all, bee-all best yeast .

 

[Jkalotai]

To answer this directly, YES! I made a semi sweet Meade with Nottingham Ale yeast 2 gal water and 2.5 lbs of Costco Honey.